What are you going to be watching in January? The Spinoff rounds up everything that’s coming to streaming services this month, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, Neon and TVNZ OnDemand.

The biggies

Good Lord Bird (on Neon from January 20)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-Tm63y-S4s

“Anti-slavery campaigner” doesn’t even begin to capture the extreme reality of John Brown, the blustering, eccentric and violent abolitionist whose attempt to incite a slave rebellion in 1859 is widely credited as one of the key inciting moments of the American civil war. Good Lord Bird, based on the novel of the same name, is a fictionalised version of Brown’s story, seen through the eyes of a 13-year-old freed slave who accompanies Brown on his mission. Starring a career-best Ethan Hawke as the wild-eyed Bird, and newcomer Joshua Caleb Johnson as his sidekick Henry, Good Lord Bird is a tough tale shot through with dark humour and an irreverent approach to history. As the note that begins each episode explains: “All of this is true. Most of it happened.”/ Catherine McGregor

Cobra Kai (season three on Netflix from January 8)

The third season of the Karate Kid sequel lands like a hard chop to the guts, as Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso’s rivalry is reborn nearly four decades after they first met. The two enemies from the classic ‘80s film are reunited when Johnny reopens the original Cobra Kai karate dojo, but this time they’re middle-aged men and Johnny is the one down on his luck. There’s no Mr Miyagi here, but with its healthy dose of nostalgia and charming underdog spirit, Cobra Kai is an easy, likeable watch. / Tara Ward

WandaVision (on Disney+ from January 15)

Disney+ has had an original content problem since launching 12 months ago. Aside from two excellent seasons of The Mandalorian, there hasn’t been a lot besides nostalgia tripping through Pixar films to justify the monthly fee. From January, that all changes: WandaVision is the first in an ever-growing slate of Marvel original series, set within the expansive cinematic universe. And it looks incredible. Part superhero epic, part 60s sitcom, the show reunites Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch and Paul Bettany’s Vision in a surrealist, six part series set to launch the MCU into its next era. I am beyond hyped. / Stewart Sowman-Lund

Euphoria (special on Neon from January 25)

For all of the (not entirely misplaced) criticism about how it erred a little too often towards glamorising the issues it claimed to be challenging, the first season of HBO’s post-Skins teen drama Euphoria was nevertheless refreshing for the not-always-flattering depth of its characters, the pure strength of its ensemble (Zendaya! Angus Cloud!) and its single-minded dedication to creating a universe that felt indebted to very little that had come before it. The arrival of Covid-19 forced the show’s creators to pump the brakes on production of its second season, but a pair of special “bridge” episodes – the first dropped last month – should sate the appetites of those desperately awaiting new chapters in the life of Rue et al. / Matthew McAuley

The notables

Blown Away (on Netflix from January 22)

Possibly the most niche reality show ever made, and yet one of the most tense, Blown Away is set within the world of glass blowing. You might not know it yet, but nothing is more nerve wracking than watching someone make a glass sculpture/vase/artwork against the clock. There’s smashes, cracks, tears, and everything else imaginable in this Netflix original reality competition that doesn’t have a rose ceremony in sight. / SS-L

Good Grief (on TVNZ on Demand from January 4)

Sisters Grace (Shortland Street) and Eve Palmer (The Adam and Eve Show) teamed up to write and star in this off-beat Kiwi comedy about two sisters who inherit their koro’s funeral home. Think The Casketeers, but with the owners being completely out of their depth while juggling a new business, family tensions and less-than-impressed team of employees. Dead funny? Certainly looks that way. / TW

Yellowstone (on Neon from January 3)

Kevin Costner was born to play a grumpy cowboy, and Yellowstone is the three season binge watch to see you through the New Year. Costner is John Dutton, the respected patriarch of a family running the biggest ranch in Montana. He just wants to farm in peace, but because the ranch is bordered by a national park, land developers and an Indian reservation, poor old John always needs a tissue for his issue. This beautifully shot series is a mix of Succession and McLeod’s Daughters, with plenty of horsey drama and a warring family that just won’t quit. / TW

Frickin Dangerous Bro… On The Road (on TVNZ on Demand weekly from January 28)

The Frickin Dangerous Bro lads (James Roque, Pax Assadi, Jamaine Ross) have been one of the best things about New Zealand comedy for some time now, and they’re long past due for a series that showcases what they can do. The concept for the series is simple, but great: The trio visit a small town somewhere in the country – the towns include Feilding, Wairoa and Oamaru – and get to know the locals before performing a comedy show for them. The aim is to hold up a mirror to our smaller communities and, in classic FDB fashion, interrogate what a ‘Kiwi’ actually looks and sounds like. / Sam Brooks

The films

Pieces of a Woman (on Netflix from January 7)

