New Shows + Movies by Women — The Year So Far

The ebb and flow of titles is always unpredictable, so I thought I’d do something a little different this week. Last week saw 13 new shows and movies by women. This week sees just one, “Past Lies” from Spain. It’s frustrating when that happens, but rather than just pitch a single title up here, I’ll take the opportunity to share some standout shows by women I’ve seen so far from this year. First, let’s tell you about “Past Lies”:

NEW SERIES

Past Lies (Hulu)
directed by Julia de Paz, Clara Roquet

A group of successful women are shaken when the 25-year-old remains of a missing high school classmate are found in Mallorca, where they shared their senior trip. Star Elena Anaya may be familiar to American audiences from her lead role in “The Skin I Live In”.

Director Clara Roquet won Best New Director and was nominated for Original Screenplay at the 2022 Goya Awards, Spain’s equivalent to the Oscars. Director and co-writer Julia de Paz was nominated for Adapted Screenplay the same year.

“Past Lies” premieres on Hulu tomorrow, Friday May 10.

THIS YEAR’S SHOWS SO FAR

Links go to my reviews, let’s get in:

“Fallout” (Amazon) is one of the best shows of the year. It’s an incredibly biting and visually beautiful post-apocalyptic dark comedy co-showrun by Geneva Robertson-Dworet. It works as an adventure, as action, as science-fiction, as character drama, and especially as a dark comedy. Watching it kind of broke me because as fun as it is, its retrofuturist satire bites deeply into modern anxieties.

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith” (Amazon) is a spy comedy showrun by Francesca Sloane. Dry humor in an unsettling atmosphere makes for an incredibly unique feeling – the whole show is quirky but tense. There are multiple memorable guest stars, which is usually a feature I don’t care much about, but here it’s used very well and in ways that sometimes undermine the concept. Maya Erskine and Donald Glover star, and the pair act the hell out of it.

Those two are pretty intense. If you need something lighter but still very worthwhile, “Renegade Nell” (Disney+) is a really fun historical adventure/comedy about a woman forced to become a thief. It’s showrun by Sally Wainwright. I’d compare it to a period “Buffy” with much higher production values, or a series-level “Pirates of the Caribbean” without the baggage. If the first episode doesn’t hook you, you are unhookable.

“Death and Other Details” (Hulu) is fun if you can get along with its period-mystery-in-modern-times vibe. Mandy Patinkin plays the wacky detective. It’s co-showrun by Heidi Cole McAdams. Its quirk might come off as overly precious to some, but I ended up liking its diorama-esque stylization. It acts like a stage comedy, which is something I look for, but you’ll be able to tell pretty quickly if it’s your thing or not.

And of course, “Abbott Elementary” (Hulu) is still a great comedy co-showrun by Quinta Brunson. The writing has an incredibly good feel for its ensemble and where their strengths lie. Usually a sitcom gets its good writing in early seasons and the ensemble develop their timing in later ones, but “Abbott Elementary” has enjoyed both right off the bat.

I’m working on “Unnatural” (Netflix) right now. I loved Nogi Akiko’s police series “MIU404” because it presented a way that police can help people from a non-antagonistic perspective, and it focused on both large and small cases. Not everything was high drama, life-or-death stakes. Its sensibilities were completely different from an American cop show. “MIU404” is still on Netflix. I highly recommend it, and I’m thrilled Nogi’s prior series “Unnatural” – about a woman leading a forensics team investigating odd deaths – is now there, too.

On my watchlist are the second season of Tima Shomali’s Jordanian drama “AlRawabi School for Girls” (Netflix). The first season was incredibly salient, punctuating an intriguing interpersonal drama about bullying with some rattling scenes.

I also need to watch Korean vigilante mystery “A Killer Paradox” (Netflix) written by Kim Da Min, and I keep hearing really good things about Vivienne Medrano’s animated musical-in-hell series “Hazbin Hotel” (Amazon) so I’ll be checking that out.

