Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of October’s most promising new titles.
(Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)
New to HBO Max
‘The Many Saints of Newark’
Starts streaming: Oct. 1
This movie-length prequel to the groundbreaking cable series “The Sopranos” looks back at life in the late 1960s for a notorious family of New Jersey mobsters and their various colleagues and enemies. It’s a film about the evolving nature of organized crime and race relations, at a time when the United States was experiencing rapid social changes that some sectors — like the old-school Mafia — resisted. Written by “The Sopranos” creator David Chase and directed by Alan Taylor (one of the show’s regulars), “The Many Saints of Newark” tells a sprawling story of criminal rivalries, balancing pulpy violence with dark comedy. Chase also returns to one of his core themes, considering how parental pressure and macho pride affect the choices of a young Tony Soprano, played here by Michael Gandolfini (the son of TV’s Tony, James Gandolfini).
‘Succession’ Season 3
Starts streaming: Oct. 17
It has been nearly two years since HBO aired the Season 2 finale of this Emmy Award-winning drama. During the long, pandemic-fueled delay, fans have been eager to find out what will happen to the mega-rich Roy family and their right-wing media empire, after the troubled son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and his goofy cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) went public with evidence of a messy scandal. That cliffhanger ending set up a bloody fight between Kendall and his cantankerous, megalomaniacal father, Logan (Brian Cox), with the other power-hungry Roy kids Siobhan (Sarah Snook) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) left to decide where their loyalties should lie. Expect another year of jarring twists and unsparing satire from “Succession,” one of TV’s most exhilarating shows.
Also arriving:
Oct. 7
“15 Minutes of Shame”
Oct. 11
“We’re Here” Season 2
Oct. 14
“Aquaman: King of Atlantis”
“Phoebe Robinson: Sorry, Harriet Tubman”
“What Happened, Brittany Murphy?”
Oct. 18
“Women Is Losers”
Oct. 20
“Four Hours at the Capitol”
Oct. 21
“Reign of Superwomen”
Oct. 22
“Dune”
Oct. 24
“Curb Your Enthusiasm” Season 11
“Insecure” Season 5
Oct. 26
“The Mopes”
Oct. 28
“Love Life” Season 2
New to Apple TV+
‘The Velvet Underground’
Starts streaming: Oct. 15
It would be hard for any filmmaker to make a documentary about the influential 1960s band the Velvet Underground as inventive and mind-expanding as the group itself, but Todd Haynes sure comes close. The director behind “Velvet Goldmine” and “I’m Not There” clearly understands not just the primitivist art-rock that the singer-songwriters Lou Reed and John Cale pioneered — a sound that inspired thousands of punk, New Wave and power-pop acts in the decades that followed — but also the New York underground culture that nurtured the Velvets. Combining new interviews, vintage audio clips and hypnotic old avant-garde films from the likes of Andy Warhol and Jonas Mekas, “The Velvet Underground” captures both the brilliance and the chaos surrounding a band who documented both the ugliness and the beauty underlying the hippie era.
‘Invasion’
Starts streaming: Oct. 22
Shot in locations around the world, this big-budget science-fiction series employs an ensemble cast to tell a story about the arrival of an Earth-threatening alien species. The show stars Sam Neill as a small-town sheriff, Shamier Anderson as a soldier stationed overseas, Shioli Kutsuna a mission-control engineer in Japan’s space program and Golshifteh Farahani and Firas Nassar as married Syrian immigrants living in New York. The “Hunters” creator David Weil and the writer-producer Simon Kinberg (best-known for his work on blockbuster superhero movies, including multiple X-Men films) collaborated on “Invasion,” which uses a fantastical, action-packed plot as a way to examine something relevant to today: how people cope with escalating crises that could wipe out life as we know it.
Also arriving:
Oct. 8
“Acapulco”
“Get Rolling With Otis”
Oct. 15
“Puppy Place”
Oct. 29
“Swagger”
New to Hulu
‘Dopesick’
Starts streaming: Oct. 13
An all-star cast tackles the origins of the opioid crisis in this mini-series, based on the journalist Beth Macy’s 2018 nonfiction book “Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America.” The director Barry Levinson and the writer-producer Danny Strong turn the complicated saga of how Purdue Pharma marketed the painkiller OxyContin into a focused story, mostly about the people in one small mining town: including a compassionate doctor (Michael Keaton) and an addict (Kaitlyn Dever). Michael Stuhlbarg (as a former Purdue leader, Richard Sackler), Rosario Dawson (as a Drug Enforcement Administration agent) and Peter Sarsgaard (as a crusading lawyer trying to expose the insidious effects of a community-wide addiction) add their own strong personalities.
Also arriving:
Oct. 7
“Baker’s Dozen”
Oct. 8
“Jacinta”
Oct. 12
“Champaign ILL”
Oct. 14
“Censor”
Oct. 21
“The Evil Next Door”
“The Next Thing You Eat” Season 1
Oct. 22
“Gaia”
New to Disney+
‘Muppets Haunted Mansion’
Starts streaming: Oct. 8
The Muppets’ first Halloween special leans on a classic horror-comedy plot, as the Great Gonzo and Pepe the King Prawn explore a ghost-infested house and deal with its baffling secret passageways and untrustworthy human hosts (played by Will Arnett, Taraji P. Henson and Darren Criss, among others). In just under an hour, the Muppets and their guests deliver a rapid-fire assortment of songs and puns, along with some Halloween-themed parodies of “The Muppet Show” itself — plus plenty of references to the original Disneyland attraction that gives this special its name. “Muppets Haunted Mansion” is geared toward longtime Muppets fans, but it should also appeal to anyone who loves old-fashioned gothic horror stories.
Also arriving:
Oct. 1
“LEGO Star Wars Terrifying Tales”
Oct. 6
“Among the Stars”
Oct. 13
“Just Beyond”
New to Amazon
‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Season 1
Starts streaming: Oct. 15
Back in 1997, Lois Duncan’s 1973 young adult novel “I Know What You Did Last Summer” inspired a hit slasher film, which itself spawned multiple sequels. Now the book has become a TV series, which updates the original’s premise to the age of social media. Once again the story is about a circle of self-involved high school friends who have to grow up in a hurry when a mysterious killer starts a campaign of revenge against them after a fatal hit-and-run accident. But the themes this time out are more up-to-the-minute, dealing with the disconnect between how some young people present themselves online and the troubles in their personal lives. It’s a thriller where the threat of public embarrassment is as scary as any murderer.
‘Fairfax’ Season 1
Starts streaming: Oct. 29
Fans of “Bojack Horseman” and Adult Swim cartoons will recognize the sensibility of this adult animated series about a handful of Los Angeles teenagers who behave like “extremely online” mini-adults, obsessed with hard-to-find fashions and exclusive experiences. Skyler Gisondo, Kiersey Clemons, Peter Kim and Jaboukie Young-White voice the kids, whose problems include the commonplace (like desperately wanting to buy a kitschy limited edition T-shirt) and the strange (like finding an underground fighting pit beneath a hip boutique). “Fairfax” — named for the Los Angeles avenue — is part slice-of-life comedy, part absurdist satire of Gen Z consumerism, spoofing the next wave of wannabe influencers.
Also arriving:
Oct. 1
“All or Nothing: Toronto Maple Leafs”
“My Name Is Pauli Murray”
“Welcome to the Blumhouse” Season 2
Oct. 8
“Justin Bieber: Our World”
Source: Television - nytimes.com
