What Should You Watch This Weekend?
A social climbing maid, or a bunch of zombie New Yorkers?
A mystery lover’s guide to what’s new to streaming this weekend.
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New and Returning Mystery and Thriller Series
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You’re Killing Me
(Acorn)
The great Brooke Shields plays internationally renowned mystery writer Allison Chandler, who teams up with a young wannabe-writer and podcaster, played by Amalia Williamson, to solve crimes… and maybe also co-author something?
A Woman of Substance
(BritBox)
Brenda Blethyn and Jessica Reynolds play older and younger versions of Emma Harte, a Yorkshire maid who climbs out of poverty to become an international businesswoman in this story of ambition (and revenge) based on the classic novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford.
The Walking Dead: Dead City, Season 3
(AMC+)
The New York zombie television show is back, now with more New York zombies! If you don’t know what the deal is with this Walking Dead spinoff series, allow me to illuminate: Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) swing by post-apocalyptic Manhattan, which is somehow even more intense than regular Manhattan.
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Movie Night
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I’ve got great news for all you streamers… Ready or Not 2: Here I Come finally arrives on Hulu. Longtime readers of this site might remember seven years ago, when I went long on the cleverness of its predecessor, Ready or Not. “Ready or Not is a Bloody Good Time at the Movies,” I titled that piece, and, more than half a decade later, I stand by this title and my thesis. The new film takes place right after the events of the first film, and kind of rehashes the original conceit: a young, newly-married woman must evade her new in-laws who are all trying to kill her as part of a strange game of “hide and seek” that they are satanically obliged to play. Except this second one might… might actually be better? Or it’s just as good. I can’t decide, and you should watch it. Then there’s Gus Van Sant’s most recent crime thriller, Dead Man’s Wire, a 70s true crime period piece starring Bill Skarsgård as a disgruntled real estate developer who kidnaps (and holds hostage) the president of a mortgage brokerage. That one’s streaming on Netflix. And if you want to try something interesting and experimental, you should check out In the Hand of Dante (also on Netflix), in which Oscar Isaac plays a writer who helps a mobster steal the original handwritten manuscript of The Divine Comedy; he also plays Dante himself in a parallel story set during the 14th century, about the actual writing of that manuscript. But if you’re looking for a mystery the whole family can enjoy, you should check out The Sheep Detectives, which has just arrived to Prime.
Olivia Rutigliano
Olivia Rutigliano is an Editor at Lit Hub and CrimeReads. Her other work appears in Vanity Fair, Vulture, Lapham's Quarterly, AirMail, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, The Baffler, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Politics/Letters, The Toast, Truly Adventurous, and elsewhere. She has a PhD from the departments of English/comparative literature and theatre at Columbia University, where she was the Marion E. Ponsford fellow. She hosts the podcasst "Culture Schlock" at Lit Hub Radio. She is on instagram at @oldebean, twitter at @oldrutigliano, and bluesky at @oliviarutigliano.bsky.social.
