Tara Ward: Your Friends and Neighbours, Landman, North of North

Your Friends and Neighbours   

After being fired in disgrace, a hedge fund manager resorts to stealing from his neighbours' homes in the affluent Westmont Village, only to discover that the secrets hidden behind the wealthy facades might be more dangerous (Apple TV+). 

  

Landman  

Deep in the heart of West Texas, roughnecks and wildcat billionaires try to get rich quick in the oil business as oil rigs begin to dominate the state. Crisis executive Tommy Norris tries to bring his company to the top during a fuelling boom (Prime Video). 

  

North of North  

Siaja is a young Inuk mother who dreams of reinventing herself in her tiny Arctic community of Ice Cove, a town where everybody knows your business. After a spontaneous - and extremely public - exit from her marriage, Siaja finds herself navigating the unpredictable, and often hilarious, highs and lows that come with relationships, motherhood, a new job, and finding your way (Netflix). 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks at b.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Twenty two past ten, which means it's screen time time
on your Saturday morning. Tara Ward is our screen time expert.
Every week, she makes three picks for TV shows to
watch and stream at home over the weekend.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Hey Tara, good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Okay, let's begin with a show streaming on Apple TV
plus tell us about your Friends and Neighbors.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Yeah, you've finished White Lotus and you're missing a show
that's sort of poking fun at the rich and terrible
people of the world. Your Friends and Neighbors is worth
a watch. This is a new drama. It stars John
Hamm who plays a successful businessman who is one day
out of the blue fired from his job, and all
of a sudden, he goes from having everything whye family,
beautiful house to having very little, and so he comes

(00:55):
up with this idea to steal from his rich friends
and neighbors. And his idea is that they have so
much stuff they won't notice the things that go missing,
and because he's so similar to his friends neighbors, he'll
be the last person that they suspect. And so he
starts off with you know, small things, watches and cash,
and then gets older and more ambitious and gets himself

(01:16):
into trouble and it's very hard to have sympathy for him.
Most people just get another job when they get fired,
you know. He still has a lot of stuff, but
a bit like The White Lotus, the characters and the
show behave badly and their own worst enemy. But John
Hammer is great in this. He's very suave even when
he's falling apart. And Amanda Pete plays his ex wife.
She's fantastic as well. The only thing with the show

(01:38):
is that there is a lot of setup. It's a
really slow start. I wanted something happen to happen sooner
than it did. But if you can stick with it
and you don't mind a slower pace, this is a
really smart drama that's going to turn into a darker
kind of thriller as it goes. Alove so it is.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
I was gonna say it is a drama because it
almost sounds like a yeah comedy, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, No, it is a drama. I mean there's sort
of the funny moments in it, but yeah, definitely more
on the drama side.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Serious, Yeah, okay, cool, So that's your friends and neighbors,
starring the suave John Hamm. It's on Apple TV Plus
on Prime Video. Tell us about land Man.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah, if you want to show with more bite and
energy that also stars John ham then this is Landman
on Prime Video. And this came out at the end
of last year, so it's not brand new, but it
flew under the radar bit and a couple of people
have recommended it to me in the last few weeks,
and I can see why. It's such a great little drama.
It stars Billy Bob Thornton and it's set in the
oil fields of Texas, and Billy Bob Thornton plays a

(02:30):
landman called Tommy. He's the overseer of the oil drilling
operation in West Texas, so he's in charge of negotiations
and access and dealing with billiers and landowners. Everyone's trying
to get rich. Everyone is out for themselves and Tommy
is in the middle of it. And he's an alcoholic,
he's got a lot of debt and he's trying to
survive and quite a cutthroat industry. And when I was

(02:54):
watching this, before I knew anything about it, I thought,
this feels like Yellowstone, but in the desert. And that's
because it was created by Taylor Sheridan, who also made Yellowstone,
and so it's got that same sort of grittiness and
masculinity to it, you know, danger and politics and bureaucracy.
I mean, it's not perfect. The female characters are pretty
one dimensional and it's it's very by the book. If

(03:15):
you watch a lot of Taylor Share and stuff shows
like Tulsa king and Mayor of Kingstown, it's still a
really entertaining show. Some great one line is in there.
John Hammers in this to me more is in this too,
and I think Billy Bob Thornton is in his element here.
He's having such a great time.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Very good. That's land Man. So that's on Prime Video.
And last, but not least, North of North is John
Hammond this as well.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
No, strangely, well not yet North of North on Netflix.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah, this is a very wholesome, delightful new Canadian comedy
that's just come to Netflix. And I wanted to mention
this because there are two New Zealanders in the cast
of the show. Melee Potching and Jay Ryan are both
in this, which is very cool for such a global show.
On Netflix. But this is a comedy set in the aptic,
in a tiny town as far north as you can go.
It's surrounded by snow and ice even in summer. And

(04:05):
it's about young Enik woman. She's a wife and mother
who wants to break free and define her own life,
but it's finding that quite hard to do in a
community where everyone knows you and has certain expectations of
how you should behave And Bailey Potchin plays one of
her best friends. And Jay Ryan is an out of
towner who arrives one day and turns everything upside down.

(04:27):
And if you like warm, gentle comedies like Shit's Creek
or Superstore, this is in that same kind of vein.
It's charming, there's lots of quirky characters, and very unique
in that it's set in this Inuit community and one
of the most remote place on Earth, so you know,
it's fabulous. There's nothing else like this on TV at
the moment, which makes it worth a watch.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Very good. Okay, I'm looking forward to seeing that does
sound kind of interesting. So that's North of North. It's
on Netflix. Landman is on Prime Video, and Your Friends
and Neighbors is the one with John ham Stealing from
his Friends. That's on Apple TV, plus all of those
shows will be up on the News Talks He'd be website.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live
to News Talks ed B from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio