Fantasy fans rejoice, The Witcher season 2 is finally here. This was one of Netflix’s biggest successes last year, a great way to fill in the gap left by Game Of Thrones, about a Giralt, a sword-wielding magically-enhanced monster hunter (or Witcher) played by muscle-bound Superman star Brandon Routh as he battled various enemies and found/lost love. the first series bounced around through time to lead up to one huge battle between good and evil, season two picks up from where that ended. Lots of fun if you’re into that sort of thing.

If you’re into K-Pop (and half the world is) you’ll already know the name BlackPink, one of the world’s biggest Korean Pop groups and an absolute phenomenon. This self-titled Disney+ doco goes behind the scenes to show how they make music and what they do when they’re not. Now… if you’re not into K-Pop, this is well worth checking out as an intro. The absolute devotion of their fans and the fame they have makes Beatlemania look like nothing. It’s incredible.

Following on from that is the Korean drama Snowdrop which stars BlackPink singer Jisoo as a young college student who meets a boy she’s not supposed to fall in love with… but does. Romeo and Juliet style chaos follows. This has been HUGE in Asia due mainly to the band’s popularity, but still a nice drama.

An absolute must from next Thursday is Being The Ricardos on Amazon Prime, the story of Lucille Ball and her husband Ricky Ricardo at the height of her fame. Directed by (The West Wing’s) Aaron Sorkin, this is set over a week of filming one episode and shows what happened behind the scenes of the juggernaut show and all the pressures Lucy had to put up with. Nicole Kidman who plays Lucy was a controversial choice (fans were very vocal) but she is brilliant and this highlights just what a game changer Lucy was.

If you love Yellowstone, don’t miss 1883 on Paramount+ from this Monday, this is the prequel set in the wild west days when the Dutton family set out to claim the Montana land that will become their empire . Great story, huge cast (Faith Hill, Billy Bob Thornton, Sam Elliot, Tom McGraw etc etc). Classic cowboy meets dynasty stuff.

From Monday, crime drama fans will not want to miss The Beast Must Die on AMC+ and Apple+, an absolutely riveting revenge story following a mother who is out to find and kill the driver who ran down her child in a hit-and-run incident. She’s not a former green beret, she doesn’t have secret connections to help her, she’s just a mum who has been utterly let down by the system which allowed a privileged man to walk free… and she’s not having it. To find out the killer she takes a job with the family she suspects is hiding the killer and slowly gets to know them so she can get to the truth. It’s chilling, gripping and very morally ambiguous – is becoming a killer ever appropriate? Watch and see what you think.

Worth checking out for the amazing view of the Great Barrier Reef it gives is Puff, a Netflix documentary looking at the life cycle of a Puffer Fish (in this case a baby called Puff). There’s rampant anthropomorphism throughout (who really knows what fish think?) but it’s still a fascinating look at life under the sea thanks mainly to the incredible filing and production techniques which slow the action down or speed it up to show the things happening at fish speed or coral speed that we normally
wouldn’t even be able to notice.