After Life (Netflix)
Yes, the show about loss and grief. Tony (Ricky Gervais) is suicidal after the death of his wife Lisa but stops from taking his life because of his dog Brandy (a German shepherd; Anti in real life). He works in the local newspaper, Tambury Gazette, which covers stories like a 50-year-old plumber who identifies himself as an 8-year-old schoolgirl. Tony is foul-mouthed, depressed and angry with the world. In Season 3, he's kinder: his perspective changes after he visits a hospice and meets a young girl suffering from cancer. As Anne (Penelope Wilton) says to Tony, sitting on that bench in the graveyard: "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in."
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Photocopier (Netflix)
This Indonesian film by Wregas Bhanuteja tackles the topic of sexual harassment. Suryani is a computer science student and the website developer for the college theatre group Mata Hari. After a party with the theatre group members, Suryani's life goes haywire when inappropriate photos of her are posted on social media—she has no recollection of the night and thinks she was drugged. Suryani is denied scholarship and her father turns her out of the house. She starts living with her friend Amin, who runs a photocopy shop. To find out the truth, Suryani decides to hack the phones of the people present at the party. But she's up against a powerful person.
Sex and the City (Disney+ Hotstar)
The sequel, And Just Like That, might be a misfire but Sex and the City is still a classic. We wrote that “the series—groundbreakingly—celebrated women wanting whatever they happened to want: from commitment to couture to career. If they chose the wrong man, the wrong approach, or chose to buy heels so expensive it drove them to homelessness, so be it. The show not only depicted female friendship accurately but created lasting social templates for viewers to follow.”
Maadathy (MUBI)
Leena Manimekalai's Maadathy is playing as part of a retrospective of the director's work on MUBI. We had written: “In the Tamil film Maadathy, Yosana, possibly teenaged, watches a shepherd wash himself near a river and her lips part in a slight smile, not in mirth but in pleasure… It is a reversal of the scene we know and expect, a young man watching a young woman bathe in a stream and perhaps hiding her clothes. It’s not just Mandakini in Ram Teri Ganga Maili and its various avatars, it is also the stories of Krishna and his dalliances by the Yamuna in the Mahabharat and our folk tales.”
Human (Disney+ Hotstar)
A series on the nexus between hospitals, doctors and pharmaceutical companies. It's directed by Mozez Singh and Vipul Amrutlal Shah, and the accomplished ensemble cast includes Shefali Shah, Kirti Kulhari, Ram Kapoor and Seema Biswas.
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