Weekend watchlist: Spider-Noir, Mandalorian and Grogu lead OTT and UAE cinema picks

From smoky 1930s alleyways to a galaxy far, far away, this weekend’s watchlist is serving up serious screen variety. On the OTT front, Spider-Noir swings in with trench coats, trouble, and Nicolas Cage in full hardboiled detective mode, reimagining Marvel’s web-slinger in the most noir way possible. Meanwhile, The Mandalorian and Grogu brings Star Wars back to the big screen with bounty hunters, Baby Yoda chaos, and New Republic missions gone sideways. Bring in fresh UAE cinema releases and you’ve got a line-up that jumps from gritty crime to space opera without missing a beat.

1) Spider-Noir Season 1 on Amazon Prime

A stylish dive into shadowy 1930s New York, Spider-Noir reimagines the Marvel mythos through a smoky, hardboiled lens. Developed by Oren Uziel for MGM+ and Prime Video, the eight-episode series is based on Marvel Comics’ Spider-Man Noir and unfolds in an alternate universe within Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. At its centre is Ben Reilly, an ageing, disillusioned private investigator who once operated as the masked vigilante known as The Spider.

Played by Nicolas Cage in his first lead television role, Ben is a weary anti-hero haunted by past loss and pulled back into action when a new case forces him to confront both criminals and his own fractured identity. The show enjoys the noir aesthetic, moody lighting, moral ambiguity, and a world where every answer comes at a cost.

The ensemble cast adds depth to the grimy underworld, including Lamorne Morris as an ambitious journalist, Li Jun Li as a dangerous nightclub singer, and Brendan Gleeson as a calculating crime boss. Across its run, the series brings pulp detective storytelling with superhero mythology, offering a darker, more grounded take on Spider-Man lore.

2) A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, Season 2 on Netflix

It’s been nearly two years since A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder dropped on Netflix in the summer of 2024, leaving us stranded in a desert of anticipation. But after a hiatus, the British mystery thriller is finally back.

Wednesday breakout Emma Myers returns as Pippa “Pip” Fitz-Amobi, the amateur investigator who clearly never learned the golden rule of true crime: mind your own business. Co-written by original author Holly Jackson and showrunner Poppy Cogan, Season 2 drags Pip kicking, screaming, and podcasting back into the trenches when a local man goes missing.

All six episodes bungeed onto Netflix this Wednesday. Go ahead and binge—your alibi for the weekend is officially sorted.

3) One Tree Hill on Netflix

Ah the millennial teen dramas have returned! This is for those who didn't grow up in the Brooke-Lucas-Peyton love triangle mess. One Tree Hill is about angsty teenagers living in a small town, falling in and out of love, getting married in high school (yes that happens), and uncovering dangerous secrets about their families along the way. There's the bad-news dad, the MIA mothers and the well-meaning mothers too. Return to a world where each season had over 24 episodes (that wasn't a fever dream, it existed, as you can see).

4) The Four Seasons Season 2 on Netflix

It's Tina Fey. No more questions asked.

But if you do have more, well, last year Fey, Lang Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield blessed us with The Four Seasons, and now the star-studded dramedy is already back for Season 2.

The core group of couples is back, which means the return of a stellar cast including Fey, Will Forte, Colman Domingo, Kerri Kenney-Silver, and Marco Calvani. This season, they’re keeping their tradition of vacationing together alive, because nothing screams "relaxation" like trapped group dynamics. This time around, they’re packing some extra baggage: grappling with the arrival of a new baby and navigating the shared, messy grief of a shocking death in their tight-knit circle.

Expect sun, sand, and existential dread. All episodes are streaming now.

Star City Season 1 on Apple

From the mastermind trio of Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert, and Ben Nedivi comes Star City, a spinoff operating in the exact same alt-history sandbox as For All Mankind, you know, the one where the Soviet Union beat America to the moon.

This time, we’re slipping behind the Iron Curtain to see how the other half lives, launches, and looks over their shoulders. Star City trades NASA's clean-cut optimism for the paranoia-fueled, high-stakes lives of Soviet cosmonauts, engineers, and intelligence officers who are just trying to win the Space Race without getting sent to Siberia.

The stellar, heavily accented ensemble cast features Rhys Ifans, Anna Maxwell Martin, Agnes O’Casey, Alice Englert, Adam Nagaitis, and Solly McLeod.

In UAE cinemas

The Mandalorian and Grogu

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026), directed by Jon Favreau and co-written with Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor, continues the saga of Din Djarin and his foundling Grogu in a cinematic leap from the Disney+ series into a full-scale theatrical adventure. Set after the fall of the Galactic Empire, the story follows the pair, played by Pedro Pascal (with Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder also performing the role physically), as they are pulled deeper into New Republic operations targeting remnants of imperial power.

When New Republic commander Ward offers them a mission involving the rescue of Rotta the Hutt (Jeremy Allen White) in exchange for intel on a dangerous warlord known as Commander Coin, Mando reluctantly agrees, especially after being provided a new Razor Crest as payment. The mission quickly spirals into chaos on the planet Shakari, where Rotta has become a celebrated gladiator who refuses rescue, believing freedom lies in his own brutal path. Betrayals surface, identities blur, and Mando is forced into a series of arena battles, shifting alliances, and moral dilemmas involving crime lords, bounty hunters, and the shadowy Hutt Twins. As secrets unravel, revealing deeper conspiracies linking Rotta, Coin, and the criminal underworld, Mando and Grogu are pushed to their limits, ultimately choosing loyalty over orders and survival over duty. With allies like Zeb Orrelios and the Anzellans aiding them, they storm enemy strongholds, face deadly creatures, and survive near-fatal encounters that test their bond.

Kattalan

Kattalan (2026), meaning “Forest Dweller,” is a Malayalam-language action thriller written and directed by Paul George and produced by Cubes Entertainments as the third entry in the Mikhael Extended Universe. Set against the dense, lawless forest belt between Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the film blends high-stakes crime drama with stylised action as power struggles erupt over an illegal ivory empire. Antony Varghese leads the cast alongside Sunil, Jagadish, Kabir Duhan Singh and others, with music by Ravi Basrur and B. Ajaneesh Loknath amplifying the gritty, atmospheric tone. Shot across Thailand and multiple Indian locations, the film builds a tense world of smuggling syndicates, rival factions and shifting loyalties within a jungle ruled by fear and greed.