In this feature, I limit the weekly coverage to series showrun or directed by women (or else I couldn’t do the amount of research I have to do weekly). But I do want to highlight how good of a year it’s been for anime written (or based on work written) by women:

“The Apothecary Diaries” (Crunchyroll) is the best mystery going for a second year in a row. It follows Maomao, the daughter of an apothecary in Imperial China. She wants to remain anonymous and live a quiet life of testing poisons on herself, but her knowledge of chemistry and medicine means she can make connections between clues others can’t. The mysteries are balanced between small and large, between incidental and intentional, and its protagonist is a unique blend of tenacious and lazy that you usually don’t see – especially for women characters. “The Apothecary Diaries” is based on a light novel series by Hyuuga Natsu.

“Delicious in Dungeon” (Netflix) is a rangy fantasy series that tells its story through cooking (of fantasy creatures), written by Ueno Kimiko and based on a manga series by Kui Ryouko. Its talented but sometimes bumbling adventuring party is a familiar anchor of fantasy, but done very well here. As they set out to resurrect one of the party’s sisters before a dragon fully digests her, what makes the show unique is how it world-builds. They’re broke, so they cook monsters along the way. Hunting and cooking requires knowledge of the dungeon’s ecology and environmental impacts, which in turn reveal complex relationships between the world and its magic. It’s deeply thought out and surprisingly engrossing. And while it’s not primarily an action series, its action scenes are phenomenal.

“7th Time Loop” (Crunchyroll) is one of the best uses of time loop fiction I’ve seen, about a woman who repeats five years, each time taking a different career. Every time, a war that envelops the world causes her death, and she restarts that five year chunk. She keeps the skills and knowledge she accumulates each go-round, and makes it her mission to use these to stop the war. It’s written by Machida Touko and based on a light novel series by Amekawa Touko. I would’ve preferred it got an extra episode to give the ending some more room to breathe, but it has such incredible character writing along the way that it’s a minor flaw. There are scenes here that are so literary and layered they should be studied if you’re even remotely interested in storytelling.

“A Sign of Affection” (Crunchyroll) is a superb and tranquil romance between a deaf woman and a man who learns sign language. What I like about it is that things don’t come easy – and I don’t mean the usual trope of dragging the will they-won’t they out. What I mean is that both characters question if they truly like each other or simply see in each other an idea they want to embody in themselves. Yuki’s been sheltered and likes that Itsuomi travels the world. Does she like him, or just that he represents a wider world out there? Itsuomi travels because he seeks out new experiences. Does he like her, or is she simply a new experience that will fade once familiar? The great gentleness and care for the other with which they figure this out already provides the answer, but even if the anime itself is pretty sentimental, it’s refreshing to see this realistic complexity and sense of responsibility be the core of the story. It’s also a really good view on a man doing the work to unlearn assumptions and understand someone else’s perspective. Itsuomi doesn’t automatically know how to understand and relate to someone who’s deaf, and he makes clear mistakes, but he does the work to unlearn bad habits and replace them with recognition and communication.

This last one is current season, so only halfway in, but “Train to the End of the World” (Crunchyroll) is a very hidden gem. It fuses wholesome with disturbing as four girls drive a train through an incredibly artistic and metaphorical post-apocalypse to find their lost friend. It’s cosmic horror if the power of very stubborn friendship was enough to fight your way through it, and holding onto that in the face of unprecedented weirdness has its own way of speaking to our times. It’s written by Yokote Michiko.

Take a look at new shows + movies by women from past weeks.

If you enjoy what I write, subscribe to my Patreon! It helps with the time and resources to write more features like this one.

Historical Fantasy Finally Sticks the Landing — “Renegade Nell”

I go into so many historical fantasies over-brimming with joy…only to spend most of my time watching that optimism wash away bit by bit as I complain, “Hey, I was using that”. If I’m still watching several episodes in with a big, dumb smile on my face, something’s gone very right. “Renegade Nell” fulfills the promise that dozens of historical fantasy series before it have failed to keep.

