Best new movies and TV series on BINGE: August 2024

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

Top Picks: TV

Mr Throwback: Season 1 (August 8)

Some are born to achieve athletic greatness, to redefine the squishy limits of the human body…others are destined to sell tacky merch of those heroic characters. In this new mockumentary series, a down-on-his-luck memorabilia dealer (Adam Pally) reconnects with a childhood sporting buddy for a shot at redemption. Thing is; that friend is NBA living legend Steph Curry, playing himself in what we hope is a convincing comic role. If you can’t be an athlete, be an athletic supporter, as the stinky saying goes.

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Industry: Season 3 (August 12)

Long overshadowed by Succession, this other HBO series about cutthroat weirdos battling it out in sleek office spaces now has more space to shine. It’s set in the aftermath of the 2008 GFC, following the unscrupulous upstarts of fictional international finance corp Pierpoint & Co as they scheme and backstab their way to the top. This is a loud, rude show, with just as many four letter words and bad people as the aforementioned hit—but with perhaps a touch more empathy, even as this third season surely sees our moneyed protagonists stepping on each other’s faces to grab at the throne.

Chimp Crazy (August 19)

“From the humans who brought you Tiger King“, here’s another despicable deep dive into the world of exotic animals and the strange folks who mistakenly think they own them. Formerly a nurse, our “hero” Tonia Mannix considers herself the “Dolly Parton of chimps”—whatever that means—forming such a close bond with one monkey in particular that authorities and animal rights groups are drawn into their bizarre relationship. Expect plenty of gawping at the single-minded “chimp mom” community, and perhaps some richer analysis of the perils of human-animal cohabitation.

Top Picks: Movies

The Holdovers (August 3)

Nobody does “loveable curmudgeon” like Paul Giamatti, at his cranky best in this recent collaboration with his Sideways director Alexander Payne. He plays a roundly disliked teacher at a frosty academy in the 1970s, forced to bond with a troublemaking 15-year-old left behind for the holidays. They’re also brought together by Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s warm cook character, for which Randolph nabbed a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. It’s a good old-fashioned, snowed-in comedy, the kind of film which ruled the era in which the film is set with spiky dialogue and ultimately warm-hearted values of friendship and belonging.

Origin (August 5)

How do you adapt a celebrated non-fiction book, that traverses history with one common sociological theme binding its famous characters together? If you’re Ava DuVernay, you take a bold non-linear approach, and turn the author (Isabel Wilkerson, writer of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent) into the main character. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor portrays Wilkerson as she makes connections between marginalised groups such as Dalit castes in India, Black Americans targeted by police brutality, and Jews living under Nazi reign. The scattered approach worked for Luke Buckmaster, who claimed in his review that we may never see another biopic quite like it; “The film’s patchwork-like structure has soft edges, interweaving pockets of drama that bring colour and life to concepts bouncing around the subject’s mind.”

Madame Web (August 8)

Ever since that clunky line in its trailer—”he was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders just before she died”—this flop of a Spider-Man spin-off never stood a chance. And yet…I kinda defend it, as a star vehicle for Dakota Johnson, a woman whose superheroics could not be more uniquely half-assed if she tried (and not trying is kind of her whole thing). Saddled with soothsaying powers, and the care of three teen girls who will one day get spider-powers, Johnson’s Madame Web bounces from one shabby setpiece to another, resulting in a hilariously anticlimactic failure of a blockbuster. It’s not quite camp enough to be a midnight movie classic, but there’s enough flabby ADR, nonsensical dialogue, and bizarre moments to keep your bewildered attention.

All titles arriving on BINGE in August

August 1

Mr Bigstuff: Season 1
ER: Seasons 1 – 15
Please Like Me: Seasons 1 – 4
Munch: Season 2
Swamp People: Season 15
Paradise: Season 2
Surgeons: A Matter Of Life Or Death: Season 1
A Tale Of Two Thieves
Strange Way Of Life
Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein
Raid On Rommel
The Rawhide Years

August 2

Pawn Stars Do America: Season 2
Police Strike Force: Season 1
Swamp People: Serpent Invasion: Season 4
Hurst: The First And OnlyInstant Family
The River

August 3

The Holdovers
Migration

August 4

WWE Summerslam 2024
Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes
Daddy’s Home
Daddy’s Home 2

August 5

FBOY Island Australia: Season 2 Premiere
Secrets Of The Queen’s Coronation
The Great War: Season 1
See No Evil: Season 7
Grantchester: Season 8
Origin

August 6

Taskmaster New Zealand: Season 5 Premiere
Charles & The Women Who Could Have Been Queen
The Postman Always Rings Twice

August 7

Edward Viii: Britain’s Traitor King
Fergie and Meghan: Inconvenient Royals
Murder On The Blackpool Express

August 8

Mr. Throwback: Season 1
Catherine: Our Queen In Waiting
Russia’s Wars: Season 1
Swamp Mysteries With Troy Landry: Season 2
Taken Together: Who Killed Lyric and Elizabeth: Season 1
Madame Web

August 9

Married To A Psychopath: Season 1

August 10

Night Swim

August 12

Industry: Season 3 Premiere
Abandoned Americana: Season 2

August 13

The Ark: Season 2 Premiere
Emergency Helicopter Medics: Season 2

August 14

Gogglebox Australia: Season 20 Premiere
Prince Albert: A Victorian Hero Revealed
Death on the Tyne

August 15

Grace Kelly: The Missing Millions

August 16

How Disney Built The World: Season 1

August 19

Chimp Crazy: Season 1 Premiere
The Great Canadian Bake Off: Season 7 Premiere
Extraordinary Extensions: Season 2
Ancient Engineering: Season 2
Antiques Road Trip: Season 26
All New Traffic Cops: Season 11