The clocks went forward this weekend, Queensland shrugged as usual, and somebody in your house has already spent the spare hour of arvo light on the Netflix home screen. Six releases new to streaming in Australia this October are worth the argument, and each one comes with its Australian service and date. Yes, the month has already started without us. East of Eden has been up since Thursday and Kill Jackie since Friday, so two of these are a catch-up job rather than a countdown.
Six new to streaming in October, sorted
Same rule as every month: only the releases somebody in the house will bring up without being prompted. This time that means a Steinbeck epic, a revenge caper, an Everest film with an Australian behind the camera, a Marvel finale, a rom-com you have both already argued about, and a local crime drama on the ABC. Every date below is the Australian one. Streamers move them without a word, so check before you plan a Friday night around one.
East of Eden
Netflix put the whole thing up on Thursday 1 October, seven episodes, so you are already behind. Florence Pugh's Cathy Ames is the reason to press play on Zoe Kazan's Steinbeck. Two families, two generations, one genuinely frightening woman. A week of school nights, sorted.
Kill Jackie
Stan dropped every episode on Friday 2 October. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays a former cocaine dealer living very nicely on the proceeds, until a squad of seven hitmen comes looking. Made by people from Killing Eve and Gangs of London, and it shows: quick, nasty and funny about it. A two-night job at most.
Tenzing
Jennifer Peedom, the Australian who made Sherpa, directs her first drama: Everest in 1953, with Genden Phuntsok as Tenzing Norgay and Tom Hiddleston as Edmund Hillary. Friday 16 October on Apple TV. A proper Friday-night movie, and the Kiwis will be unbearable about it.
VisionQuest
Two episodes land on Disney+ on Wednesday 14 October, then one a week across eight. Paul Bettany is back as Vision, James Spader is back as Ultron, and Terry Matalas runs the show. It closes the run that started with WandaVision. Appointment TV, the old way: one night a week, no skipping ahead.
Nobody Wants This
Season three arrives on Netflix on Thursday 22 October, all ten episodes at once. Joanne and Noah are moving in together, which is either the happy ending or the start of the real trouble. Kristen Bell and Adam Brody are back, with Sarah Silverman joining as a rabbi. Half-hours, so two nights tops.
Dustfall
Honourable mention
All six episodes go up on ABC iview on Sunday 11 October, the night it starts on ABC TV. Anna Torv is a Gold Coast detective whose sexual assault case turns darker when a suspect turns up dead. It sits in the honourable-mention slot for being heavy going, not for being any less good.
The long version, since you asked
Six cards will get you through a Tuesday. They will not tell you which ones need homework first.
East of Eden: Steinbeck, Pugh, and a family business
Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stuart run this one, and the Kazan name matters. Her grandfather Elia made the 1955 film with James Dean, which only ever bothered with the last stretch of the book. This version goes for the lot: the Trask and Hamilton families across two generations, from the late 1800s into the First World War. The brothers are Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist, Ciarán Hinds plays Samuel Hamilton, and Florence Pugh has Cathy Ames, the role everyone will be talking about. Netflix put all seven episodes up on 1 October, as Deadline reported back in August.
No catch-up required, unless one of you insists on reading the novel first, in which case you will be watching it in December. Seven episodes is a week of school nights. The only real reservation is tone. This is a Cain and Abel story told at full volume, and Cathy is written to be hard to sit in a room with. That is the point, but it is not the one for the night someone wants a laugh.
Kill Jackie: the retirement plan goes badly
Peter Lawson co-created this with a crew who did time on Killing Eve and Gangs of London, and you can see both in the way it moves. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Jackie, who got out of the cocaine trade twenty years ago and has done very nicely since. Then a hit squad called the Seven Demons gets her name. Daniel Ings, Sidse Babett Knudsen and Óscar Jaenada fill out the cast, and nobody is playing it straight for long.
Stan put up every episode at once, so this is the weekend pick while the other two are still busy with Steinbeck. Nothing to watch first. The reservation is that it is a caper, not a character study: if you need to care about the hitmen as people, you will be disappointed by about episode two. If you just want Zeta-Jones being very good at being very bad, settle in.
