The SheerLuxe Culture List: January

Ray Trapani always wanted to be a criminal, even as a young boy. In 2017, amid the economic frenzy of the Bitcoin boom, there was no better place for scammers than cryptocurrency. So, when Ray's friend approached him with the idea of creating a debit card for crypto, he jumped at the chance. There was only one problem: he had no idea how to do that. But thanks to fake LinkedIn profiles, paid celebrity endorsements and the online community’s insatiable desire to get rich quick, Centra Tech was soon raking in millions of dollars a day. Was it real? No. But did it work? In this fast-paced documentary, Ray himself guides viewers through the ups and downs of his dramatic journey, with the help of his family, former friends and the journalist who exposed Centra Tech as the first high-profile fraud case of the crypto era.

Visit Netflix.com

Eleven strangers are given a quarter of a million dollars to split evenly. Will they take their fair share? Or will the allure of more money cause them to vote each other out to keep more for themselves? The Trust is the ultimate test of human nature, as greed and mistrust threaten to destroy even the strongest of relationships. In this game, everyone starts as winners and they can all leave as winners – but only if they choose to share.

Visit Netflix.com

Ten years in the making, The Kitchen is an original story from Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out, Judas & The Black Messiah), Kibwe Tavares (Robots of Brixton, Jonah) and Daniel Emmerson (Calm With Horses) and marks the film debut of Kane Robinson (Top Boy). In a dystopian London, the gap between rich and poor has been stretched to its limits. All forms of social housing have been eradicated and only The Kitchen remains. A community that refuses to move out of the place they call home, this is where viewers meet a solitary Izi, living here by necessity and desperately trying to find a way out, and 12-year-old Benji, who has lost his mother and is searching for a family. Follow the unlikely pair as they struggle to forge a relationship in a system that is stacked against them.

Visit Netflix.com

When teenager Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend. Through Priscilla’s eyes, Sofia Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth, exploring Elvis and Priscilla's long courtship and turbulent marriage, from a German army base to his dream-world estate at Graceland. The result is a deeply felt and ravishingly detailed portrait of love, fantasy and fame.

Visit Picturehouses.com

From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite, The Lobster) comes the incredible tale and fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation. Also stars Margaret Qualley, Christopher Abbott and Jerrod Carmichael.

Visit Picturehouses.com

Already a hit in the US, The Holdovers follows a curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually he forms an unlikely bond with one of them – a damaged, brainy troublemaker (newcomer Dominic Sessa) – and with the school’s head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).

Visit Picturehouses.com

The anthology crime-drama series returns this month. Its fourth season, set in Alaska and titled True Detective: Night Country, stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as a pair of detectives with a dark past, investigating the disappearance of eight men from an Arctic research station. While the second and third series failed to live up to the outstanding first, we suspect that, with Foster at the helm, this could be a return to form…

Visit NowTV.com

Starring award-winning actress Sarah Lancashire, Julia is inspired by Julia Child’s extraordinary life and her long-running television series, The French Chef, which pioneered the modern cooking show. Released in 2022, series one played out Julia’s trial and tribulations to bring her show to TV screens, relaying the story of a loving marriage with a shifting power dynamic. With her trailblazing cooking show up and running on the air, the second series will see Julia grappling with her rising celebrity and what that means for her, her colleagues and her show.

Visit NowTV.com

Set in 1850s Australia, in the colony of Port Victory, Jack Dawkins – aka The Artful Dodger – is a surgeon with a penchant for crime. When Dodger’s past returns to haunt him with the arrival of Fagin, he is lured back into a world of crime. From heists to life-and-death surgeries, to the harsh realities of the criminal world mingling with the middle ground and gentry, this is a tale of reinvention, betrayal, redemption and love with a twist. Stars Thomas Brodie-Sangster, David Thewlis and Maia Mitchell. 

Visit DisneyPlus.com

Cristóbal Balenciaga is a new series that recreates the life and legacy of one of the most iconic fashion designers of all time. Alberto San Juan plays Balenciaga, an enigmatic and extraordinarily talented man who defied the social conventions of the time and revolutionised the world of fashion. It begins as the designer presents his first Parisian haute couture collection in 1937. He has left behind a successful career in his ateliers in Madrid and San Sebastian, dressing the Spanish elite and aristocracy. However, the designs that had set the trend in Spain don’t quite work in the sophisticated fashion empire that Paris has become, where Chanel, Dior and Givenchy are the benchmark of haute couture. Guided by his obsession for control in all aspects of his life, Balenciaga eventually becomes one of the most important designers of all time.

Visit DisneyPlus.com

Landing on Netflix, Good Grief marks Schitt’s Creek star Daniel Levy’s debut as a feature-film writer and director. Marc (played by Levy) was content living in the shadow of his larger-than-life husband Oliver (Luke Evans). But when Oliver unexpectedly dies, Marc’s world shatters, sending him and his two best friends, Sophie (Ruth Negga) and Thomas (Himesh Patel), on a soul-searching trip to Paris that reveals some hard truths they each needed to face.

