What are you going to be watching this week? We round up everything coming to streaming services this week, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, ThreeNow, Neon and TVNZ+.

The biggies

Squid Game: The Challenge (on Netflix from November 22)

A real-life Squid Game feels a little bit on the nose for a dystopia, but hey, that’s where we are in 2023 apparently. In this series, 456 players compete to win $4.56m, the largest single cash prize in reality TV ever (breaking a previous record of $2.6m). As per the hit series, each player is put through a series of games. Not per the series, players will not be killed off in droves. / Sam Brooks

Faraway Downs (on Disney+ from November 26)

Remember Baz Luhrmann’s 2008 film Australia? Probably not, because it was hyped a lot and came out to middling box office returns and even more middling reviews. The general consensus that it was simply too much movie, and a pretty disjointed one at that. So now, 15 years later, it is coming to Disney+ as a six part miniseries, using what has to be swathes of unused footage. I actually have a soft spot for the OG film – it’s very 1930s, in a good way – so I’m looking forward to this. / SB

Fargo (season five on Neon from November 22)

If you told me 10 years ago that a Coen brothers film would have a spinoff series that lasted for five seasons, I would have assumed that spinoff series would come from O Brother Where Are Thou?, not Fargo, but that’s where we are. The fifth season of this anthology series sees Ted Lasso’s Juno Temple as Dot, a seemingly typical Midwestern housewife whose past comes to haunt her, when Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm!) comes searching for her. / SB

The notables

Doctor Who: The Star Beast (on Disney+ from November 26)

Devil’s Peak (on ThreeNow from November 21)

This series, adapted from Deon Meyer’s detective novels of the same name, follows disillusioned detective Benny Griesel, who is forced back into action in crime-plagued Cape Town by a new case – a local vigilante killer with a personal vendetta is taking matters into his own hands when it comes to people committing crimes against children. Gritty! / SB

Utopia (all seasons on TVNZ+ from November 23)

In this cult hit, a community of comic book fans believe that a graphic novel predicted several disastrous epidemics, including mad cow disease, and a rumoured unpublished sequel supposedly contains further information on future world events. When one fan finds the manuscript, he and his friends find themselves as the target of a secret organisation who will kill anyone in their way to get their hands on it. I’ve not seen this one but fans speak incredibly highly of it, so if this sounds even remotely like your jam, give it a spin. (This is the original British version of the series, by the way! You can also watch the American adaptation on Prime Video if you so desire.) / SB

The films

The Pope’s Exorcist (on Neon from November 24)

This isn’t your mother’s Exorcist, it’s your Pope’s exorcist! This horror is, somewhat surprisingly, based on not one but two books by Father Gabriel Amorth – An Exorcist Tells His Story and An Exorcist: More Stories (sadly “The Exorcist” was already taken). All you need to know, really, is that Russell Crowe plays a scooter-riding priest in the 1980s. I’ll let you take it from there. / SB

Leo (on Netflix from November 21)

The second animated film from Adam Sandler’s production company stars the man himself as Leo, a jaded and desperate lizard who gets depressed after a visitor to the classroom where he lives suggest he’s old. Sure! When the chance to explore the world presents itself, Leo jumps at the chance to be taken home by his students but surprise surprise, it turns out he can talk. Hijinks, presumably, ensue. / SB

Salt (on Neon from November 24)

Is Salt a good movie? Maybe, maybe not. But what it definitely is, is a film where Angelina Jolie knocks things and people down while wearing a very conspicuous wig. Those movies (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Wanted, Mr and Mrs Smith, Maleficent) are always guaranteed good times, and Salt is no exception to the rule. / SB

Netflix

November 20

Stamped from the Beginning

November 21

Leo

November 22

Squid Game: The Challenge

Crime Diaries: The Celebrity Stylist

I Don’t Expect Anyone to Believe Me

High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America: Season Two

November 23

My Little Pony: Make Your Mark: Chapter 6

My Daemon

November 24

A Nearly Normal Family

My Demo

Last Call for Istanbul

DOI BOY

Wedding Games

Neon

November 20

Elf

November 21

Trainwreck

November 22

Fargo: Season Five

The Little Rascals

November 23

Navajo Police: Class 57

Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known

Four Brothers

November 24

Chucky: Season 3

The Pope’s Exorcist

Salt

November 25

An Unexpected Christmas

Merry Liddle Christmas Baby

My Christmas Family Tree

The Santa Stakeout

Time For Them To Come Home For Christmas

Christmas Carole

Wonder Park

TVNZ+

November 20

Screw

Ali

Southpaw

November 21

Dictatorland

November 22

Catching a Serial Killer: Sam Little

August: Osage County

Babs

November 23

Utopia

November 25

Country Music Awards Highlights

ThreeNow

November 21

Devil’s Peak: Season One

November 23

Saving the Manor

November 24

Legends of the Lost with Megan Fox

Disney+

November 23

The Naughty Nine

November 26

Doctor Who: The Star Beast

Faraway Downs

Prime Video

November 22

Comedy Island: Japan

November 24

Elf Me

November 26

Polite Society

Apple TV+

N/A

AMC+/Acorn

November 20

Hollington Drive

Shudder

November 20

Sons of Steel

A Dangerous Summer

Hayu

N/A

In 2010, Scotty Cam became the host of a little Australian show called The Block. He talks to Tara Ward about why the reno series is still going strong.  

