The Best Movies and TV Shows New to Netflix Australia in March

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Every month, Netflix Australia adds a new batch of movies and TV shows to its library. Here are the titles we think are most interesting for March, broken down by release date. Netflix occasionally changes its schedule without giving notice. (Unfortunately, the streaming information provided in our Watchlist listings only applies to viewers in the United States.)

TV Series New to Netflix

The intricate story of the unlikely business partnership between Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine fills up four fascinating hours in this documentary series, which doubles as a history of pop, rock, hip-hop and R&B from the 1970s to now. Beginning with Dre’s origins as a music-obsessed boy in Los Angeles — and Iovine’s early career as an engineer and producer for the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty — “The Defiant Ones” continues through the dawn of gangsta rap and the rise and decline of the CD era, examining the way new technologies and social movements continue to change music.
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Also of interest: “Homeland” Season 6 (March 1), “Queen of the South” Season 1 (March 1), “Ghost Wars” Season 1 (March 2) and “The Hollywood Masters” Season 2 (March 15).

New Netflix Original TV Series

Flint, Mich., is infamous for the recent crisis involving lead-contaminated water, as well as for the General Motors downsizing covered in Michael Moore’s documentary exposé “Roger & Me.” The docu-series “Flint Town” describes a different problem, noting how the city’s poverty has led to an underfunded police department, an escalating crime rate and citizens who live in fear. The show tracks the efforts to rectify the problem, which involves a lot of missteps, but also some genuine will to squeeze hope out of a hopeless situation.
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Netflix’s Marvel shows vary wildly in quality, but “Jessica Jones” is one that even a lot of the franchise’s skeptics like. Give a lot of credit to the star, Krysten Ritter, who’s both cool and heartbreaking as a crusty, superstrong detective, clobbering creeps while indulging in multiple vices to numb her pain. Three years after the show’s first season became a critics’ darling, it finally returns, with the heroine determined to crack a case that could lead her back to how she got her powers in the first place.
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Carey Mulligan stars as a dogged, London-based Detective Inspector in this BBC Two mini-series, about a seemingly random murder that leads the police to a larger criminal conspiracy, potentially involving the government and the church. Not just another gritty British crime drama, “Collateral” has been given a sophisticated polish by David Hare, a writer best-known for the Tony-nominated plays “Plenty” and “Skylight,” and for the Oscar-nominated screenplays for “The Hours” and “The Reader.” Expect more subtle character building than surprising twists.
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Fans of the darkly comic, painfully real MTV series “Awkward” should be thrilled to hear that the show’s creator, Lauren Iungerich, is back to making television, once again taking on high school but from a different perspective. Shifting her focus from the ritzy Palos Verdes region of Los Angeles to the more hardscrabble South Central, Iungerich should bring her usual snappy dialogue — and her sensitivity to adolescent emotions — to a part of the city where life is often more complicated than just finding a date for prom or mastering Snapchat.
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Readers who lived through the 1980s may recall the name of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a guru whose small Oregon cult briefly made national news because of his followers’ alleged involvement with bioterror and an attempted political assassination. The docu-series “Wild Wild Country” uses rare archival footage and recent interviews to help explain where Rajneesh’s movement came from, how it took hold in America and how it all came to a violent end.
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The former “Hannah Montana” writer Heather Wordham and the former “Wonder Years” and “Malcolm in the Middle” writer Matthew Carlson bring their knack for family-friendly tales of teen angst to this, another of Netflix’s growing stable of old-fashioned multicamera sitcoms. Paris Berelc and Isabel May star as high-school freshmen who struggle with this latest phase of their lives while discovering that making a good impression isn’t entirely within their control.
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From the mind of a “Narcos” producer, José Padilha, comes another true crime story, based on the still-unfolding “Operation Car Wash” money-laundering scandal in Brazil. “The Mechanism” (or “O Mecanismo” in the original Portuguese) follows a team of investigators who start looking into kickbacks and bribes in a state-run petrochemical company. Things get hairy as they realize they could be exposing corruption on a scale that could destabilize the social order, not only in Brazil but also around the world.
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Also of interest: “B: The Beginning” Season 1 (March 2), “Love” Season 3 (March 9), “Edha” Season 1 (March 16), “Santa Clarita Diet” Season 2 (March 23), “A Series of Unfortunate Events” Season 2 (March 30) and “Trump: An American Dream” Season 1 (March 30).

