What to watch on November 21: A Simple Murder streaming on SonyLIV

Directed by Prakash Jha, Pareeksha stars Adil Hussain, Priyanka Bose, Shubham Jha, Sanjay Suri. The Indian Express critic Shubhra Gupta gave the film 2.5 stars and wrote, 'Prakash Jha knows his Bihar. The accents, the cadences, the characters, including the gold-chained festooned ‘sahukar’ and the entitled ‘sahebs’, feel right. An underdog-as-winner is an always-in-demand subject; a little less exposition would have made this well-intentioned film better.'

In Margarita with a Straw, Kalki Koechlin’s character is a teenage girl who is not afraid to express her sexual urges and finds herself enjoying getting intimate with both men and women.

Set in Kashmir in the 1990s, Haider tackled many sensitive matters pretty deftly without being too judgmental. It was another triumphant entry in Vishal Bhardwaj’s glorious line of Shakespeare adaptations set in Indian context (Maqbool and Omkara drew inspiration from Macbeth and Othello respectively) and was based on one of the most famous works by the Bard: Hamlet. With a taut storyline, strong performances particularly by Shahid Kapoor as the titular character, Haider was relentlessly absorbing.

Aligarh is an important film that, like Haider, handled a sensitive matter masterfully. Manoj Bajpayee delivers an absolutely storming performance as a homosexual professor who is persecuted just because of his sexual orientation. Bajpayee’s work is complemented quite well by Rajkumar Rao as an enthusiastic real-life young journalist Deepu Sebastian (who incidentally worked at the Indian Express then).

HBO's miniseries The Third Day is an effective mystery that rises above its premise's trappings largely due to Jude Law's superlative performance, capable direction and cinematography.

A low budget film that tells the story of screenwriter Emily V Gordon and her husband and comedian Kumail Nanjiani, who have also written the story together. This is a no-holds-barred story that does not gloss over anything a relationship is - messy, sometimes infuriating and perplexing, but beautiful and worth it nonetheless.

Based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s stories, which also inspired a hugely popular series of open-world RPG video-games, the world of the witcher resembles Westeros (from Game of Thrones) in many ways. For one, it is a gritty, dirty world full of violence, sex, and so on. For another, there is no clear division of good or bad like in most fantasy tales. However, The Witcher boasts of a lot of magic and fantastical creatures, which George RR Martin’s novels shied away from. The hero itself, Geralt of Rivia, is a mutated human with superhuman abilities. Game of Thrones in comparison had magic, but only on the periphery, at least in the first few seasons.

The standard yet thrilling zombie apocalypse series has a woman being separated from her daughter. She goes on a journey to find her, determined to be reunited come hell or high water.

An endearing family drama, This is Us weaves a charming tale of a dysfunctional family. A beautiful show where characters seem to have a life of their own instead of being controlled by the strings in the hands of the creators. The show does have its dark moments, but its essence is that of love and family.

Before Game of Thrones, HBO had Rome, a lavish and no-holds-barred take on Roman Empire around the time of Caesar’s assassination. It is a gorgeously shot show that unfortunately turned out to be simply too expensive and was discontinued after 2 seasons in spite of huge success.

Anurag Kashyap’s first release Black Friday is a riveting tale based on the 1993 bombings that shook Mumbai. Though the film was not a commercial success, it has gained a cult status over the years. Kashyap through his actors recreated the actual events as faithfully as possible. Kay Kay Menon, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vijay Maurya and Aditya Shrivastava among others gave spectacular performances in the film.

They Shall Not Grow Old is a World War II documentary directed by Peter Jackson. It is an extraordinary experience, which has rightly earned plaudits around the world. Jackson, best known for directing the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has used modern post-production techniques, both visual and sound, including new voice-acting, and colourisation to bring alive World War II in all its terrible glory.

One of the few films that dared to take oppressive societal mores that restrict personal independence head on, Masaan was a surprisingly swell directorial debut by Neeraj Ghaywan. It dexterously wove two independent storylines that ran parallel and hardly met. Richa Chaddha once again demonstrated why she is a force to be reckoned with by getting into her role with a professional ease. Vicky Kaushal, then a newcomer, was pretty convincing as a shy and awkward small-town boy.

A romantic anthology series that dramatises the real-life love stories from the New York Times’ column of the same name, Modern Love explores love in all its forms.

A Simple Murder is a dark comedy web serie starring Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub. The Indian Express Shubhra Gupta wrote about it, "The opening credits are perky, and the music is well done, matching the pace and situations. These are things which add to our viewing pleasure: murders may never be simple, but crime sometimes does pay."

