The Bookshop

If you want a drama that takes its characters as seriously as its plot, The Bookshop is available in Australia on Foxtel Now and Beamafilm, and in the US on Kanopy right now. The length is exactly right for the story it is telling — nothing rushed, nothing dragged out. With 464 viewer ratings on TMDB, this is not a title flying under the radar. Watch it for Emily Mortimer — one of the stronger performances out there right now. There is no real reason to keep putting it off — it is right there on Foxtel Now.

There is a reason The Bookshop keeps coming up in conversation. The Bookshop trusts its audience to sit with discomfort instead of resolving it too quickly. Set in a small English town in 1959, a woman decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop, a decision which becomes a political minefield. Emily Mortimer and Bill Nighy lead a cast doing genuinely serious work here. It was released in 2017. What elevates The Bookshop is a refusal to let any character off the hook too easily. It knows exactly what it is, and does not try to be anything else.

The Bookshop is what you recommend to people who say they do not really watch much. It stands on its own even without an obvious comparison point. A contained runtime means every scene is doing real work. Emily Mortimer anchors a cast that never overplays its hand. The kind of drama that stays with you well after the finale.