Netflix’s first big film of the year is also one of their biggest Oscar contenders, with a buzzed about turn from The Crown actress Vanessa Kirby. It follows a woman in the aftermath of a botched home birth, and her grief in the years that follow that traumatic event. The film picked up good notices when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival, but Kirby is the one I’m stoked to watch. She was by far the highlight of her two seasons on The Crown, which is no small feat, and to see her have a meaty role to dig into on the big screen (or at least in a film) is something that gets me really excited. It probably won’t be a light watch, but it’ll be one you won’t want to have missed come Oscar time. / SB

One Night in Miami (on Amazon Prime Video from January 15)

On 25 February 1964, Cassius Clay – later to become Muhammad Ali – met Sonny Liston in the ring for the first of two of the most famous boxing bouts in history. Accompanying Clay to Miami Beach were his pals, civil rights leader Malcolm X, soul singer Sam Cooke and pioneering football player Jim Brown. Directed by the great Regina King (Watchmen) in her directorial debut, One Night in Miami is a fictionalised account of what happened when these four legends got together in a hotel room to hang out, to shoot the shit, and to discuss the reality of life as a Black man in the midst of the civil rights movement. / CM

Scoob! (on Neon from January 29)

Scoob! is the latest installment of the multimedia, multi-generation smash hit Scooby-Doo. It’s also the first in years not to feature Matthew Lillard as Shaggy. Lillard has played Shaggy 40 times across film, TV, and games. He is Shaggy Rogers. Will Forte is a wonderful actor, but he is not Shaggy Rogers. Scoob! is full of new voices for a new generation of viewers: Zac Efron, Gina Rodriguez, and Amanda Seyfriend round out the Mystery Inc. team, and Frank Welker stays on as the immortal great dane himself. It’s the start of a new franchise! Rooby-dooby-doo! Fingers crossed that little creep Scrappy-doo stays out of this one. / Josie Adams

The rest

Netflix

January 1

Headspace Guide to Meditation

Dream Home Makeover: Season 2

The Minimalists: Less is Now

Batman Forever

The Dead Pool

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

American Hustle

The Karate Kid Part II

The Karate Kid

Good Luck Chuck

January 5

Nailed It! Mexico: Season 3

History of Swear Words

January 6

Tony Parker: The Final Shout

Surviving Death

January 7

Pieces of a Woman

January 8

Lupin

Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons: Season 5

Stuck Apart

Pretend It’s a City

The Idhun Chronicles: Part 2

January 10

Beneath Clouds

January 11

CRACK: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy

January 13

Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer

January 15

Bling Empire

Disenchantment: Part Three

Outside The Wire

Double Dad

Carmen Sandiego: Season 4

Sesame Street: Selections from Season 49

January 19

Hello Ninja: Season 4

January 20

Spycraft

Daughter From Another Mother

January 21

Call My Agent: Season 4

Riverdale: Season Five (weekly)

January 22

Fate: The Winx Saga

Busted!: Season Three

Blown Away: Season Two

White Tiger

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous: Season Two

January 26

Rocketman

January 29

The Dig

Finding ‘Ohana

We Are The Brooklyn Saints

Neon

January 1

Ben 10: Season 3

Catfish: The TV Show: Season 5

Just Tattoo of Us: Season 4

The Informant

Safe Spaces

Stardog and Turbocat

January 3

Yellowstone

Dark Waters

January 4

The Perfect Serve

VICE World of Sports: Season 2

JK’s Japan

The Dark Side of the Ring: Season 2

This Could G Anywhere

The Shop

Unbreakable

One Fern – 100 Years

Back on the Ball

Wayne Smith: For the Love of the Game

All Blacks ’96 Tour of South Africa

Legends of Super Rugby: Christian Cullen

Life After Footy: Legends of the Pacific

The Transformer Refueled

Trouble with the Curve

January 5

The Call of the Wild

The Iron Mask

Blood Father

January 6

Capone

January 7

The Goldbergs: Season 7

January 8

The Call of the Wild

January 10

A Discovery of Witches: Season 2

Motherless Brooklyn

January 13

Queen & Slim

January 14

Dredd

January 15

Adventure Time: Seasons 8-9

Boonie Bears Blast Into the Past

Shot Caller

January 16

Real Time with Bill Maher: Season 19

The Night Clerk

January 18

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Monkey King Reloaded

Non-Stop

January 19

Kit & Pup

January 20

The Good Lord Bird

Jay & Silent Bob Reboot

The Legend of Baron To’a

January 22

Nancy Drew: Season 2

Henry Danger: Season 4

Paddington

January 24

A Hidden Life

Scooby Doo

Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed

January 25

Euphoria: Fuck Anyone Who’s Not A Sea Blob

January 26

Charmed: Season 3

Show Me Show Me: Season 6

January 27

Countdown

January 28

Gods of Egypt

January 29

Scoob!

