Netflix murder mystery series Light the Night, set in Taipei’s red-light area, cranks up the tension; Swagger tells NBA star Kevin Durant’s story

Ah, the 80s. What a decade. Big-hair rock bands, flares and nobody texting, sexting, trolling, swiping, liking, friending, trending, blocking, yakking or chirping.

In Light the Night (Netflix, now streaming) we’re in late-1980s Taipei, mostly the red-light district, where a group of hostesses run the high-end Light bar, popular with free-spending Japanese businessmen.

Joint mama-sans are Ruby Lin as Lo Yu-nung (bar name “Rose”) and Cheryl Yang as Su Ching-yi (“Sue”), who are best friends but certain to come to emotional and perhaps physical fisticuffs on the subject of slippery, manipulative screenwriter Chiang Han (Rhydian Vaughan), who manoeuvres between the two while also giving the glad eye to actresses taking his fancy.

Among the Light staff are Wang Ai-lien (“Aiko”, played by Puff Kuo), a student paying for college; Huang Pai-he (“Yuri”; Nikki Hsieh Hsin-ying), who is sucked into the triad drugs trade; and embittered Chi Man-ju (“Ah-chi”; Cherry Hsieh), a lottery junkie indebted to loan sharks.

Skipping around chronologically lets in the murder-mystery element. After a woman’s body is found in the Taipei mountains, we follow the circumstances leading to the discovery – peppered with romantic rivalries, bitchiness, betrayal, gold digging and back stabbing. And in their cynical business, as customers are fleeced for fixed smiles and increasingly expensive alcohol, few can blame the women when one declares: “Men are nothing. Only money won’t betray us.”

As the backstories and personal problems of the women emerge, the name of the murder victim is withheld and the dramatic tension escalates. But fear not: you have 24 first-series episodes to work out her identity.

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A star is born

Many, if not most, sport-oriented films or television dramas aren’t really about the game or discipline at all, whatever it is.

Swagger (streaming on Apple TV+) isn’t really about basketball – but because it is a loose telling of the story of NBA star Kevin Durant, thinking it were would be excusable.

That’s not to say, however, that court action is lacking. Shooting hoops has rarely looked such fun, at least in a scripted setting, and the hottest prospect out there, Jace Carson (played by Isaiah Hill) has the moves and the natural, well, swagger of an athlete to do more than mere justice to the in-game footage.

But let’s not stray too far from the real premise. In the post-George Floyd world a story about African-American teenagers growing up and facing down prejudice and worse is going to be loud and proud about where it’s coming from. Accordingly, Swagger fritters away no time in taking Carson’s class on a high-school trip to Washington’s Museum of African American History and Culture or guiding the viewer through his neighbourhood.

It’s there that his determined, cajoling single mother, Jenna (played with disarming mischievousness by Shinelle Azoroh) sows the seeds of greatness in her often self-doubting son. These are nurtured by cash-strapped, spiky coach Ike “Icon” Edwards (O’Shea Jackson Jnr), whose own career never hit the predicted heights but who wants the best for Carson – even if his prodigy doesn’t understand the tough-love approach.

How closely Carson’s story follows that of Durant, now with the Brooklyn Nets and a co-producer here, we can but surmise. It is certain to have been adjusted for present-day obsessions: “My social’s gonna explode!” exclaims Carson at the first hint of recognition. Other aspects feel like they have an unfortunate timelessness: that a black youth should be roughed up by police while taking out the trash after dark, and fingered as a suspect in a local carjacking, still seems entirely normal.