Ted Lasso to Monsters of God: the seven best shows to stream this week

Jason Sudeikis’ football coach turns his hand to the women’s game. Plus, a wild new documentary from the maker of Tiger King – about exotic animal smuggling

Pick of the week
Ted Lasso

Are we still in the mood for football with a side order of ripe American cheese? In the light of reservations about the recent World Cup (and, particularly, the final’s half-time show featuring Ted Lasso), it’s certainly up for debate. The premise of this fourth series is “back to basics” – which is the only way the show could conceivably still work as an underdog story. Ted (Jason Sudeikis) is in the US when he’s visited by Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) and Keeley (Juno Temple). Can he be persuaded to manage their second-tier women’s team, Lady Greyhounds? The excellent cast – which now also includes Sex Education star Tanya Reynolds – keep the ball rolling.
Apple TV, from Wednesday 5 August

***

Monsters of God

A rich, strange, largely unknown world usually makes for a compelling documentary series and film-maker Eric “Tiger King” Goode’s deep dive into exotic animal smuggling is no exception. Many of the people we meet here fall into the likable oddball category – it’s clear that their enthusiasm for snakes and lizards is entirely sincere. However, that’s not the whole story. Goode gets the lowdown on the huge money that can be made by liberating (or stealing, depending on your point of view) animals from sanctuaries and trafficking them to both zoos and private collectors.
HBO Max, from Friday 7 August

***

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Back to Macondo for the second part of this Gabriel García Márquez adaptation which does an admirable job of capturing the uncanny, earthy strangeness of the original novel. And there’s worrying news: the era of the exploitative American United Fruit Company is upon us, so along with carefully measured bananas, the town is to be modernised in all the worst possible ways. The plotline inevitably gives this season a more socially conscious and polemical slant but as Úrsula Iguarán’s ancient curse begins to manifest, the magic at the heart of the realism is never far away.
Netflix, from Wednesday 5 August

***

Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy

The format for comic Mo Gilligan’s investigation into the chicken industry is far from original: his attempt to live on nothing but fast-food chicken for 28 days is clearly derived from Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 film Super Size Me. However, there’s merit elsewhere as Gilligan reveals a catalogue of poultry-related horror: the exploitation of workers; the targeting of low-income communities; the terrible conditions faced by the chickens; and the lack of nutritional value in the food. This is an industry long overdue the scrutiny it receives here.
Netflix, from Wednesday 5 August

***

Sterling Point

More drama about the growing pains of wealthy American teens in this YA series which, in terms of atmosphere at least, has echoes of The Summer I Turned Pretty. The action pivots round a brother and sister who (in an infuriatingly casual way) inherit a lake island. Problems, problems. However, things are set to become more confusing still: when Annie (Ella Rubin) arrives at Sterling Point, she’s shocked to bump into a girl who is the absolute double of her late mother. Could she have a secret sister? An emotionally fraught voyage of discovery ensues.
Prime Video, from Wednesday 5 August

***

The Shards

A new series from TV’s most prolific purveyor of primary coloured pulp, Ryan Murphy. The Shards was co-created with Bret Easton Ellis and adapted from the author’s semi-autobiographical novel, set in the early 1980s within a jaded, privileged friendship group at an elite LA school. The world of aspiring writer Bret (Igby Rigney) is thrown into chaos by the arrival of Homer Gere’s charismatic Robert. Is this just school politics? Maybe, but there’s a serial killer on the loose and he and Robert seem connected. Restraint and understatement aren’t really in the picture.
Disney+, from Thursday 6 August

***

Alley Cats

Ricky Gervais’s latest misguided comedy venture is this animation set within the shadowy world of cats. Sadly, the animation is generic, the plotting almost non-existent and the voice acting – particularly that of Gervais himself, though Tom Basden, Kerry Godliman and Diane Morgan also feature – almost insultingly cursory. As has often been the case with Gervais’s output since The Office, it somehow manages to be gratuitously unpleasant and twee at the same time, with lots of swearing and sentimentality.
Netflix, from Friday 7 August