Daisy Mae Cooper plays a young working-class single mother living with her ten-year-old daughter in Rain Dogs. Photo / Attached

Rain Dogs (neon, from Wednesday)

Costello Jones is the textbook definition of a cute swindler. When we first meet her at the start of a new BBC/HBO dark comedy rain dogs she has been kicked out of the apartment along with her 10-year-old daughter Iris and a couple of trash bags containing their belongings, and just under £3,000 of rent is missing. “The thing is, guys,” she explains philosophically, “if you live an interesting life, people will always be chasing you.” 2019 memoir Skint Estate: Living below the poverty line. In this book, the quiet and underappreciated British press hailed her as “the voice of her generation” and “the next Bukowski” and it wouldn’t be surprising if the same level of enthusiasm extended to her first foray into television. But for all the praise that Carraway’s hilariously spiky screenplay deserves, Daisy May Cooper deserves just as much credit for the way she brings it to life with the perfect combination of swagger and heartiness. Living below the poverty line means this is far from the first time she’s been kicked out of her apartment – “not again,” sighs the man in the laundry room as she tosses out her trash bags and says she’ll pick them up tomorrow. The rescue this time comes from the man she saved in her phone as “Selby – don’t answer”. Private school-educated Florian Selby (Jack Farthing) is a plucky underworld dandy who has just waltzed out of prison and returned to Costello’s life. He only brings trouble, but he covers for Costello – and, importantly, three grand. There is so much going on in the first episode, so many memorable scenes only to end exactly where we started. This is a series that understands that sometimes it’s just life.

Desperate Measures (TVNZ+, from Monday)

Desperate times call for a dark and serious British thriller mini-series that pretty much pushes the boundaries of believability, and that’s exactly what we have in the Movie. Desperate measures. Amanda Abbingdonsherlock) plays Rowan, a bank teller and single mother of a 15-year-old son saddled with inherited debt. The desperate measures promised by the title come after her son becomes involved in a failed drug deal on the estate and ends up owing several thousand pounds to local gangsters. Enter her career as a former criminalLutherWarren Brown), with whom she teams up to do the only thing that can be done in times like these: rob a bank.

The Reluctant Traveler (Apple TV+)

Over the years, all kinds of travelers have made television documentaries about travel: fearless, curious, just happy to be there. . . That says a lot, though it’s hard to say what exactly, that the current trend is for reluctant and/or just plain idiotic travelers. Eugene Levy (English)Shitts Creekmany memorable movie roles), fortunately only the first, and yet a good-natured example, so he actually makes for great company as we visit luxury rooms and quirky sights a bit off the beaten path from Finland to Costa Rica, South Africa to Portugal.

Above the garden wall (neon)

TV shows starring Elijah Wood, Melanie Lynskey and Christopher Lloyd don’t come out every day, even if they’re animated. First shown on Cartoon Network in 2014, this 10-episode series is a surreal story about two stepbrothers who discover an enchanted forest behind their home, where they encounter strange creatures, including a bluebird with the voice of Melanie Lynskey. It’s weird, wonderful, and well worth a watch if you’re into that sort of thing – creator Patrick Hale was the writer and creative director of the cult favorite cartoon. Adventure Timeand his last credit was co-writing with Guillermo Del Toro, incredibly well received Pinocchio.

Movie of the Week: All That Breathes (neon)

One of this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Documentary (along with fire of lovecurrently streaming on Disney+) All that breathes follows a pair of brothers in New Delhi as they rescue and care for injured black kites, birds of prey that struggle to survive in the city’s increasingly polluted skies. It’s a tender yet profound sighting documentary that seems to pierce the heart of everyone who watches it – join them so you can say you’ve seen it when it wins an Oscar.

From the vault: Gigli (2003) (Netflix)

Critics are divided on this 2003 romantic crime comedy starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez—depending on who you listen to, it’s either the Worst Movie of the year, the worst movie of the decade, or the worst movie of all time. Affleck plays a low-ranking mobster from Los Angeles, while Lopez plays a security guard who is hired because his boss doesn’t trust him to do his job properly. The chemistry is reportedly “non-existent”, which is funny because the couple were dating at the time. So is Gigli (pronounced “ji-lee”) really as bad as its 6 percent freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes suggests? You know what you want to watch and decide for yourself.

Podcast of the Week: The Coldest Deal in Laramie

The latest podcast from the Serial Productions team is starting to sound like a parody of a true crime podcast, from raucous backdrops to flat, serious journalistic monotony. The newspaper “New York Times Reporter Kim Barker arrives to paint a picture of a small Wyoming town where a young woman was brutally murdered early in the morning in 1985. It’s like a podcast that a movie character obsessed with true crime podcasts might be listening to. But be patient. The eight-part series gets really good in episode three when Barker arrives in her old hometown of Laramie – she was in high school when the murder rocked the city – and starts talking to the people involved. Arrested lawyer, character straight from Better call Saul, conveys a mountain of evidence, and the remaining episodes combine the original recordings of police interrogations with ongoing interrogations, showing how memory can be distorted in such cases. It’s a no-frills production – the episodes don’t even try to land on a cliffhanger, and the show doesn’t try to arrive at a neat “case closed” resolution. The fact that he has you hooked should tell you everything you need to know.

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