Movies New to Netflix

Before “Thor: Ragnarok,” director Taika Waititi collaborated with his old friend and comedy partner Jemaine Clement on this horror mockumentary, in which the two men play ancient vampires leading sad lives in a shabby Wellington, New Zealand, neighborhood. It’s funny enough just to watch these classic movie monsters engaging in mundane roommate squabbles, but eventually “What We Do in the Shadows” does develop a surprisingly engaging story, concerning the arrival of younger creatures with different values and habits. Waititi and Clement root their jokes in the anxieties of very old men, struggling to keep up with the times.
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The screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich,” “Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind”) turns to stop-motion animation for this wonderfully weird movie, which follows a depressed self-help guru on a business trip to Cincinnati. Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis) imagines that every person he meets has the same face and same voice, until he meets an “anomaly” named Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who bewitches him even though she’s otherwise completely ordinary. Both a character sketch about an arrogant man and a hilariously accurate depiction of what it’s like to stay in a Middle American luxury hotel, “Anomalisa” is stunning to look at and rewarding to argue about after the credits roll.
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An electrifying combination of caper picture and high-school comedy imagines what would happen if three teenage nerds from Inglewood, Calif., stumbled on the cache of drugs that their neighborhood’s local dealers are literally killing one another to retrieve. As the three friends come up with clever, cutting-edge ways to sell their unexpected stash, the writer-director Rick Famuyiwa revels in the specific slang, codes and status symbols that mean the most to poor kids today. That’s how “Dope” stays both energetic and up-to-date for the 2010s.
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The winner of the 2015 Academy Award for best picture is based on the true story of a Pulitzer-winning Boston Globe investigative reporting team, which uncovered a disturbing pattern: Higher-ups in the Roman Catholic church were paying off parishioners who complained of having been sexually abused by priests. Tom McCarthy, who directed and helped write “Spotlight,” is primarily interested in examining the recent and sudden decay of venerable American institutions, from the church to the government to the media. He does this by focusing on minute details, as a talented cast (including Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams) buries itself in the roles of diligent professionals doing work that matters.
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Both a blockbuster and a cultural phenomenon, “Wonder Woman” is the rare superhero movie that stands strong on its own, telling a story that’s complete and entertaining story if viewers never watched anything else from “the DC Extended Universe.” Anchored by charismatic performances from Gal Gadot (as Diana, the titular heroine) and Chris Pine (as the American pilot and spy Chris Trevor, working to win World War I), “Wonder Woman” is a stirring throwback adventure, which has resonated with the many, many people who have been eager to see a big-budget action picture with a female lead.
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Also of interest: “I, Robot,” (March 1), “The Purge: Election Year” (March 1), “Ricki and the Flash” (March 3), “Bushwick” (March 15), “Cars 3” (March 18) and “Australia” (March 31).

New Netflix Original Movies

A hit at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, this arty French Canadian zombie thriller — with a title that translates as “The Ravenous” — crosses “The Walking Dead” with muted neorealism and a touch of “The Twilight Zone.” When a rural Quebecois community begins to succumb to a ghoulish plague, the survivors regroup in the surrounding forests and fight to reclaim their home. But will they become as horrible as the monsters they’re aiming to expel? The writer-director Robin Aubert asks that question subtly, in a horror movie that is as thoughtful as it is creepy.
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A surefire candidate for “Best of 2018” lists, this Alex Garland adaptation of the Jeff VanderMeer’s novel opened in theaters in the United States and China just a few weeks ago, but it is already arriving on Netflix in other international territories. The reasons are an endorsement, not a red flag. A story about five troubled women who investigate a mysterious energy-bubble that’s been obscuring a vast stretch of the American wilderness (the women are played by Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson and Tuva Novotny), “Annihilation” has been called too smart and surreal for mainstream audiences. Fans of brainy, ambitious science-fiction should probably jump on it right away.
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Producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg join forces with the team behind the Comedy Central series “Workaholics” to put a stoner-comedy twist on “Die Hard.” Anders Holm, Adam Devine and Blake Anderson play Los Angeles waiters who work in a building that gets seized by terrorists. Determined to be rough-and-tumble, blockbuster-style heroes — with guns and cool catchphrases — the three waiters bumble their way into even more trouble, and end up fighting with one another as much as with the bad guys.
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Also of interest: “The Outsider” (March 9), “Layla M.” (March 23), “Happy Anniversary” (March 30) and “The Titan” (March 30).

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