Best new movies and TV series on Amazon Prime Video Australia: March 2021

Each month, new films and TV shows are added to Amazon Prime Video‘s Australian library. Eliza Janssen presents her picks for titles worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.

Top picks

Coming 2 America (March 5)

Eddie Murphy has been quietly sneaking his way back into good comedy roles for a while now; if you haven’t seen the feel-good Blaxploitation biopic Dolemite Is My Name, you’d be excused for thinking he hasn’t been up to much lately. Coming 2 America is an even more sentimental return to Murphy’s glory days, checking in on Prince Akeem about three decades after he first brought Zamundan excellence to the streets of Queens.

This goofy sequel begins with the shocking revelation that Akeem has a long-lost son in the States, giving the royal and his confidante Semmi (Arsenio Hall) plenty of opportunity to bump into prosthetic-wearing New Yorker alter-egos of Murphy and Hall. Not to mention all the black comedy talent in Coming 2 America’s supporting cast; it features Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, Jermaine Fowler, Teyana Taylor and original Zamundan king James Earl Jones.

Invincible (March 26)

There’s a lot about Invincible that feels pretty familiar by now; it’s about an angsty teen superhero overshadowed by his famous superhero dad, with great blah comes great bleh, etc. But please note that Invincible is based on a legendarily gory comic by Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, then feast your eyes on the cartoon’s stunning voice cast.

Led by Steven Yeun and J.K. Simmons, the upcoming first season also features Sandra Oh, Seth Rogen, Mahershala Ali, John Hamm and even Mark Hamill among others. In a competitive landscape of superhero stories, we can’t wait to see what sets Invincible apart from existing thoughtful shows like WandaVision and The Boys.

Personal history of David Copperfield (March 30)

This was supposed to be the year of Dev!!! Dev Patel has been many things over the years—a Slumdog Millionaire, a British heartthrob, an Oscar nominee who actually did a cracking Australian accent. But in 2020, he was supposed to shine in multiple arthouse releases, like A24’s postponed The Green Knight and this Armando Ianucci comedy.

Finally appearing landing on Prime Video at the end of the month, The Personal History of David Copperfield casts Patel in a lively reinvention of Charles Dickens’ Victorian bildungsroman. You might have enjoyed Ianucci’s barbed work on shows like Veep and The Thick Of It, and he gives these Victorian characters a similiar acidity here. It’s very unlikely that Patel wins his Golden Globe nomination for this film, but it’s definitely worth seeing anyways.