Seven TV shows that will make you re-adjust your focus on this world 

Does social media ever stop prying into your life? Are algorithms choosing to direct your attention to this show or that? Watch this! This is trending! If you are like everyday ordinary people — and I fervently pray that you are not — then you’ll go on Twitter and ask your timeline, ‘What’s new, pussycat?’ You’ll get the same old suggestions and you’ll be like, let’s do what everyone else is doing. Am glad most of you will not fall for trends, and will buy Oxfords, not Brogues, and will never wear fuzzy bedroom slippers with a tux. Let’s use this month to stab the prying analytical eyes of social media giants with our elegant fingers.

Just to jolt the Matrix a tad bit watch Wu Assassins. And sit back and enjoy some of the best action you have seen in a while. It’s got Iko Uwais who made decimating enemies one floor at a time in The Raid: Redemption (Director: Gareth Evans, 2011) look jaw-droppingly easy, and then when he finally beats Yayan Ruhiyan in the most vicious hand-to-hand combat ever shot, you know you just cannot miss this show. He’s a chef, and is told that he’s the chosen one, and has to save the world.

Oh yes! You had flashbacks of John Wick 3: The Parabellum, didn’t you? Indeed! You watched the cruel, villainous Mark Dacascos create a fabulous glass and mirror arena in the final John Wick fight. He has a very different role in this show and if you are like me, your hearts too will skip a beat the first time you see him in Iko Uwais’s mirror in this show.

I chanced upon a show called Louder Milk by fluke. Call me jaded, but whenever there are shows about drugs and alcohol abuse I know they’re all aping Breaking Bad or doing the terrible version of Steve Carell funny movies where he’s inadvertently ferrying drugs. But when you end up watching all three seasons of a show sort of backwards and you begin to enjoy the strange encounters then you know Amazon Prime Video does have gems hidden away in their smorgasbord.

If you want to get out of laid back visions of birds chewing gum, then you’ll want to get a rush of adrenaline when you watch quicksilver action of Rez Ball in the show Basketball Or Nothing. Having been a vertically challenged person all my life, watching the super talented not-so-tall people play a fantastic game is super-inspiring. And the challenges Native American youths face on the Reservation (the ‘Rez’) will remind you of wonderful films from down under like Once Were Warriors (1994 movie from a book by the same name by Alan Duff).

‘When I’m playing, I feel just as tall as everyone else’... If sports stories are meant to teach you one thing, it is playing with others as a team. Although the practical part of me said that there was another Netflix show called Last Chance U which made eminent sense as well when it came to learning hard life lessons, there is much that can be written about fair play and the values you learn when playing with a team. I also loved Girls With Balls, just to put that ‘she watches sports docus’ algorithm out of whack. Yes, yes, it’s on Netflix.

Like most good Indian kids, I went to school run by Catholic nuns. We were always fascinated by the ‘penguins’ who could discipline us with a strong hand and pat our backs should we write a great essay or sing in tune with the choir. So naturally I was driven to watch this show that chronicles the mysterious disappearance of Sister Cathy in The Keepers. There is a public face and a private face to the Church and I enjoy a murder as well. Watch this show…

Speaking of murders, what if you realised that there’s a big black hole in your memory and you wake up next to a whole lot of dead bodies? The show is a tad cheesy, but it satisfies the need to watch something odd. The chances of you looking over your shoulder greatly increase. I watched The Rook with a niggling sense of deja vu. Can you feel it? What book? What movie speaks to you like this? What else makes you feel like there’s a monster inside of you?

Some of us know the monsters and we are in their power. We don’t even know it, but we follow men who influence our lives, and perhaps influence politics too. I have seen sane, intellectual people come under this powerful drug called religion (and these days, it is fashionable to ‘be spiritual’, go for chanting sessions and the like). Am not saying finding inner peace is not a good pursuit. But when a few men of faith, take it upon themselves to change the way men in power think, and begin to insidiously change the way politics works and yet manage to remain invisible… Now that’s dangerous. And then they call themselves The Family. This is a powerful, powerful binge worthy show. There is a prickle on the back of your neck that doesn’t go away. And I am at once awed and horrified by the power of ‘Jesus plus nothing’.

When you recover from the series, you’d want to unburden. And how I laughed and watched this show with a grin plastered on my face! It’s poignant and funny and desperate and different. And yes, it is Japanese. The show is called The Naked Director. And yes, he wants to sell desire. Aren’t we all aiming for that?