Every month, streaming services in Australia add a new batch of movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for October.
New to Netflix
‘Nikki Glaser: Bangin”
Starts streaming: October 1
Nikki Glaser has been performing stand-up since she was a teenager in the early 2000s. But her career has taken off in recent years, thanks to her sexually frank talk show “Not Safe” and her hilariously cutting appearances on various celebrity roasts. Glaser’s new special “Bangin’” shows off the comedian in her element, riffing on the awkwardness of sex as a way of making a larger point about the inherent repulsiveness and absurdity of human existence.
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‘Big Mouth’ Season 3
Starts streaming: October 4
The hormone-addled junior high schoolers of “Big Mouth” return for a third season of raunchy and deliriously imaginative animated comedy about the fuzzy area between healthy adolescent sexual curiosity and demonic possession. Once again, some of America’s funniest comedians — including Fred Armisen, Jason Mantzoukas, Paula Pell, Jordan Peele and Kristen Wiig — join the series’ leads Nick Kroll, Jessi Klein, John Mulaney, Maya Rudolph and Jenny Slate, for some fearless and sidesplitting humor derived from embarrassing memories of teenage ignorance.
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‘Peaky Blinders’ Season 5
Starts streaming: October 4
With his British crime drama “Peaky Blinders,” the writer Steven Knight has said he intends to cover the history of England between World War I and World War II through the life of Tommy Shelby (played by Cillian Murphy), a gang leader who returns from the war to his hometown Birmingham in 1919 with some fresh ideas for how to run the rackets. In season five, the story reaches the 1929 stock market crash, and the attendant rise in fascism across Europe. It’s been nearly two years since season four ended, but “Peaky Blinders” fans should find this latest six-episode run well worth the wait.
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‘El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie’
Starts streaming: October 11
When “Breaking Bad” wrapped production in 2013, the award-winning series’ creators shifted their attention to the prequel “Better Call Saul,” which so far has only occasionally alluded to what might’ve happened to the drama’s other characters after Walter White’s story ended. Now, with the movie “El Camino,” the writer-director-producer Vince Gilligan is finally taking the time to explore the immediate aftermath of “Breaking Bad.” Aaron Paul reprises his role as the soul-sick drug dealer Jesse Pinkman, who’s still trying to find a peaceful place where he’s not plagued by cops, old enemies and his own troubled conscience.
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‘Living with Yourself’
Starts streaming: October 18
The gifted comic actor Paul Rudd takes on a dual role in “Living with Yourself,” a fantastical dark comedy created by former “The Daily Show” producer Timothy Greenberg. Rudd plays the sad sack Miles Elliot, who makes a last-ditch effort to fix himself by visiting a radical rejuvenation spa, but then wakes up to find the facility has replaced him with a clone who is smarter, funnier, healthier and better liked than Miles has ever been. The series deals with the hero’s existential crisis as he fights to reclaim a life he’s been badly misusing.
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‘The Laundromat’
Starts streaming: October 18
In “The Laundromat,” director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns tackle the complex international and political scandal often referred to as the Panama Papers, with the help of a cast that includes Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, Jeffrey Wright, David Schwimmer and Sharon Stone. Meryl Streep stars as an ordinary woman who has a painful personal connection to this dense, ripped-from-the-headlines story about fiscal fraud and cover-ups. Like the Oscar-winning “The Big Short” and Soderbergh and Burns’s own “The Informant!,” “The Laundromat” is intended to help laypeople understand the intricate mechanics of an unfair world.
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‘Tell Me Who I Am’
Starts streaming: October 18
There are secrets within secrets in the documentary “Tell Me Who I Am,” which starts with a strange situation: an 18-year-old amnesiac awakes from a coma remembering only his identical twin brother — and then it takes some surprising turns. As Marcus Lewis helps his confused brother Alex relearn the facts of their life together, he omits certain traumatic details, which are gradually revealed to the audience. “Tell Me Who I Am” should appeal to fans of docs like “Three Identical Strangers” and “Dear Zachary,” which focus as much on the painful emotions within their stories as their more sensational elements.
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‘Dolemite Is My Name’
Starts streaming: October 25
Eddie Murphy gives one of the best performances of his career in “Dolemite Is My Name,” a riotously funny and surprisingly moving biopic, inspired by the life of the comedian Rudy Ray Moore. Murphy plays Moore, who struggled to find an audience for years before he developed a wild, vulgar braggart character named Dolemite, who appeared on X-rated underground LPs and in a cult favorite 1975 blaxploitation film. Directed by Craig Brewer (best known for “Hustle & Flow”) and co-written by the “Ed Wood” screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, “Dolemite Is My Name” is a bright, energetic film about an entertainer following his dreams.
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Also arriving: “Living Undocumented” (Oct. 2), “Rhythm + Flow” (Oct. 9), “Riverdale” Season 4 (Oct. 10), “Billy Elliot” (Oct. 11), “Elizabeth” (Oct. 11), “The Forest of Love” (Oct. 11), “Inside Man” (Oct. 11), “Jaws” (Oct. 11), “Kick-Ass” (Oct. 11) “Sophie’s Choice” (Oct. 11), “Da Kath & Kim Code” (Oct. 13), “Sicario” (Oct. 13), “Beowulf” (Oct. 15), “Green Lantern” (Oct. 15), “Police Academy” (Oct. 15), “Upstarts” (Oct. 18), “Jenny Slate: Stage Fright” (Oct. 22), “Surviving R. Kelly” Season 1 (Oct. 22), “Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner” (Oct. 23),“Brotherhood” (Oct. 25), “It Takes a Lunatic” (Oct. 25), “The Kominsky Method” Season 2 (Oct. 25), “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” (Oct. 28), “Arsenio Hall: Smart & Classy” (Oct. 29).
