What to stream this week: A supernatural Australian murder mystery and five more picks

This week’s picks include a creepy Australian thriller with supernatural vibes, an Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson action comedy and a three-season binge of Reservation Dogs.

Playing Gracie Darling (Paramount+) ★★★

Opening with a flashback to a teen seance in an abandoned shack that quickly spins out of control, this Australian mystery comes on strong. There are signs of possession, ominous nightmares and a nerve-jangling score. “Let me out!” demands an unseen presence at the seance, and the show has the same desire. Playing Gracie Darling wants to take the small-town murder mystery, where the crime of a previous era seeps to the surface, and use the supernatural to bend the genre’s conventions.

We should appreciate that seditious intent. Without it, this limited series could be overly familiar. The seance’s convenor in 1997, 14-year-old Gracie Darling (Kristina Bogic), was never seen again, leaving her best friend, Joni Grey (Eloise Rothfield), traumatised. Cut to today and mother of two Joni (Morgana O’Reilly), now a child psychologist, is drawn to her coastal hometown, where Gracie’s niece, Frankie, is now the face on missing posters. It is, as on so many other shows, happening again.

The show’s creator, Miranda Nation, previously made the 2018 independent feature Undertow, and her work examines how female perception can be a source of strength and vulnerability. Once Joni starts making inquiries, at the request of local police officer Jay Rajeswaran (Rudi Dharmalingam), who was also present on the fateful 1997 night, her empathy and expertise encounter supernatural portents, not least recurring sightings of the secret symbol she and Gracie created as teenagers. Every flashback adds to the unease.

Nation has her own take on the procedural. Joni and Jay are sidelined by barely seen homicide detectives, so their unofficial search unfolds in family visits and difficult reunions. Joni’s understanding is stretched by the presence of her mother, the flinty Pattie (Harriet Walter), and her two daughters. Conversations between teenagers, including Jay’s daughter Raffy (Saiesha Sundaralingam) and Joni’s Mina (Chloe Brink), illuminate their parents. Suspects of various kinds dot the narrative, including the friction of Joni possibly being compromised in some way.

Director Jonathan Brough (Bay of Fires) accentuates all this without initially tipping over into pure horror. Only the first three of six episodes were provided for review, so it’s unclear how Playing Gracie Darling resolves what is a pungent, occasionally blunt, set-up. Certainly, with its dark forest canopy and a sense that past crimes and otherworldly incursions are one and alike, the show taps into a lineage that spans Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Kettering Incident. “Can you feel it?” are the very first words spoken, and the answer is a clear yes.

Reservation Dogs (seasons 1-3) ★★★★½ (Disney+)

Any serious list of the best new shows from the past five tumultuous years of television has to include 2021’s Reservation Dogs. The three seasons of this bittersweet coming-of-age comedy, set on a Native American reservation in the back blocks of Oklahoma, constitute a small miracle. Now that all three seasons have found a permanent home on Disney+, this series should be a binge to savour. Please put it atop your to-view list.

Few shows have a more telling, idiosyncratic sense of place, or the harsh hold it exerts on the next generation. Creator and showrunner Sterlin Harjo, with some doors meaningfully opened by his successful co-creator, Kiwi filmmaker Taika Waititi, offered a lived-in experience of intergenerational poverty, idiosyncratic spiritualism, collective trauma and deadpan hilarity. You quickly understood why the teenage protagonists were determined to skip town, and how difficult that would turn out to be.

The young Native American leads, including Devery Jacobs as Elora and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai as Bear, gave terrific performances that grow with their characters. It’s striking how the show evolved, capable of taking in a hang at the local medical clinic, a self-contained episode where Elora’s driving test with Bill Burr’s instructor goes sideways, and community events where multiple generations hold a mirror to each other. The characters felt marooned, but Reservation Dogs never failed to take you somewhere new.

Leanne ★★½ (Netflix)

While it’s not as common now, stand-up success to sitcom star has long been an entertainment assembly line in America. It gets a southern gal spin in this latest variant, which was co-created by comic Leanne Morgan and sitcom bigwig Chuck Lorre (The Big Bang Theory).

Morgan’s fictional alter-ego is a wife and mother from suburban Tennessee whose husband (Ryan Stiles) walks out on her for a younger woman after 33 years together. After the punchline-friendly anger comes starting over in her 50s. It’s predictable, and it starts slowly, but Morgan is undeniably likeable.

Emmanuelle ★★ (Binge)

A 21st century feminist remake of the 1974 softcore porn hit about a young woman’s search for sexual pleasure in Thailand is a valid concept, and everyone involved in this erotic drama has first-rate credentials, from French filmmaker Audrey Diwan (Happening) to stars Noemie Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire) and Will Sharpe (Too Much). But the film, in which Merlant’s title character travels to Hong Kong for her job evaluating luxury hotels, is moribund in its contemporary critique and cinematic chemistry. It’s a tepid piece, nowhere near daring enough.

Revealed: Building Bad ★★★½ (Stan*)

The Revealed series works extremely well as recaps of complex investigative journalism: detailed reporting across the print and broadcast outlets of Nine (the owner of Stan and this masthead) can be woven into a comprehensive narrative.

That’s the case with this feature-length documentary about rampant corruption and underworld infiltration of the powerful CFMEU, a union now under administration. The journalists, including Revealed mainstay Nick McKenzie, explain how a culture of fear and extortion took hold across the construction industry. “That’s business,” says a fixer covertly recorded. “Everybody eats.”

The Pickup ★½ Amazon Prime Video

Painfully long at just 96 minutes, this inert Hollywood action-comedy has a placeholder script that was never updated, instead hoping that the stars – Eddie Murphy, Pete Davidson and Keke Palmer – could manufacture laughs on set with their performances. They do not. Veteran director Tim Story (Ride Along) can only pad a plot that has Murphy and Davidson as mismatched armoured car guards whose vehicle becomes the target of professional thieves. The implausible ensues, which would be fine if the action and/or comedy was entertaining enough to allow for the suspension of disbelief. It is not.

Stan is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.

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