January 31

Black Narcissus

Brahms: The Boy 2

The Prince & Me

TVNZ on Demand

January 1

Happy Valley: Season 1-2

Rillington Place

From the Vault: Antartica

Judge John Deed: Season 1-5

The Science of Sleep: How to Sleep Better

Why Do I Put on Weight

The Passion of Augustine

A Blast

Spy Merchants

Beyond the Autism Spectrum: A Family’s Year Confronting Autism

12 o’Clock Boys

Murder in Melbourne

Abducted: The Carlina White Story

Jodi Picoult’s Salem Falls

My Sweet Audrina

Wuthering Height School

Bushwhacked!

Limitless with Theresa Vail

The Third

Drag Heals

The Amazing Gayl Pile: Season 3

Mixed Up

Knock Knock Ghost: Season 3: Part 1

Marti: The Passionate Eye

Tom Who

Peter Peryer: The Art of Seeing

The Look

A Murder of Crows

January 4

Good Grief

January 5

The Bachelor

January 8

The Not-Too-Late Show

January 18

Huritua

January 28

Frickin Dangerous Bro… On the Road

Resident Alien

Disney+

January 1

The Making of Out

Mega Hammerhead

Earth to Ned

Once Upon a Time: Season 1-7

Great Shark Chow Down

700 Sharks

Big Sharks Rule

January 8

Marvel Studios: Legends

Star War Forces of Destiny: Volumes 1-4

January 15

WandaVision

Doctor Dolittle 3

Disney Junior Mira, Royal Detective

Disney Elena of Avalor

Disney Fancy Nancy Clancy

January 22

Pixar Popcorn

The Book of Life

Drumline

Flicka 2

Flicka: Country Pride

Wild Uganda

January 29

Dinosaurs

Ramona and Beezus

Amazon Prime Video

January 11

American Gods: Season 3

January 14

Tandav

January 15

One Night in Miami

The Stand

January 21

South Park: Season 23

January 22

Star Trek: Lower Decks

The Rental

Jessy & Nessy

January 23

The Magicians: Season 4

Acorn TV

January 4

My Life is Murder

Care

Blue Murder: Season 3-4

Inspector Morse: Season 6-7

Moving On: Season 1-2

January 11

The Silence

Kavanagh QC: Season 4

Midsomer Murders: Season 17

January 18

Lewis: Season 7-8

Heartbeat: Season 5-6

Prime Suspect: Season 6-7

Brideshead Revisited

Moving On: Season 3-4

January 25

The Wipers Times

The Last Detective”: Season 1-2

Sensitive Skin: Season 2

Midsomer Murders: Season 18

Apple TV+

January 8

Dickinson: Season 2

January 15

Servant: Season 2

January 22

Losing Alice

January 29

Palmer

Summer reissue: She’s an Oscar-winning actress, a widely hated celebrity and founder of one of the most successful wellness brands in the world. And all your jade egg jokes make no difference at all, writes Sam Brooks.

First published January 24, 2020.

A few weeks ago, the trailer for new Netflix show The GOOP Lab was released, along with a provocative image: Gwyneth Paltrow beaming while standing between the lips of an abstract vulva. The image wasn’t provocative because of the genitalia, though. It was provocative because a lot of people really, really hate Gwyneth Paltrow and don’t want to see her on their screen, whether they’re scrolling through Twitter or scrolling through the Netflix carousel.

The continued success of Gwyneth Paltrow feels like an elaborate troll upon the world, or at least upon the people who hate her. She won an Oscar almost ludicrously early on in her career, controversially beating fellow nominees Cate Blanchett and Meryl Streep, and went on to star in dark, little-seen indie films. She wins an Emmy for being in Glee and then performs at the Grammys with Cee-Lo. She stars in Marvel films and regularly gives the impression that she not only hasn’t seen any of them, but has no interest or inclination to do so in the future. She doesn’t divorce, she consciously uncouples from Chris Martin, and hangs out with him and his new girlfriend. She’s close friends with Jay Z and Beyonce. Her life is aspirational and objectively cooler than yours.

All of those things are enough to encourage scorn, but none of them have earned her as much scorn as GOOP, her wellness and self-care empire. What started as a newsletter of travel and lifestyle tips in 2008 (imagine The Bulletin but for what Irish pub you should go to in Paris) has turned into an empire worth at least US$250 million (though that figure is regularly quoted, Paltrow herself notes that it’s from 2008 and well south of the company’s present value) that sells wellness, self-care and luxury products.

It also regularly spreads misinformation, more commonly known as ‘lies’. Jade eggs, vaginal steaming, amethyst water bottles and earthing: there’s more pseudo-science wandering around GOOP than you’d find in a 16th century doctor’s office. This doesn’t make GOOP unique among wellness brands pushing various forms of alternative healthcare, some of which use the loosest definitions of the words ‘health’ and ‘care’, but GOOP is the only one with a famous person not just as its face, but with everything she represents baked into the brand. What do you think GOOP stands for?