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New to Amazon
‘Goliath’ Season 3
Starts streaming: October 4
Because there are way too many great shows for the average TV viewer to keep up with these days, some outstanding series have failed to draw the attention they deserve. So it’s gone with “Goliath,” a punchy Los Angeles neo-noir starring Billy Bob Thornton as the alcoholic lawyer Billy McBride, who takes on the city’s elites as he tries to make up for a lifetime of mistakes. Moody and magnificently acted, the first two “Goliath” seasons have been stellar adult mystery fare — like “Chinatown” crossed with “The Rockford Files.” There’s no reason to expect any less from season three.
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‘Modern Love’ Season 1
Starts streaming: October 18
An all-star cast helps bring The New York Times column “Modern Love” to life in this new romantic-comedy anthology series, produced by the “Once” and “Sing Street” director John Carney. Each half-hour episode features true tales about the myriad ways people meet, mate and break up these days, dramatized by the likes of Tina Fey, John Slattery, Dev Patel, Catherine Keener, Andy Garcia, Brandon Victor Dixon and more. As with the newspaper version of “Modern Love,” expect unconventional love stories, and not the same old “boy meets girl.”
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‘Peterloo’
Starts streaming: October 18
In the complex historical drama “Peterloo,” the English director Mike Leigh draws on the historical accounts of an 1819 riot in Manchester, England, where soldiers and hired guns opened fire on some frustrated working-class men and women assembled for a universal suffrage rally. Leigh builds the story through long scenes of people arguing in vivid language about humanity and privilege. “Peterloo” follows dozens of characters — so handsomely photographed that they look like classical oil paintings come to life —who are all moving toward an inevitable clash.
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Also arriving: “Frida” (Oct. 1), “One Mic Stand” Season 1 (Oct. 17), “Bosch” Season 5 (Oct. 18), “The Purge” Season 2 (Oct. 18).
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New to Stan
‘Godfather of Harlem’ Season 1
Starts streaming: October 1
Forest Whitaker plays the real-life crime boss Bumpy Johnson in “Godfather of Harlem,” a period drama that covers the last years of Johnson’s life after he returned to New York from a decade behind bars and had to fight to rebuild the empire the Italian mob had taken from him. The series balances gangland action with a detailed portrait of African-American politics and pop culture in 1960s, showing how Johnson’s mission overlapped with the rise of the Black Power movement.
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‘Get Shorty’ Season 3
Starts streaming: October 7
Through its first two seasons, the TV version of Elmore Leonard’s comic crime novel “Get Shorty” has honored the kooky spirit of the book, which is about a mob-connected hustler who uses his powers of persuasion to become a Hollywood player. This season features different characters with a fresh set of problems. Chris O’Dowd plays a hit man hoping to use his love of movies to escape his past and to reunite his family, while Ray Romano plays a B-picture producer risking everything for one last shot at the big time. As dark as it is funny, “Get Shorty” continues to depict both the allure and the insanity of showbiz.
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‘The Godfather Trilogy’
Starts streaming: October 9
The first two “Godfather” movies are among the greatest achievements of American cinema, with director Francis Ford Coppola adding a sense of grandeur and social commentary to novelist Mario Puzo’s pulpy, decades-spanning organized crime potboiler. The third film is something of a letdown; but regardless, this story of the powerful, corrupt Corleone family is absorbing and rich, with a lot to say about how criminal enterprises can become social institutions. The trilogy also features a remarkable cast, including Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall and Robert De Niro.
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‘Looking for Alaska’ Season 1
Starts streaming: October 19
Like a lot of young writers, John Green turned to his own life when penning his first novel, the acclaimed 2005 high school saga “Looking for Alaska,” about a bookish teen who finds a sympathetic clique of misfits at a boarding school. After multiple attempts to adapt Green’s story into a movie, the “Gossip Girl” and “The O.C.” writer/producers Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz have made it into an eight-part mini-series, with the accomplished young actor Charlie Plummer as the introverted hero and Kristine Froseth as the title character Alaska Young.
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Also arriving: “The Amazing World of Gumball” Seasons 2-6 (Oct. 1.), “Rango” (Oct. 1), “Anchorman” (Oct. 4), “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” (Oct. 4), “Old School” (Oct. 4), “RuPaul’s Drag Race UK” Season 1 (Oct. 4), “The Hurt Locker” (Oct. 5), “All American” (Oct. 8), “The Flash” Season 5 (Oct. 10), “Team America: World Police” (Oct. 15), “The Master” (Oct. 16), “Doctor Who” Season 11 (Oct. 18), “Clear and Present Danger” (Oct. 24), “The Hunt for Red October” (Oct. 24), “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (Oct. 24), “Patriot Games” (Oct. 24), “The Sum of All Fears” (Oct. 24), “Dreamgirls” (Oct. 26), “Hairspray” (Oct. 26), “The School of Rock” (Oct. 29), “Snakes on a Plane” (Oct. 30).
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