What to watch this week

Star Wars: Visions (September 22, Disney+)

This striking-looking show is billed as an anthology of animated shorts celebrating Star Wars ‘‘through the lens of the world’s best anime storytellers’’. Among those lending the vocal talents to the nineepisode project are Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lucy Liu, Neil Patrick Harris and New Zealand’s own Temuera Morrison.

Foundation (September 24, Apple TV+)

Based on the novels by Isaac Asimov, this 10-part sci-fi series chronicles a band of exiles on their monumental journey to save humanity and rebuild civilisation amid the fall of a Galactic Empire. The cast includes Chernobyl’s Jared Harris, The Hobbit trilogy’s Lee Pace and Voyagers’ Lou Llobell.

Midnight Mass (September 24, Netflix)

The Haunting of Hill House creator Mike Flanagan is back with this seven-part tale of a small, isolated island community whose existing divisions are amplified by the return of a disgraced young man and the arrival of a charismatic priest. When Father Paul’s appearance on Crockett Island coincides with unexplained events, a renewed religious fervour takes hold of the community – but do these miracles come at a price?

The Starling (September 24, Netflix)

After a loss is compounded by abandonment by her husband, Lily (Melissa McCarthy) finds herself being harassed by a territorial bird in this dramedy. As she becomes obsessed with ending the feud with her avian nemesis, she turns to psychologist-turnedveterinarian Larry (Kevin Kline) for advice, a man not without his own troubled past. The two actors are joined by Chris O’Dowd, Timothy Olyphant and Daveed Diggs.