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Pop CultureJune 9, 2025

New to streaming: What to watch on Netflix NZ, Neon and more this week

Guest writer
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We round up everything coming to streaming services this week, including Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+, ThreeNow, Neon and TVNZ+.

The Brokenwood Mysteries (TVNZ+, June 15)

The reliably charming local murder-mystery behemoth The Brokenwood Mysteries returns for an 11th season, with Neill Rea and Fern Sutherland still on the beat solving improbable homicides. In the picturesque fictional New Zealand town with an abnormally high murder rate, it’s up to the affable duo to unearth the shocking truths behind a new lineup of confounding cases that includes the electrocution of a Santa lookalike, a spooky mid-seance stabbing, and a chandelier crushed tycoon. As always, The Brokenwood Mysteries promises more cosy murder, Aotearoa-style.

Titan: The OceanGate Disaster (Netflix, June 11)

The tragic loss of the Titan submersible on its deep sea expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic in 2023 dominated headlines, sparking morbid memes and conspiracy theories that flooded social media. Now, in Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, award-winning documentarian Mark Monroe delves into the Icarus-like psyche of Stockton Rush, the CEO of the oceanic exploration company, to provide the chilling answers as to how this ill-fated disaster occurred. Told through exclusive whistleblower testimonies, audio recordings, and archival footage from OceanGate’s early days, this disquieting documentary is sure to give you shivers.

Paris Has Fallen (Neon, June 9)

At first glance, you might be hesitant to check out Paris Has Fallen, the small screen expansion of Gerard Butler’s Has Fallen films, but the TV show has been described as “a gripping race around France, with snipers, mercenaries and politicians all vying for the moral low ground.” Similar to Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Sean Harris, the maestro of unsettling antagonists, is a vengeful terrorist mastermind hell-bent on bringing the French government to its knees. It’s up to two agents, played by Tewfik Jallab and Ritu Arya, to stop his reign of terror before any more blood is shed. Paris Has Fallen might not feature Butler, but it seemingly does the trick without him.

The Casketeers: Life and Death Around the Globe (TVNZ+, June 11)

In this travelogue TV show, funeral directors Kaiora and Francis Tipene discover the deep-seated traditions and rituals around death and dying from various cultures around the world. From reconnecting with whānau in Tonga, taking part in death rites in Vanuatu, and immersing themselves in body preparation on the banks of the Ganges, the Tipenes are on a life-affirming globe-trotting journey to explore the vast variations in how death and dying are conceptualised. Despite the subject-matter, The Casketeers: Life and Death sets out to be a heartwarming exploration of life’s final transition.

Deep Cover (Prime Video, June 12)

Mixing slapstick with shootouts, Deep Cover sees Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, and Nick Mohammed as a trio of aspiring (aka failing) comedians roped into a covert sting operation led by Sean Bean. They’ve honed their improv skills on stage, but it’s now time to truly commit to the mantra of “Yes, and…” by going undercover as ruthless ruffians to help the gruff detective take down Ian McShane’s bloodthirsty kingpin. Quickly in over their heads, the Whose Line Is It Anyway? types have to commit to the bit to survive in this hysterical blend of Snatch and 21 Jump Street.

Pick of the Flicks: Saturday Night (Neon, Prime Video, June 15)

With four-time Oscar nominee Jason Reitman at the helm, the biographical “madcap thriller” Saturday Night depicts the iconic comedy sketch TV show’s first broadcast in October 1975 by following the pioneering, troublesome troupe of drug-fuelled young comics at the epicentre of it all. In the eye of the storm is The Fabelmans’ Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels, the show’s strung-out creator and producer, who has to wrangle the stacked ensemble cast into place before they go to air. Despite a hint of navel-gazing, Saturday Night is bound to be a hoot.

The rest

Netflix

The Creature Cases: Chapter 5 (June 9)

Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy (June 10)

Dumb Money (June 10)

Titan: The OceanGate Disaster (June 11)

Cocaine Air: Smugglers at 30,000 Ft. (June 11)

Cheers to Life (June 11)

Our Times (June 11)

Aniela (June 11)

North Shore (June 12)

The Fairly OddParents: A New Wish: S2 (June 12)

FUBAR: Season 2 (June 12)

Kings of Jo’Burg: S3 (June 13)

The Pope’s Exorcist (June 15)

TVNZ+

Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby S6 (June 11)

The Casketeers: Life and Death Around the Globe (June 11)

Alone: Africa (June 13)

Here We Go (June 14)

The Brokenwood Mysteries S11 (June 15)

New Amsterdam S1-S4 (June 15)

ThreeNow

Expedition From Hell: The Lost Tapes (June 13)

Whakaata Māori

Hīkina Te Mānuka (June 15)

Neon

Paris Has Fallen (June 9)

Barney’s World (June 9)

Moonshiners: American Spirit (June 10)

The Neighborhood S6-S7 (June 10)

Runt (June 11)

12 Strong (June 13)

Earth to Echo (June 14)

Saturday Night (June 15)

Prime Video

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (June 11)

Deep Cover (June 12)

American Thunder: NASCAR to Le Mans (June 12)

