what to watch in March

From new releases to rediscovered classics, this month’s streaming list is brimming with both spectacle and nostalgia.

We see a pared-back return to the world of Game of Thrones, a glossy portrayal of one of America’s most high-profile romances, some bingeable courtroom drama, and the welcome reappearance of the much-loved Muppet Show.

Add in a distinctly Australian shark survival thriller and you’ve got plenty to pad out the long, warm evenings.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

HBO Max

At first glance, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms appears to be a modest spin-off of Game of Thrones – a franchise previously defined by dragons, dynasties and spectacular bloodshed.

Instead, this show trades dynastic spectacle for something more intimate and unexpectedly incisive. Rather than centring rulers and succession wars, it follows Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey), a hedge knight with no inheritance, title or powerful allies. Honour is his only currency.

Travelling with Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell), a prince moving incognito among commoners, Dunk learns that virtue carries little weight in a world organised around bloodline and inherited power. Land and lineage determine outcomes more than moral conviction.

By narrowing its focus to outsiders, the series exposes how hierarchy sustains itself. Power circulates through status, inheritance and masculine codes of “honour” that reward proximity to authority and exclude those outside it.

The world is structured around male succession and elite consolidation, leaving women largely peripheral in the series. What emerges is not triumphant masculinity, but a glimpse of patriarchal systems that reproduce themselves and limit even well-intentioned men.

Where Game of Thrones asked who deserves the throne, this prequel asks why the throne endures. It shows how the powerful remain powerful, and decency without structural backing rarely prevails.

– Corey Martin

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette

Disney+

There are many reasons to be sceptical about this new series from TV super-producer Ryan Murphy – whose track record with real people and events is patchy. But writer-creator Connor Hines’ 1990s fever dream is lucidly rendered, nuanced, and sparkling with chemistry.

Relative newcomers Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and John Anthony Kelley as John F. Kennedy Jr crackle together, helped along by Kelley’s uncanny resemblance to Kennedy Jr. And although not a direct facsimile of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Pidgeon perfectly captures the aloof, formidable, slightly mean, but enigmatic charm of a fashion girl in her element.

There are no real surprises here plot wise, but Love Story is more than a Wikipedia page come to life. It captures the limerence of infatuation, the seemingly magnetic connection between two forceful personalities, and the very real trauma of living under intense scrutiny, both at home and in public.

The costuming, sets and music capture the feeling of being at the centre of 1990s New York culture – whether smoking out the window of the Calvin Klein offices or fighting in Washington Square Park. Naomi Watts as Jackie O, Grace Gummer as Caroline Kennedy and Alessandro Nivola as Calvin Klein fill out the expertly drawn world. The delicious nostalgia will bring you in, and the love story will hold your attention.

– Jessica Ford

The Lincoln Lawyer, season four

Netflix

The new season of The Lincoln Lawyer, the Netflix courtroom drama inspired by Michael Connelly’s bestselling novel The Law of Innocence, returns with its core cast intact. Defence lawyer Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) appears alongside Maggie (Neve Campbell), Lorna (Becki Newton), Izzy (Jazz Raycole) and Cisco (Australian actor Angus Sampson). Prosecutor Dana Berg (Constance Zimmer) makes a guest appearance.

Framed by iconic Los Angeles vistas, from the Hollywood hills to the imposing modernist Stanley Mosk Courthouse, season four shifts its emotional centre, taking on a more intensive focus on Mickey’s ex-wives. They pull together to save him from life in prison. Developed as strong characters, Maggie and Lorna risk their careers without hesitation.

Mickey’s wonderful classic 1963 Lincoln Continental convertible, highlighted in previous seasons, symbolises individualism. But in this series, he spends more time in his two town cars, emphasising interdependence on those around him.

Previously characterised as a suave operator working from the back seat of his Lincoln Continental, Mickey is now more exposed and uncertain, following the broader trend in legal dramas towards emotionally vulnerable male protagonists, and communal – rather than individual – heroism.

His team and ex-wives never doubt his innocence and pull out all stops in a compelling story of the “wrongfully accused”. They are loyal, and provide the emotional safety one would expect from family. This season is light, fun and easy to binge.

– Lisa French

The Muppet Show

Disney+

The Muppet Show is back – at least for one episode.

A lovingly made continuation of Jim Henson’s original, which debuted on television in the United Kingdom 50 years ago, the new episode features recreations of the original set, format and characters.

Fozzy Bear hurling terrible one liners? Check (or Wukka Wukka). Miss Piggy battling for the Best Diva on Set? Check. The Great Gonzo with delightfully absurd stunts that provide satisfying call backs for trainspotters? Check. Statler and Waldorf (aka the old grumpy critics) providing dry critic? Check. Beaker and Professor Honeydew presenting a particularly experimental experiment? Check.

