Each month, lots of new films and TV shows are added to Stan‘s library. Critic Craig Mathieson surveys each month’s selections and picks for titles most worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.
Top Picks: TV
Manhunt: Deadly Games (March 5)
The first season from 2017 of Manhunt—a dramatic anthology about high-profile American law enforcement investigations—is currently on Netflix: a middling if corner-cutting depiction of the FBI’s pursuit of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski (Paul Bettany, the season’s standout asset).
The new season, Deadly Games, will focus on the hunt for the bomber who attacked the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, a crime where the official focus on a security guard was at the centre of the recent Clint Eastwood movie Richard Jewell. The cast includes Cameron Britton (Mindhunter) as Jewell, alongside Carla Gugino and Jack Huston. If the failings of the first season have been learnt from, there’s potential here.
Bloods season one (March 11)
The life and death daily duties of ambulance crews are a recurring favourite in the observational documentary genre, with every emergency call bringing a potential new story. So it was only a matter of time until those same lives got the fictional comic treatment, with Jane Horrocks (Absolutely Fabulous) and Samson Kayo (Truth Seekers) as the mismatched paramedics who work shifts together that might go from the mundane to the bloody and intense.
The comedy’s setting is South London, with a supporting cast that includes Lucy Punch (Motherland) and Julian Barratt (The Mighty Boosh). The key question: how black will the humour—and the calls that serve as their backdrop—get?
Safe House seasons one and two (March 25)
Another promising back catalogue buy from Stan, the highly praised 2015 and 2017 seasons of this British drama (no connection to the Denzel Washington thriller) stars one of the great British actors, Christopher Eccleston (Elizabeth, Doctor Who). He plays a former police officer who, nagged at a by a guilty conscience, agrees to allow the hotel he’s bought to run with his wife, Katy (Marsha Thomason), to also serve as a sanctuary for people his friends and former colleagues want to keep hidden.
It’s not a textbook procedure, with Eccleston’s brooding Robert Carmichael becoming involved in the cases surrounding each season’s hotel guests.
City on a Hill season two (March 29)
There were some Boston clichés—a gaudy accent or two, producing credits for Ben Affleck and Matt Damon—to get out of the way, but the first season of this period crime drama soon proved itself a capable work. Set in 1993, Charlie MacLean’s series explores a cityscape marked by timeless divisions and institutional corruption, with an uneasy alliance between a product of the system, old school FBI agent Jackie Rohr (Kevin Bacon), and a young straight arrow District Attorney new to the city, DeCourcy Ward (Aldis Hodge).
Having focused on an armed robbery crew in seasons one (another Boston perennial), the new weekly episodes will explore the drug trade and resulting community struggle in a working class Black neighbourhood.
Top Picks: Movies + Specials
Shirley (March 4)
While she’s best-known for television series’ including Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale, the list of Elisabeth Moss film performances in which she inhabits her character to an entrancing degree is also growing. In this fictionalised biopic she plays the author Shirley Jackson, a combative and unconcerned presence intertwined with her academic husband, Stanley (Michael Stuhlbarg), who charges her next project by inviting a young couple (Logan Lerman and Odessa Young) to stay in their 1950s home.
Director Josephine Decker is fascinated by the creative process—notably, ownership of an idea and the flaws that ultimately fuel its fruition. This independent drama is a knotty, layered narrative, with Moss serving as an impeccable focus.
Bill & Ted Face the Music (March 9)
A mere three decades after Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey confirmed “bogus” as a catchphrase and encouraged the widespread adolescent usage of air guitar, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter return as the troubled middle-aged versions of their signature goofballs. Mid-life crises are rarely as amiably silly as this, which once again require time travel to save both the universe and the duo’s marriages.
The franchise’s mixture of homage and innovation leans to the former, but as daughters who rock harder than their dads Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine are a welcome addition to a movie that closes off the series with a sense of affirmation.
She Dies Tomorrow (March 10)
A surprise session at last August’s Melbourne International Film Festival that topped many of the more fancied festival circuit titles, the riveting new feature from American actor (Alien: Covenant, Pet Sematary) and director Amy Seimetz (The Girlfriend Experience) is an unnerving psychological horror film for the COVID age.
