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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 74 movies from SBS
A tale of friendship between two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York.
Apr 2009
In the past 40 years, the War on Drugs has accounted for 45 million arrests, made America the world's largest jailer, and destroyed impoverished communities at home and abroad. Yet drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available today than ever. Where did we go wrong?
Oct 2012
Jackie Chan is a true icon of Asian and Chinese culture. Over a 45-year-long career, he has carved a niche for himself as an actor, stuntman, director, and screenwriter, but also singer and formidable businessman. After starring in almost 200 films, Jackie Chan has reconciled fans of genre film and Hollywood blockbusters, whilst bridging the gap between Asian and Western cinema. Through film excerpts, archive footage and images, and an offbeat approach inspired by the visual codes of the golden age of kung fu films, this documentary will take a look back at the creation of a popular hero who has come to be an icon for China, and for the entire Asian continent.
Aug 2021
Witnesses, survivors and front-line heroes recall the first days of the Chernobyl disaster of April 1986. Featuring rare archive footage of the world's worst ever nuclear accident.
Mar 2026
Explores the latest archaeology and science on one of history's most enduring mysteries - did the Trojan War really happen? In 1874 Heinrich Schliemann announced he had found the legendary city of Troy and caused a sensation.
Dec 2025
January 1953: On the eve of his death Stalin finds himself yet another imaginary enemy: Jewish doctors. He organizes the most violent anti-Semitic campaign ever launched in the USSR, by fabricating the "Doctors' Plot," whereby doctors are charged with conspiring to murder the highest dignitaries of the Soviet Regime. Still unknown and untold, this conspiracy underlines the climax of a political scheme successfully masterminded by Stalin to turn the Jews into the new enemies of the people. It reveals his extreme paranoia and his compulsion to manipulate those around him. The children and friends of the main victims recount for the first time their experience and their distress related to these nightmarish events.
Aug 2011
An idealistic film student is drawn into a shadowy and intoxicating world when she befriends an enigmatic performance artist.
May 2023
The Colosseum: the jewel of Ancient Rome. It wowed vast crowds with extraordinary battles. It pushed the boundaries of technology. It exhibited Rome’s vast wealth and power. Roman leaders spread the Colosseum’s design throughout the Empire, and it helped them conquer the ancient world. But just as the structure embodied Rome’s power, so too did it contribute to the Empire’s downfall.
Oct 2025
Radical feminist Andrea Dworkin's expose on the pornography industry.
Oct 1991
This riveting documentary depicts former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as a warmonger responsible for military cover-ups in Vietnam, Cambodia and East Timor, as well as the assassination of a Chilean leader in 1970. Based on a book by journalist Christopher Hitchens, the film includes interviews with historians, political analysts and such journalists as New York Times writer William Safire, a former Nixon speechwriter.
Sep 2002
Warren steps out of prison and straight into a self-help group whose idea of therapy is to play board games. But if he has to humour these weirdos so the cops will leave him alone while he does a 'job' for a mate on the inside, then 'roll the dice...'
Sep 2005
Three years in the making, this feature documentary follows the progression of the Muslim Punk scene: from its imaginary inception in a novel written by a white-convert named Michael Muhammad Knight to a full-blown, real-life scene of Muslim punk bands and their fans.
Nov 2009
What happens when western anthropologists descend on the Amazon and make one of the last unacculturated tribes in existence, the Yanomami, the most exhaustively filmed and studied tribe on the planet? Despite their "do no harm" creed and scientific aims, the small army of anthropologists that has studied the Yanomami since the 1960s has wreaked havoc among the tribe – and sparked a war within the anthropology community itself.
Jan 2010
For centuries Troy was believed to be a mythical city. Now, a leading team of American archaeologists have discovered an ancient thriving city, and evidence of a real Trojan War.
Jan 2014
This true, astonishing story describes how King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into its private colony between 1885 and 1908. Under his control, Congo became a gulag labor camp of shocking brutality. Leopold posed as the protector of Africans fleeing Arab slave-traders but, in reality, he carved out an empire based on terror to harvest rubber.
Jan 2003
Eleven-year-old Marco (Daniel D'Amico) is cunning and smart, and he knows it. With the face of an angel and the heart of a trickster, his pranks are the terror of the neighborhood and everyone is fair game for his cunning imagination. Can Marco get away with his annoying behavior or will he end up behind the eight ball? Can the town be made safe from Marco the Menace?
Nov 1991
In the early 1990s, a Japanese samurai detective series was aired in Australia and became a cult success. Titled in Japan Ronin Suiri Tentai (meaning roughly Deductive Reasoning Ronin), it was soon known in the West as Top Knot Detective. The original series was legendary in Japan, a cultural train wreck led by Takashi Tawagoto, a crazy writer, producer, director and lead actor; one who could not act, fight or write at all.
Apr 2017
Sep 2024
The Ghan is an innovative three-hour documentary that takes the viewer on an immersive, visually stunning journey on Australia's most iconic passenger train. In Australia's first 'Slow TV' documentary, The Ghan doesn't just travel through the heart of Australia, from Adelaide to Darwin, it explores the part the Ghan played in the foundation of modern multicultural Australia.
Jan 2018
Kate is on a plane taking Warren, her 18 year old Torres Strait Islander foster son, to meet Flo, his birth mother, who is gravely ill in hospital in Brisbane. Flo hasn't seen Warren since she took him to the hospital on Thursday Island when he was a toddler and the white authorities took him away. But as Warren, Flo and Kate all prepare themselves for the reunion, unbeknown to them, Kate's Brisbane based parents, Keith and Dellmay, are planning a different kind of reunion.
Jun 2006