Starring Damian Lewis and Paul Giamatti, this show follows a wall street biggie who is at war with a government attorney but their differences are way more than professional. As they engage in a cat and mouse game, they realise they have much more in common than they realise.

The Last Kingdom gives some interesting insights on Alfred the Great, the man who first envisioned the idea of England as a single entity as opposed to a conglomerate of disparate kingdoms like Mercia and Wessex. The story is told through the eyes of a nobleman's son who is kidnapped by the Danes invading England.

Netflix’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Victorian-era Gothic horror novel was a surprisingly clever, well-performed piece of entertainment. While it was a considerable departure from the source material, it remains an interpretation that Stoker himself probably would have been proud of.

An underrated show of the time when the Palace of Versailles was being built, and the court was being moved from Paris to Versailles. The show offers insight into the politics of the time and how kings dealt threats, internal and external.

The Imagineering Story is about Walt Disney Imagineering, a little known design and development centre of The Walt Disney Company, which creates Disney theme parks and attractions around the world.

This animated adventure revolves around a misunderstood and ostracised ogre who gets inundated by fairy tale creatures and goes on a quest to get back the quiet he had in his swamp. There are three sequels, and they are pretty good too.

Jon Favreau creation The Mandalorian is the first-ever live-action Star Wars series. It is about an ace bounty hunter, who due to recession in the wake of Galactic Empire’s obliteration, takes up a near-impossible job from a well-paying client. The second season is streaming now.

In this Sam Hargrave directorial, Chris Hemsworth’s character Tyler Rake, a mercenary, is recruited by another mercenary Nik Khan (Golshifteh Farahani) to rescue the son (Rudhraksh Jaiswal) of an imprisoned crime lord (Pankaj Tripathi). Randeep Hooda, Priyanshu Painyuli and David Harbour also star.

While the plot and characters are thin, Extraction is all the same a gripping piece of entertainment.

Relive your childhood and follow the adventures of ultra-rich Scrooge McDuck, and his three grandnephews Huey, Dewey and Louie in the classic series.

This show is based on the children book series of the same name and follows two young siblings as they try to protect themselves and their fortune from the devilish Count Olaf (played with a menacing glee by the inimitable Neil Patrick Harris). The series is the right mix of horror and comedy and you scarcely mind the improbability of the events unfolding before you, since it is incredibly entertaining.

The animated series follows a mad but brilliant scientist Rick Sanchez and his naive, impressionable grandson Morty Smith's adventures across faraway galaxies, planets, parallel worlds, different realities and so on. Rick and Morty boasts some of the most intelligent writing in the medium currently, with jokes that are easy to miss if the attention wavers even a little. And before you have managed to wrap your head around it, the show has already moved ahead.

This one is among the weirder and eccentric shows. Frodo of Lord of the Rings movies, Elijah Wood, plays an everyman whose life is turned into a veritable whirlwind a flamboyantly British "holistic" detective; holistic because he believes everything in the universe to be interconnected. And indeed, he has a seemingly preternatural ability. The feel of the show is like from one of the more strange comic-books from the 80s came to life. The story is loosely based on the writings of the great Douglas Adams.

It is a pity that one of the best sitcoms on television is not as publicised as others. Curb Your Enthusiasm is an out-and-out Larry David show, who is the writer behind probably the greatest sitcoms of all time, Seinfield. He plays his own fictionalised version in this show. This show delivers more laughs in one episodes than a popular sitcom like The Big Bang Theory would in an entire season.

Based on the 1993 novel of the same name by John le Carré, this miniseries has two of the best actors on television: Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston. It is a espionage drama and is engaging throughout its run.

A DC TV show that embraced the crazy after tip-toeing around it for a couple of seasons. And it is live-action. There is few things off-limits or too insane for this show. It may not have Batman (Bruce Wayne is a young boy in the show) but it has every single member of Batman's rogues gallery, and this was just as good.

Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney play the roles of school superintendent Dr Frank A Tassone and district official Pamela Gluckin, respectively. The two are accused of embezzlement of hundreds of thousands of dollars from district funds. Their job is to bury the accusation and keep it from going public.

Mickey Mouse stars in the retelling of the classic story, as Mickey, a poor peasant, and the Prince, son of the dying King.

Officially the debut of Mickie and Minnie Mouse, Steamboat Willie has Mickie being a mischievous deckhand on a riverboat that is under the command of the tyrannical Captain Pete. 

Netflix's young adult web series Mistmatched, starring Prajakta Koli and Rohit Saraf, is now streaming.