Without warning Amy (Kate Lynn Sheil) becomes convinced she will die the next day, a realisation that not only hangs over her but begins to infect those she comes into contact with. Formally composed and possessed of a mordant existential humour, the film moves between the metaphoric and literal with telling effect.
All titles arriving on Stan in March
March 1
The Handmaid’s Tale: Season 3
The Circus: Season 6, Episode 8 – Midseason finale
Desus & Mero: Season 3, Episode 9
Bridge and Tunnel: Season 1, Episode 6 – Final
Supervillain: The Making of Tekashi 6ix9ine: Season 1, Episode 2
Churchill
The Affair: Season 5
Mother’s Day
Shaun the Sheep – The Movie
American Ultra
March 2
My First Summer
All American: Season 3, Episode 7
Sick of It: Season 2
A Son
Geography Club
March 3
Deerskin
Secret Safari: Into the Wild: Season 1
An American Werewolf In London
Emo: The Musical
The Last Goldfish
March 4
Shirley
A Murder of Crows: Season 1
Inheritance
This Town
Unstoppable: Bethany Hamilton
Lilting
Vida (2016)
March 5
Manhunt: Deadly Games: Season 1
Walker: Season 1, Episode 7
RuPaul’s Drag Race UK: Season 2, Episode 8
Clarice: Season 1, Episode 4
Desus & Mero: Season 3, Episode 10
Back To The Future
Back To The Future II
Back To The Future III
52 Tuesdays
Coby
March 6
RuPaul’s Drag Race: Season 13, Episode 9
RuPaul’s Drag Race Untucked: Season 13, Episode 9
Pride
March 7
Mamma Mia!
March 8
Desus & Mero: Season 3, Episode 11
Supervillain: The Making of Tekashi 6ix9ine: Season 1, Episode 3
Final
The Wall
Farewell to the Night
March 9
Bill and Ted Face the Music
All American: Season 3, Episode 8
Suntan
March 10
She Dies Tomorrow
Oldboy
March 11
Cryptid: Season 1
Litigante
Delfin
March 12
Walker: Season 1, Episode 8
Clarice: Season 1, Episode 5
RuPaul’s Drag Race UK: Season 2, Episode 9
Desus & Mero: Season 3, Episode 12
March 13
RuPaul’s Drag Race: Season 13, Episode 10
RuPaul’s Drag Race Untucked: Season 13, Episode 10
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
March 14
My Best Friend’s Girl
The Legend Of Baron To’A
March 15
Schindler’s List
Desus & Mero: Season 3, Episode 13
My Murderer and Me: Season 1
Only Cloud Knows
March 16, 2021
All American: Season 3, Episode 9
Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist: Season 2, Episode
The Way Of The Gun
March 17
Steve Jobs
Black Hands: Season 1
Fagara
An Old Mistress
March 18
The Disappearance: Season 1
One Man & His Shoes
Close to the Enemy: Season 1
March 19
The Greasy Strangler
Walker: Season 1, Episode 9
RuPaul’s Drag Race UK: Season 2, Episode 10
Desus & Mero: Season 3, Episode 14
Save Me: Season 1 & 2
Now You See Me
Now You See Me 2
March 20
RuPaul’s Drag Race: Season 13, Episode 11
RuPaul’s Drag Race Untucked: Season 13, Episode 11
Dirty Dancing (1987)
March 21
Open Water
March 22
Desus & Mero: Season 3, Episode 15
Crimson Peak
Dirty Like an Angel
March 23
Guns Akimbo
The Wild Goose Lake
March 24
Carlito’s Way
LFO
March 25
Safe House: Seasons 1 – 2
Raw
March 26
Walker: Season 1, Episode 10
Between Black and Blue: Season 1
Gods of Egypt
Sumergible
March 27
RuPaul’s Drag Race: Season 13, Episode 12
RuPaul’s Drag Race Untucked: Season 13, Episode 12
Bean
March 28
Monster’s Ball
March 29
City on a Hill: Season 2, Episode 1
Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist: Season 2, Episode 7
Outback
A Very Brady Sequel
Antibirth
March 30
The Last Witch Hunter
I Am Not a Serial Killer
Haifa Street
March 31
E.T.,The Extra-Terrestrial
Starry Eyes
See also
* Best new movies and TV series on Netflix Austalia
* Best new movies and TV series on Amazon Prime
* Best new movies and TV series on Disney+
* All new streaming movies & series
