Best new movies and TV series on BINGE: July 2021

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

Top Picks: TV

Gossip Girl (July 8)

Almost a decade after its sixth and—until now—final season, Gossip Girl is back, with an all-new cast of privileged and wealthy Upper East Side socialites contending with the titular anonymous blogger (again voiced by Kristen Bell) digging up all their dirty laundry for public consumption. Jordan Alexander, Evan Mock, Savannah Smith, Emily Alyn Lind, Whitney Peak, Eli Brown, Thomas Doherty, Tavi Gevinson and Zión Moreno are the new generation of pretty young things and the series, which is set in the same continuity as the original, promises to delve into the fraught world of social media and—dare we say it?—cancel culture.

Time (July 11)

Scripted by British screenwriting legend Jimmy McGovern, this three part drama sees Sean Bean as Mark Cobden, a man sentenced to four years in prison for vehicular manslaughter, where he comes under the care of compassionate by professional head guard Eric McNally (Stephen Graham). What follows is a searing indictment of the prison industry as it stands in modern Britain, which leaves no one unscarred and every crime called to account. Hard to watch but impossible to look away from, this is top notch TV drama.

Mr Inbetween season 3 (June 15)

The third and final series of this winning Australian dramedy drops all at once, letting us say our goodbyes to working class hitman Ray Shoesmith. Will he live happily ever after with paramedic girlfriend Ally (Brooke Satchwell), his adored 12-year-old daughter, Brittany (Chika Yasumura) and his disabled brother Bruce (Nicholas Cassim)? Or will the criminal underworld drag Ray down? Catch the final nine episodes and find out.

Top Picks: Movies

Queen of the Desert (July 4)

Think of this as the distaff version of Lawrence of Arabia and you’re on the right track. Nicole Kidman is real-life explorer and anthropologist Gertrude Bell, who spent her career exploring the Middle East in the early 20th century. Co-starring James Franco, Damian Lewis and Robert Pattinson (as Lawrence!), this sprawling account of the formation of the modern Middle East comes to us courtesy of cult director Werner Herzog. That fact alone should have you lining up.

The Notorious Bettie Page (July 23)

American Psycho director Mary Harron brings us this biopic of the infamous fetish pin up model Bettie Page (Gretchen Mol). Harron’s film traces Page’s life from her beginnings as a devoutly Christian small-town girl to aspiring actress and model to the reigning queen of glamour photography, and an unwitting frontline soldier in the battle for free speech. Harron refuses pat answers here, leaving the audience to decide for themselves if Bettie was victim or victor, in the process crafting a fascinating look at American sexual mores in an age of nigh-Puritanical repression.

Sid and Nancy (July 25)

The ugliest onscreen love story this side of Leaving Las Vegas, Alex Cox’s film portrays the utterly doomed love affair between Sex Pistols bass “player” Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman), groupie Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb) and all the heroin they could lay their hands on. It’s a fascinating look at both the rise and fall of the UK punk scene, and the fall and fall of the two main characters, who are undeniably headed for an awful ending from the film’s opening moments. Also Johnny Rotten hates it, which is a high recommendation.