Come for the nostalgia; stay for the energy provided by Sabrina Carpenter, the show’s musical guest who delights as a musician and hams it up with Piggy perfectly (all puns intended).

Cameos by Seth Rogan and Maya Rudolph are also delightful, and, like the original series, the vibrant Muppets’ covers of contemporary songs really are the biggest draw.

The only real gap is Henson’s voice as Kermit. While new voice actor Matt Vogel has been in place since 2017, in this familiar context the difference is a bit more noticeable.

– Liz Giuffre

L'Eclisse

Mubi

I’m always pleased to see a Michelangelo Antonioni film become available to stream in Australia. Although I’ve seen his 1962 masterpiece, L’Eclisse (The Eclipse), several times now – and dedicated a thesis chapter to it – it still leaves me at a loss for words.

Succeeding L’Avventura (The Adventure, 1960) and La Notte (The Night, 1961), L’Eclisse constitutes the final piece in Antonioni’s so-called “trilogy of alienation”. This defining three-film run – often cited among the most influential in modern cinema – explores themes of emotional disconnect, and the unknowable conditions of modern life.

Set largely among the modernist architecture of the Mussolini-era EUR (Esposizione Universale Roma) district, and chaotic events at the Borsa stock exchange, L’Eclisse’s narrative centres on the doomed love affair between Piero and Vittoria, played by the inimitable Alain Delon and Monica Vitti.

Beyond the love affair, however, Antonioni’s film also explores far deeper existential and emotional concerns.

As epitomised through the haunting final seven-and-a-half-minute montage, L’Eclisse is a film enveloped in uncertainty and opacity. Like other titles by Antonioni, the film lays bare the texture of our human condition, capturing the enigmatic, ever-unfolding mysteries that characterise the modern world.

It continues to feel more groundbreaking and devastating with each rewatch.

– Oscar Bloomfield

The Royal Tenenbaums

Netflix

I recall Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums as charming but confusing to my 20-something brain when it came out in Australian theatres in 2002. What would I make of it more than 20 years later?

Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) is the mercurial patriarch. His artful antics have estranged him from his family, which consists of his self-possessed wife Etheline (Angelica Huston) and his brilliant brood, Margot, Chas and Richie (Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson, respectively). Each child is a prodigy in their chosen domain of art, business and sport.

When forced to leave his decades-long residence at the Lindberg Palace Hotel, Royal formulates a last-ditch plan to win back his family’s affection in league with his longtime companion, Pagoda (Kumar Pallana).

The time is modern but unclear, suggesting the late 1970s but with props that date it closer to Y2K. Stacks of vintage boardgames and Chas’ Dalmatian mice linger in the Flemish revival family residence, located in an imagined New York City. These elements coalesce with a killer soundtrack featuring Nick Drake, The Clash and The Velvet Underground.

Watching The Royal Tenenbaums with maturity on my side, what hit me was how deeply troubled this family is. Trauma, mental health, neurodivergence and arrested development aren’t so much lurking in the background as front and centre.

The film succeeds in offering viewers a way through familial messiness. It left me feeling reflective, hopeful and grateful.

– Phoebe Hart

Beast of War

Netflix

Australian writer-director Kiah Roache-Turner’s Beast of War is a unique blend of war and shark flicks of the “survival horror” kind. It’s a short, sharp, gory joyride at 87 mins.

Set in 1942, a warship full of Australian soldiers is suddenly sunk on the Timor Sea. Seven men cling to a makeshift raft to survive.

Our hero is an Aboriginal private, Leo (Mark Coles Smith). Among the soldiers are Will (Joel Nankervis), Des (Sam Delich) and Teddy (Lee Tiger Halley). As Japanese fighter planes strafe from above, the soldiers must defend themselves against a giant great white shark circling below.

Beast of War is visceral. It gushes with affect. Its stylistic trait is close-up after close-up of soldiers’ faces, each one brutal in conveying pure horror.

As you watch, you become absorbed in the shock and horror of it all, but without getting too drawn under. As soon as there’s a moment’s calm, literally rendered onscreen in the lulls between the shark’s attack, you’re jolted with something scary, surprising and gruesome.

It’s also a very Australian film. Alongside themes of mateship and racism experienced by Indigenous soldiers is over-the-top Aussie slang. In one comical line, Des points a puny rifle at the enormous shark surging towards them and yells: “Come on you toothy bastard!”

– Roger Dawkins

Read more: Beast of War is a beautifully shot survival thriller with bite