Best new movies and TV series on Netflix New Zealand: December 2024

Each month, loads of new films and TV shows are added to Netflix‘s library. Eliza Janssen presents her picks for titles worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.

Top Picks: TV

Black Doves: Season 1 (December 5)

This British thriller series has already been tapped for a second season, before we’ve even been blessed to see Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw in sexy spy mode yet. Must be onto something! When Knightley’s secret lover is killed, her spy agency sends an old mate, Whishaw’s scowling assassin, to protect her, launching the pair into the deepest depths of London’s criminal underworld.

There’s a sense of odd similarity here to the recent Day of the Jackal remake, with the Bond series’ Q and Moneypenny (Lashana Lynch) currently starring in duelling, steamy spy series. It should be nice to see the bloke who normally gives Bond his gadgets finally getting his own mitts on some—and Knightley’s poise adds an extra sense of gravitas to the twisty proceedings, too.

No Good Deed (December 12)

There’s some canny casting going on in this new limited series: Ray Romano and Lisa Kudrow are both old hands at the sitcom, and here they’ll be between four far stranger walls than either of those 1990s sets. Teyonah Parris, Abbi Jacobson and Luke Wilson round out the supporting cast, with creator Liz Feldman’s lucky charm Linda Cardellini returning from their work together on the oh-so-loveable Dead To Me.

With so many funny folks all vying to buy the same villa, the domestic stakes are high enough: but Feldman has shown a morbid sense of humour in the past, and she’ll likely apply the same turns, twists and blackhearted moments to this story.

Squid Game: Season 2 (December 26)

Talk about a tough follow-up. The first season of this twisted, completely addictive South Korean drama exploded overnight in 2021, and so creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has had a few years to contemplate the perfect next move. Thing is, since the story revolves around a barbaric game of death with only one winner, he’ll need to conjure up an (almost) entirely new cast for us to care about—and come up with a few new fatal playground games to put them through, to boot.

Can the show’s sophomore season reach the same unturnoff-able heights of that opening chapter, now that some of the mystery’s been revealed and our appetite has already been sated once? Settle in on Boxing Day to find out.

Top Picks: Movies + Specials

Birdeater (December 7)

As the pent-up, blokey characters in this new Aussie thriller plot out a perfect Stag do, a poster of Wake In Fright looms menacingly on the living room wall. It’s a telling touch, the influence of Australia’s gritty New Wave coming across potently in a newer story of cosmopolitan pretense confronted by darker, rawer impulses.

Directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir capably maintain the movie’s tense arc, broiling the characters until dirty secrets are laid bare. It’s one of those claustrophobic social settings where you wonder why the characters would ever be mates, but not in an unbelievable way, if that makes sense? And Ben Hunter is absolutely arresting as the bucks’ loosest mate, a wild-eyed archetypal larrikin who ends up being one of the least terrifying members of the doomed party.

A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter (December 12)

Swap “Ho Ho Ho” with “Please Please Please,” and Santa’s milk and cookies for a Short ‘n’ Sweet shot of ‘Espresso’: one of the reigning divas of Gen Z pop plans on keeping us up all night this holiday season. The Christmas special has previously been a dumping ground for has-beens and reheated, tinselly covers, but Carpenter’s winkingly old-school aesthetic and breathy vocals make this a cooler carolling event than you might expect.

Guests stopping by include Shania Twain, Kali Uchis, Chappell Roan and Tyla, plus an impressive slate of sketch comedy stars adding a sense of daggy variety show delight.

Carry-On (December 13)

Huh, the 32nd film in the Carry On franchise seems to be more gritty than usual, with like 70% less sex jokes…In honesty, the movie’s a holiday-flavoured airport thriller, with Taron Egerton the last line of defence against a bomb threat. Are we really ready to feel something approaching sympathy for those pesky airport security agents? Egerton can surely get us there.

Better yet, Jason Bateman is playing against type as the mysterious passenger trying to blackmail our blue-suited hero, and the whole ordeal is directed by French action auteur Jaume Collet-Serra, best known for his nailbiting, adrenal action collaborations with Liam Neeson. Your flight to pulse-pounding tension is now boarding!