Tenzing: an Australian takes on Everest, again
Jennifer Peedom has form on this mountain. Her documentary Sherpa came out of the 2014 Everest avalanche, and she followed it with Mountain. This time it is a drama, written by Luke Davies, who wrote Lion. It tells the 1953 climb from the Sherpa side: Genden Phuntsok has the title role, Hiddleston is Hillary, and Willem Dafoe plays John Hunt, the man running the expedition. The tension it is after is between a British expedition out to conquer the peak and a man who regards it as sacred.
It is a film, so no homework. Apple TV has it from Friday 16 October, the same day as everywhere else. Sherpa is the natural double bill if you can find it, but Tenzing does not need it. One honest warning: Hillary was a New Zealander, and anyone across the ditch will mention this more than once. Let them have it. They do not get many.
VisionQuest: the last part of the WandaVision run
Terry Matalas created and runs this, and it is pitched as the third and final chapter of the story that began with WandaVision and carried on through Agatha All Along. Paul Bettany is back as Vision, now in hiding and sorting through memories that do not quite fit together. James Spader returns as Ultron, which is the casting news that got the Marvel group chat going. Two episodes on Wednesday 14 October, then weekly across eight.
Homework, yes, but not much. WandaVision and Agatha All Along are both on Disney+, nine episodes each. WandaVision is the one that matters, because it is where this version of Vision comes from. Agatha is optional unless someone in the house is a completist, and someone always is. Do WandaVision over the next ten days and you will walk in knowing who everyone is.
Nobody Wants This: season three moves in
Last season ended with Joanne and Noah back together for good, or at least for now. Season three starts with them setting up house, so the premise has shifted from whether this can work to whether two people can share a kitchen. Kristen Bell and Adam Brody lead again, with Sarah Silverman, Andrew Rannells and Keyla Monterroso Mejia joining. All ten episodes arrive on Netflix on Thursday 22 October.
If you skipped the first two seasons, they are both on Netflix and they are short half-hours, so a long weekend covers them. You could start at three and follow along. You would miss most of why his mum is the way she is, which is half the fun. The reservation is the usual one with a third season: the will-they question is gone, and the show has to find out what else it has.
Dustfall: Anna Torv on the Gold Coast
Emma Freeman, who directed The Newsreader, reunites with Anna Torv for this six-parter, adapted from Vikki Petraitis's novel The Unbelieved. Torv plays Detective Tig Pollard, working a sexual assault case that gets darker when a suspect is found dead, and drags up things from her own teenage years. Juliet Stevenson, Kate Box and Jay Ryan are in it. It won the audience award at Series Mania before it got anywhere near the ABC.
It starts on ABC TV on Sunday 11 October, with all six up on iview the same night, so you can do it in one sitting or spread it out. No catch-up needed. The subject matter is the reason it is the honourable mention rather than a pick: this is the Gold Coast with the theme-park gloss scraped right off, and it is not a Friday-night unwind.
The rest of the month, briefly
SBS On Demand has The Jury: Skeleton in the Garden, where a real Australian manslaughter trial is restaged from the transcripts and twelve ordinary people decide it. The first four episodes are up from Monday 5 October and the verdict lands on Tuesday 13 October, so do not let anyone at work spoil it. The Rainmaker returns to Stan for season two on Saturday 17 October, weekly. Tulsa King season four starts on Paramount+ on 16 October, also weekly, with Stallone still trying to go legit. Stan has a killer-gnome comedy and a Friday the 13th prequel this month too, and there will be more on the scary stuff later in October.
Pace it, or October wins
A bit of order before you overcommit. East of Eden and Kill Jackie are both up in full, so split them: Steinbeck on school nights, Zeta-Jones for the weekend. VisionQuest is the only weekly one here, which makes it Wednesday's job until late November whether you like it or not. Tenzing wants a Friday with the lights off. Dustfall can have a Sunday, which is how the ABC wants it anyway. Nobody Wants This goes last, because it is the easiest sell on the page and the one you will both agree to. You will not get through all of it. Nobody does, and anyone who claims otherwise is lying about their screen time.
That is a lot to fit around longer evenings and the first warm weekends. Add the ones you rate now, match with the household, and skip the half-hour stand-off in front of six apps. What to watch this week stays current for the whole of October, and the getting started guide is the quick way in if MatchWatch is new to you. That is the lot that is new to streaming in Australia this October. MatchWatch is free to use. Available in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and the United States.