Saturday Night (June 15)

Terminator: Dark Fate (June 15)

Disney+

Call Her Alex (June 10)

Atsuko Okatsuka: Father (June 13)

Our Movie (June 14)

Apple TV+

Echo Valley (June 13)

Hayu

The Real Housewives of Miami (June 12)

Shudder/AMC+/Acorn/HIDIVE

Goodnight Mommy (2022) (Shudder, June 9)

The Guyver (Shudder, June 9)

Love After Lock Up: Where Are They Now? (June 12)

Comic Book Men S2-S4 (June 12)

DocPlay

Nisman: The Prosecutor, The President and the Spy (June 9)

Elizabeth: A Portrait in Parts (June 12)

Keep going!
Wrest (Photo: Supplied)
Wrest (Photo: Supplied)

Pop CultureJune 9, 2025

Review: Wrest is too much show

Contributing writer
Wrest (Photo: Supplied)
Wrest (Photo: Supplied)

Sam Brooks reviews the new show from Red Leap, a visually stunning mix of theatre and dance.

A mundane breakfast, repeated ad nauseam. A coat check in a club. A bloody operating table. A woman pulled in two in a moment at a bus stop. These are images that show up in Red Leap’s new show, Wrest, a hybrid of theatre and dance exploring early motherhood. These are also the images that have lingered with me long after the show.

They aren’t necessarily the images that you might associate with the setting of Wrest, which is set in a neo-noir world that feels closer to Cyberpunk 2077 or Deus Ex than the modern day. They also aren’t the images you would associate with the actual narrative of Wrest, which follows a woman – or really, two women, played by Shavorn Mortimer and Ariāna Osborne – literally and sometimes metaphorically finding themselves. 

Wrest is two shows in one, and too often, these two shows seem in conflict with each other rather than in conversation. The show about motherhood is moving, with a vibrant physicality. The neo-noir mystery allows the show to play inside a rich, familiar, canvas. Too often, however, the mystery is put on pause to develop a visual language, which makes the sequences where the mystery takes centre stage feel perfunctory and even explanatory, rather than evocative. Neither is bad, although I prefer the show about motherhood to the mystery, but they seldom feel connected to each other.

The best thing about a Red Leap show is that they demand a lot of the artists they work with, and the artists – on and offstage – absolutely rise to the occasion. While the neo-noir setting lends itself to impressive imagery and an undeniable style, it distracts from the themes of motherhood and identity that Wrest is clearly more interested in exploring. It’s not necessarily a question of genre – noir is a broad church of interrogations into various human conditions – but of balance. 

As the leads, Mortimer and Osborne nail two sides of the same coin. They  match each other’s physicality and vocal musicality – even though the show has scant dialogue – without being exact mirrors of each other. Mortimer wrangles with the show’s centrepiece adeptly, and it’s a moment that risks becoming the show’s thematic statement just in case the audience have missed it, but she grounds it in an aching humanity that makes the preceding 75 minutes feel worth it, even cohesive. The ensemble is, as is usual for Red Leap, excellent, with Shadon Meredith’s specific character work being especially impressive; he moves like a dancer, not like an actor working with choreography.

Red Leap is also a company that never fails to deliver, visually and aurally. It goes, then, that the production design, courtesy of Rachel Marlow at Filament 11, is world-class. Sets that would be centrepieces in other productions seem to pop out of nowhere, and disappear just as quickly. A full nightclub is simply (to the audience) spun into focus and then spun out of focus. It is seamless, and impressive.

Wrest (Photo: Supplied)

It’s in the design that the two shows sitting inside Wrest feel like they actually could belong together. The coldness, even the meaninglessness of the neo-noir world that the two women inhabit, is a rich palette for the lack of direction the characters feel. Where the show really reaches out and grabs you is in the body horror moments  – amped up by Eden Mulholland’s haunting score – a reminder that some of the most seemingly natural and normal things that a human might go through can be the most absolutely horrific when viewed from afar, or examined from a different direction.

The images are so beautiful, so specific, and so rich, but they are so unsupported by the narrative that they end up feeling less like pieces of live performance and movement and more like paintings in a gallery. The designers are working at the height of their ability here, but the story is too generic, and too confusing, that it ends up forming its own kind of fourth wall, placing the audience at a remove when we should be invested. It also doesn’t help that the show is very light on dialogue in a genre that is famous for its intricate, musical patter. Noir is the rare genre that can get away with the audience walking away not understanding everything that happened, and dance is an artform that lingers in the same lack of comprehension, but it doesn’t feel intentional here.

More Reading

    As complaints go, “too much show” is not the worst one. There is so much at play in Wrest that the genuinely moving, and distressing, exploration of motherhood is hidden. There’s so much good in this show, but it’s not necessarily the kind of good that fits on the same stage. I’d love to see Red Leap tackle a neo-noir, and play with this cinematic language more onstage. I’d also love to see them continue to explore this thematic territory, I could see a thousand shows about motherhood and still want to see more. In this case, however, I found myself wanting to – apologies – wrest Wrest from itself.

    Wrest plays at Q Theatre until June 14. You can book tickets here. 

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