What’s on TV: The Spy, Elite season 2, Content, Shrill and Incredible Homes - NEWS.com.au

INCREDIBLE HOMES

(Lifestyle Home on Foxtel/Foxtel Now — Wednesday, September 4 at 9.30pm)

My goodness, who doesn’t love a bit of house porn, especially when the house porn is this porny?

Irish architect Dermot Bannon is touring the world to gaze at some of the most jawdropping home designs on this four-part series and he’s starting in Australia, including the iconic Cabbage Tree House by architect Peter Stutchbury.

The following episodes will see Bannon in Melbourne, Sweden and the London. The northern Swedish homes are particularly eye-popping, and you’ll want to pause the show and just drink in those amazing designs.

Those incredible curves, those beautiful lines, the pitch of that roof. Oh my. It’s enough to make you faint.

The only thing better would be to be there.

Foxtel is your home of Australia’s best design and property experts. Watch now

CONTENT

(ABC iview — Wednesday, September 4)

The ABC has the oldest average audience, somewhere in their mid-60s, so it’s a no-brainer that the revered public broadcaster would be experimenting with attracting younger viewers.

Web series Content is its latest effort in a wave of shows that have either tried something different in attitude (Get Krackin’) or format (Sarah’s Channel). Content is made to be watched on your phone, and vertically, not horizontally.

It follows, intimately, a pink-haired wannabe social media influencer named Lucy, and you get to see her live her live through her phone, flipping between her emails (a failed MAFS audition), her texts (no more shifts at her casual job), her social profiles (beach hang, anyone?) and, of course, her phone camera as she pouts and poses this way and that.

When Lucy crashes her car during a live stream, she becomes a global meme — oops. Or is it the best thing that’s ever happened to her?

ELITE S2

(Netflix — Friday, September 5 from 5pm AEST)

The seductive Spanish soap about private school teens, compared to Gossip Girl and Riverdale, is back for its second season this week.

It’s a series heavy on drama and plot twists and it’s still all about the death of Marina, the popular girl who was, shock horror, in a love triangle with the good boy and his bad boy brother. Oh, and she was pregnant. And involved in blackmail!

Yeah, you see where I’m going with this. Elite is pure melodrama indulgence for those so inclined that way.

THE SPY

(Netflix — Friday, September 6 from 5pm AEST)

Sacha Baron Cohen has spent his career creating and inhabiting outrageous, buffoonish characters from Ali G to Bruno. So it’s a surprise to see him playing not just a dramatic role but a historical one.

In this six-part series, Cohen portrays Eli Cohen, a famous Mossad spy who spent years infiltrating the Syrian political hierarchy before he was captured in 1965. Eli Cohen’s espionage work is the stuff of legend in 20th century Middle East history, and absolutely ripe for a miniseries treatment.

The Spy was written and directed by Gideon Raff and Max Perry — Raff is best known for his Israeli TV series Prisoners of War, which was adapted in the US as Homeland. The Spy also stars Noah Emmerich, who played Stan Beeman in that other spy series, the very excellent The Americans.

SHRILL S1

(SBS On Demand — now/SBS Viceland — Tuesday, September 3 at 9.30pm)

Starring Saturday Night Live’s Aidy Bryant, the six-part first season of Shrill is sweet but fierce, funny but serious.

The dramedy is centred on a lead character who doesn’t usually get to be the lead: an overweight young woman who isn’t on some crazy weight-loss journey, instead she’s trying to find the confidence to accept who she is.

A character-driven series that’s perfectly cast, Shrill is a breath of fresh air in a sea of sameness. Wait until you see the pool party episode, it’s one of the most well-calibrated 23 minutes of TV, expertly swinging from euphoria to awkward despair.

RELATED: Shrill full review

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