Get out the popcorn, cold drinks and binge. This is your weekend, after all.
This is a weekend for television and couch flopping of the particularly lazy kind. And there’s so much to watch across streaming and DSTV channels. In between, get out the popcorn, Pepsi and binge.
Task on Showmax is a lekker watch. Imagine a group of garbage collectors that double up as vigilante robbers at night. They don’t just steal from anyone but stake out and calculate heists at the dens and homes of criminals, drug lords and distribution houses.
The series is set in the blue collar suburbs of Philadelphia and stars Tom Pelphrey as Robbie the trash truck driver who leads the charge of masked late-night robbers.
By day he’s a family man and nobody would ever suspect the connection. That is, until Mark Ruffalo, who stars as Agent Tom, gets onto their trail. Agent Tom leads a task force assembled to put an end to the crimes.
Thrilling vigilante show Task
Task is action packed, layered and well-paced and makes for a fantastic binge-watch. Ruffalo and Pelphrey’s performances lead a highly capable cast in this show. If you don’t get to it this weekend, catch it during the week or, alternatively, next weekend.
Dexter is resurrected
Everyone’s favourite serial killer is back, too. Hot on the heels of Dexter: First Blood and then Dexter: Original Sin, it’s prequel comes Dexter: Resurrection. The new series, now available in weekly instalments on Showmax, is set in New York and is the sequel to First Blood, the season where Dexter meets a grown-up Harrisson, his son, and where Dexter is shot.
Resurrection picks up the narrative where Dexter wakes up from a 10-week coma. Detective Angel, all the way from Miami, hot on his trail. This, while Harrisson is busking at a five-star hotel in the Big Apple and, inevitably, makes his first kill, but doesn’t quite get the balance right.
Dexter, still in hospital, hears about the murder on the radio and recognises the modus operandi of his son’s kill. Harrisson chopped the discovered corpse into nine pieces, just like dad taught him in First Blood.
What follows, and where it’s at now, is a Dexter escape from the hospital, detective Angel on his trail. Dexter heads straight to New York to both reconcile with and, of course, have Harrison’s back.
Resurrection is most definitely a watch for all Dexter fans and even if you have never been introduced to everyone’s favourite serial killer, all the seasons are available on the streamer. Michael C Hall as Dexter is impeccable as always, cold but fuzzy, calculated but oh so very human at the same time.
Some of the characters may be new, but it’s balanced out by familiar faces. It’s good to have Dex back in a new show.
Netflix also carries several Dexter seasons but for the new stuff head to Showmax.
Kathy Bates as Matlock
On M-Net Kathy Bates stars in a remake of the ’80s legal classic, Matlock. It’s a gender swap reprise with the original show starring Andy Griffiths as Ben Matlock. The original series ran for nine years and Bates stars as Matty Matlock. However, it’s not a remake in the traditional sense of the word, more like an extended play with a new plot and a new premise.
Matty Matlock is wealthy retired attorney Madeline Kingston who gets a job at a law firm under somewhat false pretences. She is seeking justice for the death of her daughter and the firm that she joined. Well, there may be evidence about the case hidden somewhere in a filing cabinet.
While this sidebar investigation is happening, Matlock must gain the trust of her colleagues and help them on some of the firm’s more challenging cases.
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The original Matlock was a much slower burn and Bates’s reincarnation of the character is well suited to intriguing television. The cases are good, the acting, as could be expected, flawless.
What’s really refreshing, above all, is a legal drama that’s not another spin-off of Law and Order or, for that matter, another David E Kelley show where the characters are similar, the setting simply different. Think LA Law, Boston Legal and so on.
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