Every season on The Block Australia, five teams try to make their fortune by transforming run-down homes and selling them for a huge profit. And every season, the show’s host Scotty Cam gives these teams the same piece of advice: manage your budget. Those three little words are the secret to winning the entire show, Cam tells The Spinoff, because it’s the only way to ensure teams can build a beautiful house that will connect emotionally with wealthy buyers. “That’s what I tell them every year,” he says, “and they never listen.”

Who wouldn’t listen to Scotty Cam? As host of The Block for the past 13 years, he’s seen more bickering and budget blowouts than anyone else on Australian television. In The Block’s new season, starting tonight on Three, teams will squeeze those precious budgets for every last cent as they renovate a series of original 1950s houses in Melbourne’s Hampton East. Cam promises some big property transformations this season – the biggest builds The Block has ever done, in fact – and some even bigger tension. 

“We’ve got some big personalities that I think are threatened,” he reveals, teasing ”a slight alliance, a broken alliance, and another broken alliance”. Cam says The Block doesn’t orchestrate any of this drama, but rather captures what happens when you put 10 strangers under huge amounts of pressure and judgment. “Our style is to leave them to their own devices with eight cameras, and just follow stories as they pan out. I think it’s a bit Lord of the Flies. Someone ends up being Piggy.”

The Block is the perfect marriage of Cam’s favourite skill sets: building and television. He was working as a carpenter when he was first discovered in a pub by a TV producer, and went on to star in lifestyle series like Backyard Blitz and Renovation Rescue. He landed on The Block in 2010, and while the reno series saw Cam win the Gold Logie for Best Australian TV personality in 2014, he never expected the show to last. “I thought we’d get two seasons if we were lucky, and then I’d look for something else.” 

The Block was a different show when Cam first joined. There was only one episode each week, the room reveal results were announced in a car park and the contestants all had day jobs. “We were emulating what mums and dads did at home every weekend, working during the day and painting at night,” Cam recalls. “It was exhausting for them.” Since then, the series has grown in popularity, budget and scale, and now delivers viewers a steady stream of cheating scandals, midnight departures and inspirational design choices in multi-million dollar properties. 

The show may have evolved over the past 17 seasons, but one thing remains the same: the gripping unpredictability of auction day. It’s the culmination of 12 weeks of hard slog by ordinary Australians, when dreams are realised or destroyed in a matter of minutes, and it always makes for compelling viewing. Cam admits it’s the one day of the year when he wakes up feeling sick to his stomach. “People say to me, ‘Why are you nervous? Like, it doesn’t matter’. In fact, we rate better if no one makes any money, because there’s controversy.”

But Cam points out that The Block doesn’t set anyone up to fail on the show, and he takes offence when people suggest he plays favourites. “I say on day one: we all want you to make money and do it well. We all want you to have a life-changing moment.”  While The Block NZ is on hiatus due to the challenging housing market, Cam says the Australian show’s saving grace is that the high-end Sydney and Melbourne markets have remained strong, with last year’s winning team Oz and Omar achieving a record-breaking profit.  

But changing lives never comes easy on The Block, and while Cam loves his job, sometimes he has to be the grumpy dad who needs to keep the kids in line. “My job is to poke them in the ribs when they’re too happy, and pat them on the back and give them a hug when they cry.” He admits to ruling with “an iron fist”, has no time for shirkers, and he definitely doesn’t like laziness. As for those contestants who whinge about finding their own builders and having to turn around a bathroom in a week, Cam has one message: “Well, you shouldn’t have come here then.” 

“The Block is the hardest thing you’ll ever do,” he says in farewell, and it seems that giving it a good Aussie go gets you a long way with Scotty Cam. Our quick chat is over, but not before Scotty compliments me on my freshly painted closed-in verandah that I’m Zooming him from. “You’ve done a good job,” he tells me, and I feel like I’ve just won that $100,000. Wait until I tell him about my excellent budgeting skills. 

The Block Australia premieres Sunday 19 November at 7pm on Three and ThreeNow, and screens every Sunday-Wednesday.