Lots to look at, but no touching; it’s another week of steaming streaming with NICK OVERALL

SOMETIMES it feels like a new streaming service is pumped out every week, eager to compete for our hard-earned bucks and each trying to differentiate with a tacked-on brand buzzword. Think Foxtel NOW, Amazon PRIME, Disney PLUS, you know the drill. 

Makes you wonder which company is next going to pop up to interfere with our attention span. My prediction: Google GO will be out before you know it (I’ll await my royalty cheque).

While we wait, trending on the pay-to-watch juggernaut Netflix this week: “Too Hot to Handle”, a new “reality” series kind of about sex, but, well, not about sex. Cashing in on “Instagram influencers”, a bunch of them are thrown together in a tropical resort, aka “Love Island” or “The Bachelor/Bachelorette”. No doubt aiming to stir up the tempest of tweets that follow those shows – who needs to pay for advertising when your viewers will do it for no charge – the twist with this one is that these contenders can only win by not touching each other in any way. Go figure. 

I won’t say it’s my go-to genre, but I also won’t deny I’m a fanboy for “Australian Survivor”. It is interesting to see that even with our overload of content these days reality TV always remains such a ratings puller.

WHILE your wallet’s out, currently on Stan is 2019’s break-out Best Picture from South Korea, “Parasite”, rightly deserving of the top Academy gong, sub-titles and all. 

Normally at this point you’d get a run-down, but this is a film where if you don’t know, don’t find out. Like the 1992 shock offering in “The Crying Game” – confronting for much more than just the IRA dealings – or seeing dead people in “The Sixth Sense”, jump on this latest rollercoaster story blind for the best ride.

AWAY from the streaming giants, what’s better than getting original, captivating TV for free? And I’m not talking about “MacGyver”, but home-grown drama that more than rates alongside its commercial counterparts. 

So, down “Mystery Road”. Take the stark darkness of a film such as “No Country for Old Men”, add a bloke who could teach even Clint Eastwood a thing or two about the stand-off stare, and a landscape as brutal as that in the Australian 1971 classic “Wake In Fright” – directorial master Scorsese said it left him “speechless” (you can see this one too, but on Stan) – and you’ve got our own “western”, declared “tropic gothic outback noir”.

Aaron Pedersen is back for Season 2 as the indigenous “cowboy” detective, Jay Swan. Also returned is Judy Davis as a police sergeant out in a remote community choked by crime. While Davis may initially have been seen as the bigger wheel, Pedersen has ably contributed to its international success.

“Mystery Road” draws from so many iconic sources, transposed into our own sunburnt country in a way that undoubtedly excites the Australian imagination. This is figurehead work for what’s coming up locally – at least, once production is back in full swing out the other side of this coronavirus stuff.

Credit where credit’s due to the ABC for this stylish product that’s streaming on their iView platform (a Steve Jobs buzzword rip-off by any chance?) .

In a quirk, while the series is a spin-off from the captivating 2013 film of the same name, courtesy of all this platform chest-thumping, it’s also only to be found on Stan.

“Mystery Road” isn’t “bingeable” either, but it’s certainly worth the weekly wait. 

IF you’re looking to “binge”, there’s the first three seasons of the brilliant, dystopian, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, on SBS On Demand. Probably never a better time to get into it with season four on the horizon. Just remember, though free, unlike “our ABC”, there will be ads.

It’s exciting to see Australian platforms and original productions giving the “big boys” of the ever-growing streaming playground a run for their lunch money.