What do women really want? Is it a man, marriage, a white picket fence, or is it sailing around the world, or crushing the patriarchy one day at a time? Women, unapologetically, want all of these things depending on who and when you ask because we’re not a homogenous species. The is a curated collection of the many series on SBS On Demand that showcase women’s complexities, some everyday and some unusual and fascinating. Whether women are morally flawless heroines, rebellious and cunning changemakers, addicts, high achievers, lone wolves or supporters of the sisterhood, they are relatable. Perhaps you see yourself in the dangerous, determined June Osborne in the sixth and final season of The Handmaid’s Tale, or the younger sister Iris in The Doll Factory, forgotten in the shadows of her beautiful older sister’s bold presence. On the screen, women can immerse themselves in the stories of what it is to be a girl, a woman, a daughter, a sister, an employee, and the brutal challenges as well as the funny, sweet, rebellious parts of it all.
From Bavaria to the White House, Swift Street to remote Swedish towns where lone female detectives hunt murderers, the uniting factor is that these women are really nuanced, contradictory, many of them unafraid of being 'unlikeable', and very often relatable however different their circumstances are from our own.
The Handmaid's Tale
Can Serena (Yvonne Strahovski) be redeemed? Has she irrevocably damaged women’s standing in Gilead and any hope that fascism can be crushed, enabling women to dress, read, speak and live with even a semblance of autonomy? Eight years since The Handmaid's Tale debuted in 2017, and 40 years since the release of Margaret Atwood's novel of the same title, the sixth and final season of The Handmaid's Tale is here and promises mystery, drama, loyalty and betrayal in spades.
Having scooped up Emmy and Golden Globe Awards galore, this finale carries the weight of expectation and the audience's emotional investment. Despite being defined as a dystopian fantasy, the prospect of a nation run by men, in which fertile women are merely subjects to be impregnated and enslaved - their bodies not their own - bears an eerie parallel with certain nations and their increasingly patriarchal policies. June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) is the ultimate heroine. Daring to love who she loved, to refuse to give up on her daughter, has made her a victim many times over. On the other hand, the worst of women is exemplified in selfish and sadistic Aunt Lydia Clements (Ann Dowd), Naomi Putts (Ever Carradine), and - it seems - Serena. Refusing to give any spoilers, in May last year Elisabeth Moss told Business Insider, "I think this whole season is absolutely for the fans. It's definitely for our audience. It's definitely for the people that have stuck with us for five seasons, and we're kind of making this one for them."
The sixth and final season is premiering exclusively on both SBS and SBS On Demand with new episodes weekly, until the gripping series finale on Tuesday 27 May. For more information on how to watch each episode of season 6 as soon as it airs, .
Stream free On Demand
The Handmaid's Tale
series • drama
MA15+
series • drama
MA15+
The Doll Factory
On a somewhat similar bent, The Doll Factory is a gothic, otherworldly drama in which women’s desires are met with (sometimes deadly) oppression in London, 1850. This Irish-filmed period drama is based on author Elizabeth Macneal’s award-winning debut novel. Twin sisters Rose (Mirren Mack) and Iris (Esme Creed-Miles) have been taken in by the unforgiving Mrs Salter, who supervises the girls as they paint custom mourning dolls for bereaved families.
Like The Handmaid’s Tale, it is glorious down to the tiniest detail: costumes are layered, lush and expressive, the cobble-stoned streets glisten in the rain, and Rose’s beautiful skin is nearly iridescent. Her twin sister, Iris, who is wan with illness, begins to fear that her older sister and primary carer will abandon her for one of the leery men who gaze just a little too long at Rose in public spaces. As with June and Serena in The Handmaid’s Tale, the dynamics between Iris and Rose are the soul of this series and the reason you’ll be up until 3am binge watching it.
The Doll Factory is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
The Doll Factory
series • drama
MA15+
series • drama
MA15+
Am I Being Unreasonable?