At its heart is Louisa Harland’s Nell, a woman who ran away from home and disguised herself as a man to fight for the British in Spain. After the loss of her husband in battle, she’s returned home to her tavern owner father and two younger sisters. It’s not long before things fall apart and she’s framed for a murder she didn’t commit. Oh, and quick note: when she’s threatened, she’s possessed by a pixie and fights like a demon.

“Renegade Nell” is a silly series that knows it can make you laugh, but what I love is that its silliness is filmed so seriously. It’s shot with all the detail and reverence that a historical drama of the period would use, with tracking shots through crowds, patient reaction shots that let the actors treat these characters as real, and a quietly magnificent use of shallow focus to help us draw closer to them.

The set and the costume design veer from battered workaday life in a muddy tavern to brilliantly ridiculous visions of excess that steer just this side of a pastel wonderland. There’s a sense of play that threads through every element, from writing to performance to that design and cinematography, and ties it all together. When we’re so wrapped up in that sense of play, we’re driven to treat the consequences as real and important.

The phenomenal first episode ‘Don’t Call Me Nelly’ does some heavy lifting in terms of establishing the driving plot, the foundations of a larger arc, introducing multiple characters, and letting us taste the outlandish flavor of the action. Through it all, Harland has plenty of room to land an incredibly roguish performance that ranges from sauntering confidence to brash hotheadedness. If any of this sounds appealing, just watch the thing – it is an absolute hook.

The jokes are swift and incredibly well-written. While you could frame “Renegade Nell” as an 18th-century “Buffy”, the banter is thankfully very removed from the Whedonesque sensibilities that have dominated women-led supernatural pugilism over the last 25 years. The comedy’s more compartmentalized to each character, with bursts of wordplay between competitive egos, and Nell herself shouldering the bulk of the physical comedy. There’s even a selective use of takes where an actor appears to break character but they keep it in anyway because it ends up fitting the character so well. As roguish roles go, Nell is up there with your Han Solo, Odysseus, Lupin the Third, Robin Hood, and Jack Sparrow (momentarily leaving aside the profound ick that now surrounds the latter’s performer).

The fight choreography just works. It relies on some larger movements and wire-assisted stunts as Nell sends men spinning or flying away. I’m not always a fan of these physics-defying overstatements in choreo, but the over-the-top sensibility matches Harland’s swaggering performance so well that it feels of a piece. Anything less extravagant wouldn’t be enough to complement her.

Nell is the kind of role that is rarely written for women. When it is, it’s often fetishized within the writing (a la Amalia True in “The Nevers”) or shoved into weird purity boxes because it’s too scared of expanding past a narrow definition of feminine heroism (such as Nimue in “Cursed”). Nell is neither of those things and – showrun by Sally Wainwright – the series visits the ways in which women were constricted and disempowered in the 18th century, many of which still ring true today. Robin Hood may’ve seen the socioeconomic picture, but Nell sees how that ties into other systems of oppression, and then asks the very important question of how much they can all be punched.

The middle episodes of the show run into occasional pacing issues as it swaps between Nell’s, sidekicks’, and alternating antagonists’ plots, but its sense of place and design, presentation of all these characters, and interest in comical detail are all so strong that it’s only a minor issue when a scene here or there lingers an extra minute.

There are some complaints from the usual corners because the ratio of Black and South Asian people might not be historically accurate in this show about a fictional highwaywoman taking on mythically powered nobility with superstrength loaned to her by a pixie. I can’t quite pinpoint when, but there were some clues along the way that the show is a fantasy. It’s also about as accurate as countless British dramas over the decades that showed no Black or South Asian people in Britain.

Also, that casting strikes me as peak British. You’ll be shocked to learn there were centuries where the country relied on men to play women on stage despite 50% of the talent pool to which they had access actually being women. The U.K. loves portraying a diverse range of people with whoevs, they’re just finally recognizing and drawing on how diverse their talent pool is. Almost as if different eras have different casting conventions and using 100% of your talent pool gives you better results than using 40% of it.

