Saoirse Ronan shines in Foe's AI recreation of marriage in strife

EARLY on in Australian director Garth Davis' (Lion) sc-fi drama, Foe, Saoirse Ronan's Hen asks her husband Junior, "what do you think about more, the past or the future?"

While the past and future is on the minds of the couple, the present is in an alarming state.

Hen and Junior, played by fellow Irish actor Paul Mescal, are a young couple living in the US mid-west in 2065. With the world in a state a climate destruction, Hen and Junior live in a 200-year-old farmhouse on Junior's family's property, seemingly hiding away from the modern world among 20th century comforts.

But when a mysterious government official, named Terrance (Aaron Pierre), arrives one night to reveal that Junior has been conscripted to serve on a space station, the couple's relationship is thrown into chaos.

Foe is a dark psychological thriller, which examines the dreams and desires we suppress within intimate relationships and how the fear of loss can drive the ones we love away. It also explores AI and whether the most human of emotions - love - can be created artificially.

Academy Award nominee Ronan (Lady Bird) and Mescal (The Lost Daughter) are outstanding in the lead roles and have a natural chemistry.

While Mescal's Junior is given ample airtime, Foe does little to explain his insecurities and jealousy. The outside world is also poorly fleshed out, and some plot points go unexplained.

Davis filmed Foe in regional Victoria and South Australia and the desolate landscapes create a brooding atmosphere. Sci-fi usually focuses on special effects over intimacy, but Foe upends that cliche with a terrifying reality.

Railing against "going woke" and political correctness feels like the stand-up comedy equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. It gets an easy laugh, and for some, it might feel "edgy", but there's an inescapable disappointment that Ricky Gervais isn't trying harder.

After all this is the same English comedic legend that gave us the brutally real David Brent in The Office and the darkly brilliant After Life.

Armageddon follows the controversial Netflix special SuperNature in 2022 and continues Gervais' style of being part comedian, part middle-aged ranter. There's jokes about sex, death, free speech, disability, critical race theory and a skit about paedophilia - basically a box-ticking exercise to rile up his detractors.

Much of it is funny, but there's the sense that Gervais would rather be controversial, than humorous, these days.

Cricket in the '80s was a golden time. An era of mullets, moustaches and colourful characters.

A Brief History of Cricket Downunder: The '80s doesn't offer an new insights for cricket fans who lived through the decade, but it's an entertaining walk down memory lane for older viewers and a tidy refresher for young fans.

There's an A-list line-up of talking heads in Australian legends Greg Chappell, Geoff Lawson, Kim Hughes, and overseas stars like Wasim Akram, Clive Lloyd, Ian Smith and Joel Garner.

Refreshingly it's not an overly parochial production. Australia's poor umpiring decisions and ordinary pitches are addressed in episode one.