So, yes, scorn is warranted. Misinformation is dangerous and the people who are most susceptible to it are generally the most vulnerable and desperate among us. GOOP’s audience is largely women, who have been roundly and regularly ignored or diminished by traditional medicine for years. Promoting alternative medicine that hasn’t been tested is dangerous. Doing so is worth interrogation and criticism. It’s worth a whole lot more than your tired jade-egg-in-a-vagina jokes.

But so often it seems like the scorn is aimed not so much at what she sells, but at Paltrow herself. And it’s layered with a venom that you can’t describe as anything other than gendered – can you name any non-Trump man that routinely receives the same kind of sledging that she does?

It’s easier to hate on the person everybody else is hating on. It’s easier to punch the punching bag that everybody else has beaten up on. It’s not just because she’s the head of an multi-million dollar wellness/scam empire. It’s because she’s privileged. It’s because she’s pretty. It’s because she’s famous, and seems to have a pretty easy time of it (despite being hated for the better part of two decades).

Truth be told, it’s easy for me to ignore the GOOP empire. While I would love to live my life like Gwyneth Paltrow, I’m pretty comfortably out of her target market, geographically and financially. Trust me, I’ve tried to buy an overpriced GOOP scarf only to find out they do not ship to New Zealand. I’m also, frankly, about as likely to get my wellness or medical advice from Gwyneth Paltrow as I am to get my Tom Waits fix from Scarlett Johansson.

It’s here that I have to say that I’ve always been a fan of Paltrow. She was one of those actresses who was always as talented as she was famous, even when she was increasingly dragged into projects that didn’t reward that talent (A View From The Top, Shallow Hal, so on and so forth). She was able to simply exist onscreen in a way that suggested depth and mystique, and despite her natural luminosity she always managed to bring out the complexity in her characters. She won her Oscar, fairly, for tapping into that luminosity, but it’s in her darker performances that she truly proved her worth. I’ll take her marvellous Margot Tenenbaum performance over many others, any day of the week.

But it’s not just her acting that made me a fan, especially as her performances became less frequent. And on that note, it’s worth nothing that she’s one of the few actresses whose fame has not dipped even as her actual on-screen performances have. It probably doesn’t hurt that she keeps on showing up – likely thanks to begrudging contractual obligation – in the biggest movie franchise of all time.

No, it’s her bizarre unflappability that I love. In a world where nearly everybody seems to crave validation, and stars make themselves more and more accessible, Paltrow continues to just… be herself. Some of that comes from privilege, the kind of privilege that comes from being an uncommonly talented, genetically gifted, third-generation member of Hollywood royalty. But some of it undoubtedly is the result of all the scorn thrown at her for things that are beyond her control.

In the thousands upon thousands of words I pored over to write this piece, some of them words with Paltrow, some of them words about her, the only time I saw her truly address the hatred aimed at her, and by proxy, her brand, was in the trailer for The GOOP Lab. During an episode where her team tries psychedelics, she mentions the one time she tried MDMA, and in an almost off-handed way, comes out with this pearl of… something:

“Being the person people perceive me to be is inherently traumatic.”

No shit! But if you can capitalise on it, then run away laughing to the bank, Margot.

If there’s anything that I find aspirational about Gwyneth Paltrow, it’s that she’s managed to actually capitalize on people hating her. As she herself said about her haters, in a lecture at Harvard Business School, “I can monetise those eyeballs.”

Paltrow is not the first person to capitalize on hatred. Hell, the GOOP show is on Netflix, the streaming service where your hate means the exact same thing as your love. But there’s something karmic about being the woman who was hated for winning an Oscar, hated for being the person for whom everything came easy, and then hated for the sin of recommending things to people, turning that hatred into success. Success at the expense of people’s health and wallets, but success nonetheless. The one chink in her GOOP armour – a false advertising lawsuit settled for $145,000, which is somewhat equivalent to the person who stole your car buying you a coffee – doesn’t seem to have stopped her at all.

The truth is your facile jokes do nothing to dent the GOOP empire. They actually keep GOOP part of the conversation. By engaging with it, even in the limpest way, you’re helping to legitimise it. And even worse, you’re legitimising something that has no impact on your life. You do not have to engage with GOOP, or with Gwyneth Paltrow. Nobody is making you watch her show. Nobody is making you buy her products. Nobody is making you do this. It’s a choice to do so, and one that does the exact opposite of what you’re trying to do. 

She’s rubber, and you’re glue. She will remain Gwyneth Paltrow, world-famous uncoupler, and you’ll just be the latest in a thousands-long line to make a tired joke about jade eggs.

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