Back to the main topic, “Renegade Nell” is a great watch. I love countless things about it. It’s a perfect fit if you want a historical-oriented, roguish “Buffy”, wanted “Cursed” to be more lively and self-aware, wanted “The Nevers” to focus on its story instead of creeping on its leads, if you want a series-level “Pirates of the Caribbean” without its deppth of baggage, or if you were interested in the live-action “One Piece” but wanted something much more grounded. I adore this show, and it’s refreshing to see this approach to historical fantasy done with such a thorough, consistent, and high degree of craft.

“Renegade Nell” is on Disney+.

If you enjoy what you read here, consider subscribing to my Patreon! It helps with the time and resources to write more articles like this.

New Shows + Movies by Women — Fed Up

I like weeks like this where we get new entries across most of the major streamers. It’s still wild to me that a streaming service can put out as much content as they do and still regularly fail to produce a new show or film per week that’s helmed by a woman.

I’ve been doing this weekly feature for four years. I’ve yet to see a week where a major streaming service with new content fails to deliver a new show or film by a man. The disparity is ridiculous, which probably isn’t news but is worth repeating. If it ever stops being a shocking thing, that’ll be the signal some norm has been moved too far.

Sometimes I wonder if this is a productive series of articles. It doesn’t get the numbers that individual reviews and essays do. People have had it normalized to overlook shows and movies directed by women. This is particularly true of men, who might look at something like this and think reading it only applies to women – something they’d never think about male directors only applying to male readers.

But the result is the point of why it should be done in the first place. It’s a norm that has to be changed. Many men would sooner watch a copy of a copy of a film directed by a man and whine about how there’s nothing original being made anymore than actually sit down and watch something original they know is directed by a woman. That means as a gender we’re not going to tend to seek out work by women.

Why is that? Let me put this as diplomatically as possible: on the whole, men are fucking idiots who are cowards terrified by the idea of a worthless norm being shifted, and we envision whining about how everything’s the same into a confirmatory echo chamber as a position of power where we’re entrusted to arbitrate quality. And we’d rather hold onto that illusion of relevance than take the risk of stepping into a world where others also get their voice and need to be deferred to from time to time

We don’t seek these things out because to do so would lose the echo chamber that tells us we’re the only ones qualified to judge quality along a narrow band of repeated elements, all the while complaining about how filmmaking has become a narrow band of repeated elements. We establish boundaries for what we’ll consider quality that refuse new voices, perspectives, and the original elements they bring to the table, and then confirm to each other that tiny patch of ground that results is the entire world of storytelling. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of consuming an artificially restricted range of art because even if it’s a crappier experience, it entrusts men with the power position of arbitrating how crappy an experience it is. We’re real geniuses, we are.

Writing this is important because series and movies by women don’t get the same platforming. This is important because it should the biggest thing I write. It’s important to see a man value this, it’s important to write about it. I’ve kept an eye out for others doing this because if someone else – and particularly a woman is writing about this – I’d like to feature and defer to her. But I’ve found no one else doing it weekly and since I started doing it the sites I’ve seen run regular features on projects by women have largely stopped doing them because the readership numbers don’t justify it. Screw that. I don’t care if I should be writing this according to the numbers it gets. I care that I should be writing this because somebody needs to write it. That’s the job of being a worthwhile critic – to look at what goes beyond yourself and what goes beyond your own community and even things that others might be better qualified to ultimately judge, to jump up and down and recognize how exciting that is, how needed that is.

On a self-centered level, before I started writing this feature I often felt burned out on films and series because so many things were similar. I’d never come close to watching as many projects by women as by men in a given year. Now that’s about 50-50 for four years running, and there is not enough time in the world for all that’s out there that feels original and challenging and expanding. Because now I know about the things that didn’t get publicity and platforming to the degree of the same old shit I was already used to.

