What to Watch on TV and at the Movies This Week

Your Netflix Watch of the Week is here!

Beef, Season 2

When the first season of this deliciously dark, Emmy-hauling comedy series hit Netflix back in 2023, it was a breath of fresh air, thanks to terrific lead performances from Ali Wong and Steven Yeun. Season 2 welcomes a new cast, but the theme remains the same: revenge. This time, a pair of low-level Gen Z country club employees (Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton) become awkwardly entangled in the unraveling marriage of their boss (Oscar Isaac) and his wife (Carey Mulligan). Let the head games begin!

Watch it: Beef, April 16 on Netflix

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

Your Prime Video Watch of the Week is here!

Kevin, Season 1

Whether you’re a fan of animated TV shows for grownups or not, consider an all-star voice cast as reason enough to check out this new series cocreated by The White Lotus’s Aubrey Plaza. Jason Schwartzman voices the titular house cat who’s so rattled by the sudden breakup of his human owners that he decides to dump them, heading to a pet rescue center in the New York City neighborhood of Astoria, Queens, where he meets a misfit band of abandoned animals (voiced by talents including Plaza, Whoopi Goldberg, 70, John Waters, 79, and Amy Sedaris, 64).

Watch it: Kevin, April 20 on Prime Video

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

New at the movies this week

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, NR

Grownups with children who came of age in the aughts will know Ben McKenzie as the boy-next-door-handsome star from the teen soap The O.C. (he played heartthrob Ryan Atwood). But the Southland actor is here to share something else: He just didn’t understand cryptocurrency (although, unlike me, he has an econ degree). And, so, the charming Angeleno set out to write, direct and star in a documentary to explain the sleight of hand that he calls “the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.” McKenzie, who interviews players including the now-incarcerated Sam Bankman-Fried and then reports back to his down-to-earth wife and Gotham costar Morena Baccarin, makes the journey to get to the bottom of cryptocurrency both entertaining and understandable. Is this leading man a winning bet as a documentary filmmaker? I’d invest. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Everyone Is Lying to You for Money, April 17 in theaters

⭐⭐⭐☆☆ Mother Mary, R

Anne Hathaway, 43, has had memorable screen moments, earning a 2013 Oscar for singing the role of Fantine in Les Misérables. Despite those vocal chops, she works a little too hard to convince us she’s Mother Mary, a global pop star in the Taylor Swift–Lady Gaga mold. Despite being at the top of her fame, Mother Mary returns for solace and connection to the onetime best friend and costume designer who cocreated her celestial image, Sam Anselm (rising-force-to-watch Michaela Coel). Sam is unwelcoming, bitter for being left behind in the singer’s spectacular rise. Their reconciliation, heightened by supernatural elements and long, longing glances, plays like a tortured A Star Is Reborn. If you were a fan of 2010's horror drama Black Swan, you may enjoy this crazy ride. Or you may wish that Mother Mary, to quote Paul McCartney, 83, should have just let this one be. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Mother Mary, April 17 in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ Normal, R

There will be blood. A mad mash-up of Fargo and Dog Day Afternoon, this short, swift action-comedy cements the claim of Bob Odenkirk, 63, to grownup action hero status. The Better Call Saul star cowrote and stars as a good-hearted sheriff down on his luck who takes a temporary gig in small-town Normal, Minnesota. There’s nothing normal about this backwater since the mayor (sitcom legend Henry Winkler, 80) has rescued his economically beleaguered burg by allowing Japanese yakuza to park their gold bars, illicit drugs and armaments in the vault of the local bank. When two marginalized out-of-towners decide to rob that institution, Odenkirk's Sheriff Ulysses discovers, hilariously, that there’s no such thing as an easy law enforcement gig. While the pacing is a bit uneven, the movie explodes in the final third, and Odenkirk is just the right everyman to ground the inane violence in an appealing sincerity. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Normal, April 17 in theaters

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⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ The Christophers, R

In this intelligent portrait of the artist as an old crank, James Corden and Jessica Gunning play the greedy adult children of painter Julian Sklar (Sir Ian McKellen, 86, in fine fettle), who hire artist-forger Lori Butler (a quietly commanding Michaela Coel) to surreptitiously “restore” an early series of their father’s paintings worth millions. The crime looks doable: His London studio is a hoarder's paradise, with priceless canvases cluttering an unused bathtub. Largely an entertainingly witty two-hander between McKellen and Coel, the film still delivers emotional payoff: Once they team up to foil the heirs’ plans, Julian finds a way back to his artistic and emotional roots while Lori has a chance to overcome past trauma and get a showing of her original artwork. With Steven Soderbergh, 63, directing on a smaller canvas than his 2025 spy thriller, Black Bag, The Christophers is a gem. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: The Christophers, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐☆☆ Hamlet, R

Just because every ambitious actor wants to play the prince of Denmark doesn’t mean that every audience wants to watch Hamlet again. In this adaptation moved in time and place to a contemporary, wealthy South Asian enclave in London, Riz Ahmed portrays the grieving prince returning home for his father’s funeral. He arrives to discover that his uncle Claudius (Art Malik, 73) plans to wed his mother, Gertrude (Sheeba Chaddha, 53), to snatch the crown with the help of Polonius (Timothy Spall, 69). I am not someone who tends to favor transplanted Shakespeare productions, but the new setting adds a tense Succession feel, and the play within the play unfurls as a vibrant Indian-influenced dance number. While Ahmed struggles (a bit too much) about whether to be or not to be, it may be worth a theater ticket to witness a tremendous character actor like Malik (remember The Jewel in the Crown?) put his stamp on the coveted role of the murderous Claudius. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: Hamlet, in theaters

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Stranger, R

Easily the year’s most beautiful black-and-white film, director François Ozon’s drama based on the famed 1942 novella by Albert Camus is more than a feast for the eyes; it’s a challenge to societal expectations and notions of identity. Set in exotic 1930s French Algeria, an ordinary but emotionally detached clerk Meursault (the endlessly watchable rising star Benjamin Voisin) lives alone. When his mother dies, he shows almost no emotion, going through the motions of mourning, plunging into an affair with a secretary (Rebecca Marder), then aiding a sleazy neighbor with an Arab mistress and ultimately, shooting that woman’s brother. These are the stations of the Camus narrative cross, but it’s Meursault’s emotional detachment, passivity and resistance to social norms that has him facing the guillotine for his crime. The French film is spare, elegant and perfectly cast, making for an incomparable literary adaptation that leaves nothing lost in translation. —Thelma M. Adams

Watch it: The Stranger, in theaters