The Drama, home-grown Kiwi comedy and everybody’s favourite TV coach: what to stream in September

The Drama, Ted Lasso, The Shards, Race Around The World, The Conversation It’s the first day of spring and we’re back with another round of streaming recommendations for your next binge.

Our critics’ September picks include divisive film The Drama starring Robert Pattinson and woman-of-the-moment Zendaya, a reboot of the iconic late-1990s series Race Around The World, and the season four return of Ted Lasso, arguably the best comfort watch to spawn from the depth of hell that was COVID 2020.

Or if you’re after something less mainstream, there’s an autobiographical film from French visionary Leos Carax, and a Kiwi crime-comedy that will remind you why it’s fun to be silly.

So tuck in.

The Drama HBO Max To watch Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama is to be reminded of how obsessed contemporary culture is with therapy.

I suspect many of us even know the name of our closest friend’s therapist.

This, in many ways, is nothing new.

In his 1979 book, The Culture of Narcissism, US historian Christopher Lasch prophetically told us “the contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious”.

In the past few months, you’ve probably overheard or been in a conversation where someone asks, “what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” This is the question that haunts romantic lead Emma (Zendaya) in The Drama.

It is at the crux of the social discourse around the film itself.

The Drama quickly departs from its meet-cute between Emma and stranger-turned-fiancé Charlie (Robert Pattinson), into a psychological frenzy about revelation and fixation.

There are wedding speeches that make you squirm, and deceitful behaviour that asks you to continually switch your moral certainty between characters.

The 1930s and ‘40s were the golden age of the “remarriage comedy”.

Once, the characters crafted by Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant were comfortable with just being in each other’s company, silent or otherwise; they didn’t have therapists and social media urging them to anxiously probe the slightest misstep.