This weekly feature doesn’t get the numbers of my other work, and that’s the exact reason why I should keep on doing it. Because it should. Because I should be able to look on any major film site and find a regular feature just like it. Because it should be normal to talk about films by women, and for men to read about them, and for them to get the same platforming as films by men. My doing this feature should be auxiliary and redundant because countless places should be doing it. Best I can find is the occasional monthly highlight of the few projects that already have some marketing behind them, or an individual feature updated once or twice a year that names the same directors and films from five or six years ago as fresh information.

I am so goddamn sick of paying attention to less than half the talent pool and when you factor both women and filmmakers of color out, of really just paying attention to about 10% of the talent pool worldwide, and then scratching our heads and wondering why everything seems to come from the same perspective and ideas seem to be so repetitive. It’s not because that’s the reality. It’s because there’s so little effort put into paying any attention to reality. Imagine intentionally ignoring 90% of what’s out there and then complaining there’s so little original out there. Imagine how fucking ridiculous that dude would be and, well, welcome to a lot of dudes. Forgive the rant. Sometimes I just get fed up.

New series by women this week come from Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. New films come from Italy, the U.K., and Vietnam.

NEW SERIES

We Were the Lucky Ones (Hulu)
showrunner Erica Lipez

Joey King and Logan Lerman star in the story of a Jewish family that attempts to reunite after World War II separates them.

Showrunner Erica Lipez has also written and produced on “The Morning Show”, “Julia”, “Bates Motel”, and “Suits”.

The 3-episode premiere of “We Were the Lucky Ones” is out on Hulu. A new episode follows every Thursday for a total of 8.

Renegade Nell (Disney+)
showrunner Sally Wainwright
mostly directed by Amanda Brotchie, M.J. Delaney

After being framed for murder, Nell Jackson unexpectedly becomes the most wanted robber in 18^th century England…with the help of a little magic.

Showrunner Sally Wainwright wrote, directed, and produced on “Gentleman Jack” and “Happy Valley”. Amanda Brotchie (“Gentleman Jack”, “Picnic at Hanging Rock”) and M.J. Delaney (“Ted Lasso”) direct 3 episodes apiece.

All 8 episodes of “Renegade Nell” are out on Disney+ tomorrow, Friday March 29.

Entre Tierras (Netflix)
showrunner Susana Lopez Rubio

In 1960s Spain, an Andalusian woman is married to an older man from La Mancha, and must upend her life to live with him.

Showrunner Susana Lopez Rubio also wrote on “The Vineyard” and “The Time in Between”.

All 10 episodes of “Entre Tierras” are out on Netflix.

NEW MOVIES

La Chimera (in theaters)
directed by Alice Rohrwacher

A tomb raider falls in with a black market crowd, a romantic interest, her hidden children, and a conwoman played by Isabella Rossellini.

The Italian film is directed and co-written by Alice Rohrwacher, whose short film “Le pupille” was nominated for an Oscar in 2023.

“La chimera” sees a limited release in theaters tomorrow, Friday March 29.

The Beautiful Game (Netflix)
directed by Thea Sharrock

Bill Nighy stars as an advocate for the homeless. He organizes a team that will travel to a worldwide tournament for homeless men to compete in soccer.

Director Thea Sharrock also helmed “Me Before You”, “The One and Only Ivan”, and “Wicked Little Letters”.

“The Beautiful Game” is out on Netflix tomorrow, Friday March 29.

A Fragile Flower (in theaters)
directed by Mai Thu Huyen

Thao is a club singer who catches the eye of a music producer. He hires her for a music video, which makes her an instant celebrity. Fighting an illness, she may only have so long to fall in love.

The Vietnamese film is helmed by Mai Thu Huyen. She’s chiefly acted before this, but “A Fragile Flower” makes her second feature as director.

“A Fragile Flower” sees a limited release tomorrow, Friday March 29.

Take a look at new shows + movies by women from past weeks.

If you enjoy what I write, subscribe to my Patreon! It helps with the time and resources to write more features like this one.