Escapist viewing for a stressful time of year

In the middle of the best-of-the year roundup season, here is a list of simple escapist viewing, (mostly) minus deep thinking. Consider these five suggestions as either (both?) reward or procrastinatory enabler for all the hard work of preparing for and enduring whatever holiday season you celebrate.

● My Next Guest Needs No Introduction (new Season 6 episodes première starting today, Tuesday, Dec. 16, on Netflix)

Anyone missing the former network talk-show titan gets a stocking full of new one-on-ones. Debuting earlier this month, David Letterman’s interview with Adam Sandler is only slightly in support of the latter’s new film, Jay Kelly, with George Clooney (also on Netflix, after a theatrical run). Mostly, it is a charming look at the sometimes fratboy scat-mouthed comic and serious actor, here rendered cowed fanboy, alternating between trying to amuse his hero and marvelling, like any fan would, at being in the same space as the bearded curmudgeon. Next up are three new episodes in which Letterman banters and gets occasionally serious with Michael B. Jordan (Sinners), Jason Bateman (Black Rabbit) and the influencer philanthropist MrBeast.

● Save Me/Save Me Too (series premières Thursday, Dec. 18, on BritBox)

Something old is new again with the arrival of this 2018-22 U.K. series to the BritBox streaming app. This provides an opportunity to take in a spiky mystery in which an estranged father scrambles after being accused of kidnapping the now-grown daughter he abandoned 13 years before. It refocuses on some now much more familiar faces: Lennie James (Mr. Loverman, Walking Dead), Suranne Jones (Gentleman Jack), Indeyarna Donaldson-Holness (EastEnders), and especially Stephen Graham (Adolescence) and Kerry Godliman (Whitstable Pearl, After Life).

● Goodbye June (streaming premières on Wednesday, Dec. 24, on Netflix after limited theatrical run)

Better ask for an extra box of tissues for this holiday end-of-life tearjerker. The excellent cast includes Helen Mirren (1923, MobLand), who plays the tart matriarch who wants to die on her own terms; Timothy Spall (Wolf Hall) as her husband; and joining dad around the deathbed is the rest of the family, played by Kate Winslet (Mare of Easttown), Johnny Flynn (Ripley), Andrea Riseborough (Alice and Jack) and Toni Collette (Wayward).

● Cover-Up(documentary premières on Friday, Dec. 26, on Netflix)

“People, for a lot of reasons, they talk. They talk to me. People want to talk about stuff they did that was wrong and stupid. All you had to do was just let their voice be the story.” Indeed, people have talked to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. They have talked, and through his writing and reportage, changed history. The 88-year-old’s award-winning work exposed such mega-stories as the My Lai massacre and its coverup, and abuses at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib detention facility. This biography is a portrait of a master of the craft, which you can still follow on his lively Substack page, subtitled, “It’s worse than you think.”

● The Copenhagen Test (series premières Saturday, Dec. 27, on StackTV)

There is a new, even scarier end to the scale that starts with unease at the flood of social-media or email ads for a product or service discussed out loud only seconds before. That new much-scarier place is in the brain of intelligence officer Alexander Hale (Simu Liu, Kim’s Convenience), which has been hacked. Can he trust the people trying to “help” him? What of the government now accusing him of treason? Can he even trust himself? On the plus side, he is his own Wi-Fi provider.

winnipegfreepress.com/deniseduguay