3 Best all-new Netflix and Prime Video additions for a mid-week binge (Sep 14-18)
It's a huge week for streaming fans
Every week is a big one when you're one of the biggest and best streaming services on the planet, and if you want to dominate in the manner that Prime Video and Netflix are both aspiring to, you'd better fill each week with content. Subscribers are savvier than ever right now, not least because prices keep going up, so they need to be kept satisfied with new additions.
This week is a fruitful one if you're a Prime Video or Netflix subscriber, as it happens, with some really intriguing arrivals swelling each service. From horror to animated fare, these highlights run the gamut, and I've arranged each with its trailer and release date so that you can plan your week of viewing more carefully.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story
- Streaming on: Netflix from 17 September
Netflix has made quite a success out of the twisted Monster series, which makes fictionalised versions of the stories of world-famous killers. It's tackling its oldest subject so far in the form of Lizzie Borden, whose repute as an axe-murderer stands in contrast to the outcome of her actual trial, interestingly.
Because her story is the subject of so much less documentary evidence, it looks like this might be the loosest and therefore most creatively interesting Monster season yet, with license to take a more impressionistic view of her story. It looks like we'll get to experience some of the horrible adversity she lived with, and get a fuller sense for why she might have done something terrible to change it (if she indeed did).
Neagley
- Streaming on: Prime Video from 16 September
Reacher has been a phenomenal success for Prime Video, to the point where it's a wonder it took anyone this long to adapt Lee Child's novels properly (without Tom Cruise in one of the most tragic miscasting incidents ever). You can underline that success with the fact that it's now getting a spinoff centred around his sometime colleague Neagley, a pretty interesting operator in her own right.
While she's a very different character, you can probably expect this season of TV to unfold in a roughly similar way – with Neagley uncovering and then slowly dismantling a criminal conspiracy. That said, I'm hoping that her investigative methods are meaningfully different, hopefully with a bit more deduction and reasoning compared to Reacher's blunt-force approach.
Stranger Things: Tales From '85 (Season 2)
- Streaming on: Netflix from 17 September
This is one of the most surprising releases of the year, in my opinion, simply because of its timing – just six months on from the first season's release, we're now getting another dose of Tales from '85, Netflix's exploration of what might have happened between seasons of Stranger Things.
With the mainline series now over, fans of the gang from Hawkins don't really have any other options for spinoffs right now – and now they've got two seasons of this one within the same year. This time around we should get another story of teenage derring-do as the gang takes on more supernatural monsters and grows together while doing it.
