Overwhelmed by the number of options available on various streaming platforms? Don't be – we've picked six new or returning shows and reviewed them, so you can get straight to the good bits.
Replay
Disenchantment
Netflix, from Friday
Matt Groening's foray into the realm of heroic fantasy was always going to be characterised as "The Simpsons meets Game of Thrones". As it turns out, though, it's more evocative of Trump Tower than it is of King's Landing.
Our heroine is rebellious young princess Bean (Broad City's Abbi Jacobson), a buck-toothed, freckle-faced tomboy who loves sneaking out of her father's castle at night for a spot of drinking, gambling and brawling in medieval dive bars.
Her constant companions are one Elfo (Nat Faxon), a small, bilious-green elf who bears more than a passing physical resemblance to Bart Simpson; and Luci (Eric Andre), a little black demon who looks like he just fell out of a Leunig cartoon.
The Trump angle? That comes in the form of Bean's dad, King Zog (John DiMaggio), an impulsive, irascible glutton with an accent from somewhere in the vicinity of Manhattan; and her stepmother, Queen Oona (Tress MacNeille), a glamorous but desperately unhappy foreigner who has an Eastern European accent and a decidedly amphibian physiology.
Disenchantment airs on Netflix from August 17.
Given such unavoidable – and surely intentional – parallels to public perceptions of America's "First Family", it doesn't sit well that Zog and Oona get a seemingly slow-witted young son rather than, say, a precociously mischievous daughter.
And with Groening's art style so familiar and even inherently comforting, it takes a while to adjust to Disenchantment's frequent cartoonish violence and gore.
It's like a medieval-themed Treehouse of Horror episode as severed heads are arrayed on pikes, the corpses of plague victims get chucked into pits and set on fire, ogres get stabbed in the eyeballs, and so on.
The sexual references are startlingly coarse at times, and while the humour is generally much broader and less gag-dense than many will have hoped for, there's an annoying tendency to explain jokes to make absolutely sure that everyone gets them the first time around.
Disenchantment, by The Simpsons’ creator Matt Groening, is set in the medieval fantasy kingdom of Dreamland.
Given the abundance of genre tropes they have to work with, it's surprising that Groening and co-developer Josh Weinstein – a long-time writer and producer of The Simpsons and Futurama – haven't made Disenchantment a more consistently engaging and entertaining show. Especially since their writers' room mixes veterans of The Simpsons and Futurama with emerging talents such as Australian Adam Briggs.
At this point it might feel like heroic fantasy is uniquely impervious to comedic appropriation, but Terry Pratchett's novels and even Danny McBride's marvellously silly Your Highness show that not to be the case. Perplexing, nonetheless.
Black As, on ABC iView.
Black As
ABC iView
It's a whole rollicking new adventure as Yolngu "blood brothers" Chico Wanybarrnga, Dino Wanybarrnga, Jerome Lilypiyana and Joe Smith set out across Arnhem Land once more, showing off their remarkable bushcraft and bush-mechanic skills.
This time around they're out to retrieve a relative's broken-down tractor from someone else's place on the other side of a big, crocodile-filled bay.
With indigenous musicians providing an upbeat, evocative soundtrack, even the humorously contrived gathering of supplies is fun to watch – one of the lads' first tasks is to relieve a couple of young children of the inflatable dinghy they're using as a paddling pool.
Once our heroes hit the water it's full steam ahead – constructing a makeshift barge on which to tow a big replacement tractor tyre, using an outboard motor to start a campfire, and slurping up long, wet, ropey mangrove worms like spaghetti.
As always, what shines through most of all is the men's cheerful energy and their ease with each other and with their forbidding environment – in which deadly danger might be lurking behind any tree. Play one bite-sized episode and you'll end up playing them all.
Just Another Immigrant is airing on Stan.
Just Another Immigrant: Romesh at the Greek
Stan
In Just Another Immigrant, British comedian Romesh Ranganathan set out to conquer the US in the dumbest way possible – booking a night at Los Angeles' 6000-seat Greek Theatre before anyone in California even knew who he was.
Here we get to see the show he eventually put on – and to see how many people actually turned up. It's an enjoyable hour of Ranganathan's trademark observation, irritation, unrepentant confession and gentle misanthropy.
Much more entertaining than the series that went before it.
See Extinction on Netflix.
Extinction
Netflix
A so-so Netflix movie in which a family man (Michael Pena) finds his premonitions of alien invasion coming true.
Earth's futuristic skyscrapers are soon ablaze, but the fact that the aliens' labour-intensive invasion plan requires them to go door to door with bayonets fixed to laser rifles suggests that there's something weird going on.
The big twist is a good one, there are some decent action sequences and Lizzy Caplan is always good to watch, but there isn't enough here to keep things from dragging.
Spider: The Best Hacker in Russia is on Amazon Prime Video.
Spider: The Best Hacker in Russia
Amazon Prime Video
You might think that a germophobe super-hacker would go about their business in comfy isolation, well away from other humans and all their icky bacteria. But a couple of Russian cops (Nella Strekalovskaya and Alexey Vakulov) are about to find out that vigilante cyber-sleuth Spider (Valery Pankov) prefers to deal face-to-face.
Albeit from inside a glass box, and only once his visitors have been rudely decontaminated. This watchable procedural series begins with him shedding light on the death of a schoolgirl. Expect gritty locations and dodgy fashion sense.
Australian band Six Ft Hick.
6ft Hick: Notes From The Underground
tubitv.com
Marty Moynihan's documentary gets the viewer up close and sweaty with the explosively physical phenomenon that is Queensland swamp-rock band 6ft Hick.
The film, shot on a short but gruelling European tour, provides a great sense of life on the road but frontmen Geoff and Ben Corbett retain a certain air of mystery.
Part of tubitv's sizeable free music collection, which includes documentaries on everyone from Led Zeppelin to The Pixies and performances by everyone from Tim Minchin to First Aid Kit.
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