What to stream this week: Louis Theroux gets inside the manosphere, plus five more picks

Louis Theroux weaponises his eyebrows for his first documentary with Netflix, while a heavyweight cast stumbles with the drama Imperfect Women and Alan Ritchson gets his punch on in War Machine.

Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere ★★★★ (Netflix)

Louis Theroux does a thorough job in this feature-length documentary about the extreme edges of online masculinity culture. That is to say, the veteran documentarian weaponises his quizzical eyebrows and uses his apologetic embarrassment as a tool for access, all the while getting at the ugly truths and delusional hunger behind a movement trying to turn the mobile phones of teenage boys and young men into an indoctrination tool and ATM.

It’s both a valuable explainer – this is what “red-pilled” means – and a viable public disinfectant.

A long-time BBC fixture, Theroux uses Netflix’s reach to get access to the comrades and camp followers of Andrew Tate, the first name referenced regarding toxic online misogyny. One of them, Briton Harrison Sullivan, aka HSTikkyTokky, hasn’t heard of Theroux and doesn’t know what to make of this trim, bespectacled 55-year-old with zero game.

“The structure’s not saying too much,” Sullivan says, sizing up Theroux’s biceps. That’s the last thing he should worry about.

As he’s always done, Theroux is unassuming but inquiring. He lets his subjects talk, believing that the exposure they receive will be more revelatory than rewarding. That’s certainly the case here, where online provocateurs such as anti-feminist Myron Gaines discover that a Theroux conversation can casually zero in on their hypocrisy.

Without being forensic, Theroux establishes the monetary gains that underpin the constant bluster about passing on “the cheat code”. And he shows their fan bases, whether excitable boys or solemn adult acolytes, in telling street scenes.

American influencer Justin Waller, a Mar-a-Lago guest of Barron Trump, explains to Theroux how he practises “one-sided monogamy” with his wife, Kristen. Later, in a home visit, Theroux runs those comments by Kristen, whose sales pitch isn’t as polished as her husband’s.

It’s telling how Theroux ends up interviewing the women, whether partners or mothers, who see the reality behind the sales slogans. Gaines, his girlfriend Angie notes, is a “different person” when the cameras are off.

By the time Theroux gets to right-wing commentator Sneako in New York – who earnestly points out celebrity magazine covers as a sign of a Satanic cabal “running the world” – Theroux has found the conspiratorial end point of the aggressive hustling and demonisation. He doesn’t need to expose that much because his subjects tend to self-destruct. Sullivan spirals online after Theroux’s visits, espousing antisemitism and becoming violent in his constant livestreams.

Online culture and the vast corporate platforms that house it, Theroux notes, “incentivise extreme behaviour”, but Inside the Manosphere shows how this belief system is neither complex nor plausible. That structure, it turns out, is saying plenty.

Imperfect Women ★★½ (Apple TV)

A heavyweight cast can only get you so far, as demonstrated by this awkward psychological thriller headlined by Kerry Washington, Elisabeth Moss and Kate Mara. The trio play best friends whose unity is shattered when Mara’s Nancy, a frustrated wife of old wealth, is murdered and Washington’s Eleanor and Moss’s Mary realise they only knew different parts of her life. As scandals grow and the police circle, the limits of their bond are tested.

The Californian-set show has a torrid, high-pitched melodrama running through it, whether in the ripe narration or the yearning glances between Eleanor and Nancy’s problematic husband, Robert (Joel Kinnaman). There’s a structural issue with the story beginning from Eleanor’s viewpoint, passing to Nancy’s flashbacks, and then moving to Eleanor – the narrative feels unbalanced, while the differing perspectives never quite inform each other. The storytelling’s sophistication is a fancy manoeuvre, but it doesn’t enhance the surviving duo’s quest.

While there are plenty of references to contemporary drawbacks women have to endure, more than anything Imperfect Women plays like a 1950s potboiler. That does have its appeal: Kinnaman’s classical leading man jaw can appear cruelly self-serving when shot from the right angles. There’s also a pick-me-up every time Hamilton’s Leslie Odom Jr turns up as Eleanor’s straight-talking brother, Donovan. “Yeah, you been busy,” he tells her, exasperation in his voice. Same goes for the show.

Gone ★★★½ (Stan)

Settle in for a quiet slow burn with this British thriller, which couches a police investigation into a missing woman as a battle of wills between the investigating detective, Annie Cassidy (Eve Myles), and the husband who is very much a suspect, Michael Polly (David Morrissey). Institutions, authority and public perception inform the script from Hijack creator George Kay – is Michael a domineering husband with an absolute need for control, or a stoic male with an old-fashioned aversion to public emotion? With some extremely dry wit as punctuation, the answer keeps shifting.

Ghost Elephants ★★★ (Disney+)

Obsessives, whether brilliant, deluded or both, are the persistent north star of German filmmaker Werner Herzog. Documentaries such as The White Diamond and Grizzly Man are some of the finest in his vast, eclectic catalogue, and in this National Geographic feature Herzog captures another candidate. South African naturalist Dr Steven Boyes believes there is an undocumented species of giant elephants living in the Angolan highlands. Cue Herzog’s unmistakable narrator’s voice, as the search unfolds with – it must be said – less personal risk and more thoughtful processes than the usual Herzog protagonist.

War Machine ★★½ (Netflix)

This is sound Hollywood logic: in Amazon Prime Video’s action-thriller Reacher, jacked star Alan Ritchson has fought his way through every level of human adversary. The next step? Aliens. Co-written and directed by Australian filmmaker Patrick Hughes (The Hitman’s Bodyguard), the feature stars Ritchson as a taciturn candidate for the US Army’s elite Rangers whose training exercise is interrupted by a destructive interstellar arrival. It’s a science-fiction survival film – the Ranger candidates are carrying blanks – with trace elements of Transformers, Battleship, and Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. Somewhat derivative, but modestly enjoyable.

Chris Fleming: Live at the Palace ★★★★ (HBO Max)

The breakthrough praise for American comic Chris Fleming has been building these last few months – “a marvel to behold, a true artist,” declared Marc Maron – and it rightly peaks with this stand-up special, which captures Fleming at his absurdist best. Rocking a purple jumpsuit and a jaunty physicality that offsets his deft touch with language, his set feels like a welcome outlier among current stand-up trends. Fleming is eccentric, inquisitive, and rarely settle for comedic norms. His Adam Driver NPR interview bit is a classic in the making.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.