Anne-Marie Duff and Sharon Horgan star in a deliciously dark comedy, while Bruce Banner’s cousin offers up a neat twist on an old classic

Pick of the week

Bad Sisters

We begin with a corpse. It belongs to John Paul (Claes Bang), the husband of Anne-Marie Duff’s Grace. Via a series of flashbacks, we soon understand why we shouldn’t care that John Paul is dead. Grace’s sisters refer to him as The Prick. He’s selfish, mean-spirited and manipulative. Worse still, he calls his wife “Mammy”. After one infuriating incident, the sisters get drunk and fantasise at length about his death. These are the parameters of Sharon Horgan’s darkly promising comedy series, adapted from the Belgian series The Out-Laws. How did John Paul die? What role did the sisters (Horgan, Duff, Eve Hewson, Sarah Greene and Eva Birthistle) play in his demise? And will they get away with it? Phil Harrison
Apple TV+, from Friday 19 August

Kleo

This brash, stylish espionage revenge drama lands somewhere between Killing Eve and Kill Bill. Kleo Straub is a former East German assassin, abandoned in prison by her Stasi employers but now at large and looking for revenge. Like Killing Eve’s Villanelle, she has a taste for exotic murder – see: puffer fish poison – and flamboyant couture. Jella Haase plays her as a sweetly corrupted child as she tracks down and dispatches the many people who have wronged her. But how high up does the conspiracy go? Gruesomely entertaining – and the fact that it’s partly based on a true story only adds to the intrigue. PH
Netflix, from Friday 19 August


Untold

This sports documentary strand’s specialism is telling the kind of twisty, propulsive stories that go beyond the genre’s typical glorification of success. As it returns for season two, this four-episode run (instalments weekly) opens with The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist. It’s the story of an American football college star who dedicated his season to a recently deceased romantic partner who turned out to be fictional. It’s a mind-boggling tale of catfishing and media scandal, told via soul-baring interviews with the sports player and the hoaxer at its heart. Alexi Duggins
Netflix, from Tuesday 16 August

High Heat

Absurd Mexican melodrama with a plot that defies both belief and logic. Poncho (Iván Amozurrutia) is mourning his brother. He receives a tipoff that his sibling was murdered – and that the murder is connected to a serial killer who is shortly to be released from prison. Then things get really odd: the killer, who is a firefighter, becomes chief of the local fire station after regaining his freedom. Accordingly, Poncho must also become a firefighter in order to investigate. None of it makes the slightest bit of sense, but much of it raises a baffled smile. PH
Netflix, from Wednesday 17 August

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) is a thirtysomething urbanite and successful lawyer who is unlucky in love. She is also the cousin of Bruce Banner, and the Hulk blood runs in her veins. With its nods to women in traditionally male environments, this latest MCU offering is a neat twist on an old formula – when Bruce warns his cousin that transformations are triggered by anger and fear, Jennifer points out that “those are just the baselines of any woman existing”. Cue unconventional responses to mansplainers, workplace conflict and bad dates … PH
Disney+, from Thursday 18 August

The Girl in the Mirror

The amnesia mystery is becoming a genre all of its own (The Tourist, Close to Me). The latest addition to the canon is this Spanish drama which stars Mireia Oriol as Alma, the survivor of a bus crash on a school trip. Almost all of her classmates are killed and Alma awakes in a hospital, with no memory of the incident. What follows is a series of delirious visions. Is she in a fugue state? What was the significance of the disagreement she had with a friend just before the crash? And why is everyone wearing eyepatches? Moody. PH
Netflix, from Friday 19 August

Sprung




“What the hell is a coronavirus?” Increasingly, it’s a plot device. This new comedy sees Covid-19 coming to the rescue of Jack (Raising Hope’s Garret Dillahunt), an amiable lag who is released from jail on licence due to the pandemic. Finding himself homeless in a locked-down world, he falls in with an unofficial halfway house group of ex-inmates, still tempted by crime but determined to stay on the straight and narrow. It’s the handiwork of My Name Is Earl writer Greg Garcia and the tone is in an adjacent ballpark. PH
Amazon Freevee, from Friday 19 August