Visit Netflix.com

Expats stars Nicole Kidman (Big Little Lies, The Undoing), Sarayu Blue (Never Have I Ever, Blockers), Ji-young Yoo (The Sky Is Everywhere, Smoking Tigers), Brian Tee (Chicago Med, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows), and Jack Huston (House of Gucci, Fargo). Set against the vibrant and tumultuous tapestry of 2014 Hong Kong, Expats centres on three American women – Margaret, Hilary and Mercy – whose lives intersect after a sudden family tragedy. The series interrogates privilege and explores what happens when the line between victimhood and culpability becomes blurred.

Visit Amazon.co.uk

Reuniting the award-winning team of Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman who produced Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Masters of the Air is an action-packed drama that follows the true story of an American bomber group in World War II. Based on Donald L. Miller’s book of the same name, the series follows the men of the 100th Bomb Group (the ‘Bloody Hundredth’) as they conduct perilous bombing raids over Nazi Germany and grapple with the frigid conditions, lack of oxygen and sheer terror of combat conducted at 25,000 feet in the air. The all-star cast includes Elvis’s Austin Butler, plus Callum Turner (The Capture), Barry Keoghan (Dunkirk), Anthony Boyle (Danny Boy) and the new Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa.

Visit TV.Apple.com

From the team behind Narcos, this new series is a fictionalised drama inspired by the life of the savvy and ambitious Griselda Blanco (played by Sofia Vergara), who created one of the most powerful cartels in history. Set in 1970s-80s Miami, Blanco’s lethal blend of unsuspected savagery and charm helps her expertly navigate between business and family, leading her to become widely known as ‘the Godmother’. 

Visit Netflix.com

For Piglet – an unshakable childhood nickname – getting married is her opportunity to reinvent. Together, Kit and Piglet are the picture of domestic bliss – effortless hosts, planning a covetable wedding... But if a life looks too good to be true, it probably is. Thirteen days before they are due to be married, Kit reveals an awful truth, cracking the façade Piglet has created. It has the power to strip her of the life she has so carefully built, so smugly shared. To do something about it would be to self-destruct. But what will it cost her to do nothing? As the hours count down to their wedding, Piglet is torn between a growing appetite and the desire to follow the rules. Surely, with her husband, she could be herself again. Wouldn’t it be a waste to throw everything away now?

Visit Amazon.co.uk

From the acclaimed author of The Nix comes another hugely ambitious novel, about how we change, grow and age, a story of marriage, middle age, our tech-obsessed health culture, and the bonds that keep people together. When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the 90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago’s thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward 20 years to married life and, alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors and Facebook wars. For the first time, Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognise one another, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to painful childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process, Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.

Visit Amazon.co.uk

It’s been two decades since Irakli fled his war-torn homeland with two young sons, now grown men. Two decades since they saw their mother, who stayed so they could escape. At long last, Tbilisi has lured them home. But when Irakli’s phone calls stop, a mystery begins. Arriving in Tbilisi as escaped zoo animals prowl the streets, his son Saba picks up a path of clues: strange graffiti, bewildering messages transmitted through the radio, pages from his father’s unpublished manuscript scattered like breadcrumbs. Soon, Saba discovers that all roads lead back to the past, and to secrets swallowed up by the great forests of Georgia. In a winding pursuit through the magic and mystery of returning to a lost homeland, Hard by a Great Forest is a searching tale of home, memory and sacrifice – of one family’s mission to rescue one another and put the past to rest.

Visit Amazon.co.uk

This is the follow-up to Kiley Reid’s phenomenally successful debut Such A Fun Age. Millie wants to graduate, get a job and buy a house. She's slowly saving up from her job on campus, but when a visiting professor offers her an unusual opportunity to make some extra money, she jumps at the chance. Agatha is a writer, recovering from a break-up while researching attitudes towards weddings and money for her new book. She strikes gold when interviewing the girls in Millie's dorm, but her plans take a turn when she realises that the best material is unfolding behind closed doors. As the two women form an unlikely relationship, they become embroiled in a world of roommate theatrics, vengeful pranks and illicit intrigue – and are forced to question just how much of themselves they are willing to trade to get what they want.

Visit Amazon.co.uk

This major new exhibition explores the irresistible force of cuteness in contemporary culture. From emojis to internet memes, video games to plushie toys, food to loveable robotic design, cuteness has taken over our world. But how has something so charming and seemingly harmless – doe-eyed animals, chubby-cheeked babies, flowers, hearts, stars, sweets and other such romantic motifs – gained such traction? Cute brings together contemporary artworks and cultural phenomena such as music, fashion, toys, video games and social media to examine the world’s embrace of cute culture and how it has become such an influential measure of our times.

Visit SomersetHouse.org.uk

After the success of their multi-award-winning play The Ferryman, screenwriter Jez Butterworth has teamed up with director Sam Mendes again on this new play at the Harold Pinter. Fresh from directing The Lehman Trilogy to rave reviews, Mendes has taken on a very different project in the form of Hills of California, set in 1970s Blackpool. It has been the driest summer for 200 years. The beaches are packed, the hotels are heaving. In the sweltering backstreets, far from the ice-creams and donkey rides, the Webb sisters are returning to their mother’s rundown guest house, as she lies dying upstairs…

Visit HillsOfCaliforniaPlay.com