What to Watch on TV and at the Movies This Week

Your Netflix Watch of the Week is here!

Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole, Season 1

Jon “Jo” Nesbø, the Norwegian king of Nordic noir, is best known for a series of crime bestsellers about a gritty police detective named Harry Hole — played here by veteran Norwegian actor Tobias Santelmann. Based on the fifth novel in the series, the debut season follows Hole as he takes on a crooked fellow cop, played by Swedish American star Joel Kinnaman (The Killing, RoboCop), as well as a crafty serial killer who severs a finger from his victims and leaves pentagrams on their bodies.

Watch it: Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole, Mar. 26 on Netflix

Don't miss this: The Best Things Coming to Netflix This Month

Your Prime Video Watch of the Week is here!

House of David, Season 2

When we last saw the shepherd boy David (Michael Iskander) in the Season 1 finale, he had been transformed into a full-fledged Iron Age warrior following his showdown with the giant Goliath. In the eight-episode second season of this biblical epic, the future of Israel is on the line as Saul’s reign falters and alliances shift. The cast also includes Avatar alum Stephen Lang, 73, as Samuel; Ayelet Zurer, 56 (Munich), as Queen Ahinoam; and Oded Fehr, 55 (The Mummy), as Abner, the powerful cousin of Saul who fatefully shifts his allegiance to David.

Watch it: House of David, Mar. 27 on Prime Video

Don’t miss this: The Best Things Coming to Prime Video this Month

New at the movies this week

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Fantasy Life, R

Sometimes a great cast overflowing with character actors can elevate an otherwise modest comedy. That’s true of this charmingly offbeat rom-com. Bob Balaban, 80, Jessica Harper, 76, Judd Hirsch, 91, and Andrea Martin, 79, are a Greek chorus of nosy in-laws to arrested-development rocker David (Alessandro Nivola, 53) and depressed actor Dianne (Amanda Peet, 54), whose marriage is floundering under the couple’s mutual narcissism. Enter Sam (Matthew Shear, who also wrote and directed), an unemployable law-school dropout with a tendency toward panic attacks, whom the couple hires as their new “manny.” The hapless Sam falls in love with the irresistible Dianne, turning the existing multigenerational, codependent dynamic upside down and putting the family of New Yorkers on a path to a new normal. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Fantasy Life, Mar. 27 in select theaters, Apr. 3 nationwide

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Holy Days, NR

Many, many Sundays have passed since the era of the nun story, which included TV’s The Flying Nun and 1968’s Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows (a personal favorite). Now from New Zealand comes Holy Days, a delightful but never saccharine comedy about three veteran nuns nearing retirement (the great Judy Davis, 70, Jacki Weaver, 78, and Miriam Margolyes, 84) who learn their local bishop wants to sell the convent out from under their sensible shoes and put them out to pasture. That news gets their wimples in a twist, so they embark on a bumpy road trip — with a brokenhearted Indigenous boy (Elijah Tamati) who has lost his mother — not just to save their roof and way of life, but also to comfort the bereft child along the way. The result is a recipe for miraculous mischief. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Holy Days, Mar. 27 in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ She Dances, PG-13

I’ll never underestimate actor Steve Zahn, 58, again. In this softhearted father-daughter dramedy that he cowrote and in which he stars, the journeyman actor demonstrates a range of quiet, conflicted emotion that grabs the audience by the heart. Zahn plays the relatable Jason, a father mourning the loss of his son — a tragedy that has split his surviving family in two. When his ex-wife, Deb (Rosemarie DeWitt, 54), gets called away, it’s up to him to chaperone their teen daughter (Zahn’s real-life daughter, Audrey) to her last big dance competition before she graduates high school. Suddenly, they have to navigate repressed emotions in close quarters. Actual Zahn home movies add a surprising poignance to the film, and the interactions between actor father and actor daughter feel utterly truthful. There are more emotional moments between Jason and his best friend and business partner (a terrific Ethan Hawke, 55), and here too a classic relationship dynamic feels fresh in these actors’ hands. Eschewing wrapping anything in a tidy bow, the film is a rewarding look at the actual, often complex dance between fathers and daughters. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: She Dances, Mar. 27 in theaters

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⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Late Shift, NR

The international feature films have been so spectacular this season, it’s been easy to overlook compassionate gems like the Swiss-German Late Shift. The European Film Academy nominated the film’s star, Leonie Benesch, for best actress in this taut, turbulent medical drama, which she carries on her narrow shoulders. Benesch plays Floria Lind, a dedicated, capable nurse working her high-tension shift on the postsurgical ward of an understaffed urban hospital. Floria tends to one patient after another: one blood pressure test, one temperature taken, one dose of pain pills delivered after the next. Each incident takes an emotional toll as the divorced single mother sings an agitated Alzheimer’s patient to sleep, comforts a terminally ill mother and tries to manage a demanding patient who behaves as if he’s the only sick person on the ward. Benesch is deeply moving as an angel of mercy in a hellish, often thankless but absolutely necessary profession. As TV’s hit The Pitt nears the end of another season, consider the quieter but no less powerful Late Shift. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Late Shift, in select theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Tow, R

Based on a true story, Tow stars a compellingly thorny Rose Byrne as Amanda Ogle, the Seattle woman forced to live out of her aged Toyota Camry while trying to maintain her hard-earned sobriety amid losing custody of her daughter (The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Elsie Fisher). When the sedan is towed while she’s at a job interview, Ogle’s fragile existence tilts toward chaos, then catastrophe when the heartless towing company sells her car out from under her while charging her an amassed $21,634 in towing charges and fines. Ashamed and heartbroken but not entirely without agency, she leans on the tough love of Barb (Octavia Spencer, 55), a recovering addict who runs a women’s shelter, and the help of Kevin (Dominic Sessa), her Gen Z lawyer who takes on the fat-cat attorney (Corbin Bernsen, 71) for the towing business’s parent company. While there are plot holes and continuity blips, the strong ensemble cast and director Stephanie Laing’s avoidance of melodrama make Tow a satisfying David and Goliath tale with an underdog who’s a real superhero. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Tow, in theaters