Talk about complex dynamics! The hilariously inept Nic (Daisy May Cooper) and her frenemy Jen (Selin Hizli) are the ultimate comfort watch for women who feel that – in any aspect of their lives – they’re falling short (or just falling). In season two (warning – spoilers from season one about to follow), murderess mother Nic is attempting to disguise her role in the death of her ex-husband’s brother, Alex. The same brother she was having an affair with, before he brutally dumped her. Nic is so busy running away from her family and neighbours, including – inadvertently? – her son, Ollie, that she has no energy left to channel into becoming a stable, reliable friend, mother, romantic partner or employee. However, what she lacks in predictability, she utterly makes up for with mad, fabulous, horribly ill-fated excursions that keep the audience’s laughs coming, even if we’re internally divided over whether we should be sympathising with this borderline narcissist and – yes – mistaken murderess.
Both seasons of Am I Being Unreasonable? are streaming at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Am I Being Unreasonable?
series • comedy
MA15+
series • comedy
MA15+
Sisi
From murderesses to empresses…
Alexa, give me a period drama, but make it sexy and feminist. Voila! We have Sisi, the story of true-life woman, the Empress Elisabeth of Austria and later the Queen of Hungary (known as Sisi, portrayed by Cristiana Capotondi). We meet the reluctant royal as a teenager who becomes the Empress when Emperor Franz Joseph I (David Rott) falls for the young Sisi despite being betrothed to her older sister Helene (Christiane Filangieri). Her life is catapulted into a maelstrom of royal loyalties divided – her husband, her conniving mother-in-law, her children, and her public duties. The loss of a child, the envy and cruelty of a mother-in-law, the necessity of maintaining public decorum as your country is ravaged by war. Perhaps none of these are our personal experiences, but Sisi is infinitely sympathetic. She loves fully, readily and at her own peril - living vicariously in her very ornate shoes is an absolute thrill.
All four seasons of Sisi are streaming at SBS On Demand. (Three movies about the young empress, starting with , are also streaming).
Stream free On Demand
Sisi
series • drama • German
MA15+
series • drama • German
MA15+
Miss Fallaci
Italian author and journalist Oriana Fallaci was a fearless, forward interviewer who scored some of the most enviable, rare stories of the day (Indira Gandhi, Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat and Muammar Gaddafi amongst her subjects). She was raised by an activist, anti-Fascist father who instilled a fierce political will in his daughter, an asset to her as one of the few female war correspondents covering Asia, the Middle East and South America. Fallaci's story, in part, is portrayed wonderfully in Miss Fallaci. As the feisty, determined upstart in a male-dominated newsroom, Miriam Leone as Fallaci seethes with the injustice of being relegated to Hollywood stories. Strategically, she determines that if she can score some major interviews and scoops, her editor and boss will be powerless to stop her scaling the ranks to cover war, politics and international relations. So many aspects of Oriana's personal story emerge in Miss Fallaci: her fearless will, being raised by a father who risks his child's life for his political activism, the lone female in male-dominated newsrooms and war zones, and the oft-wrought love affair with a fellow journalist for whom monogamy is an alien concept. Not only is Leone irresistible in her sensitive, smart portrayal of Fallaci, the landscapes and lighting are utterly gorgeous whether it's 1950s Hollywood or flashbacks to Florence in the 1930s.
Miss Fallaci is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Miss Fallaci
series • biography • Italian
M
series • biography • Italian
M
Cry Wolf
Swedish cop Hannah Wester (Eva Melander) is accustomed to a pretty mundane routine in a small town bordering Finland and Sweden. Far from the high-heeled, glossy-haired cops of some US drama series, Wester is blessedly real and relatable. She arrives at work in jeans, hair thrown into an elastic, face free of any skerrick of makeup with the expectation of drinking cold coffee and taking calls about robberies or lost dogs. Then, the body parts of a drug dealer show up in the belly of a dead wolf, and humdrum Haparanda becomes the centre of a murder and trafficking investigation. Creator Hans Rosenfeldt was the mastermind behind The Bridge, which introduced one of the greatest female detectives of all time: Saga Noren. Wester is equally brazen and unfussed by what people want or expect from her – she’s got a singular focus, and that is solving this cross-border case that grows increasingly fraught by the hour. Her nemesis, Kat (Eliot Sumner, the offspring of Sting and Trudy Styler) is stalking someone, armed and determined to take out whoever gets in her way. Women, whether cop, killer, or red herring, are the heart of Cry Wolf.
Cry Wolf is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Cry Wolf
