Little Birds (Season 1)

Little Birds (2020) is a sultry period drama you can watch online on iFILM. The setting is Tangier in 1955, during the last gasp of the city's lawless International Zone. New York heiress Lucy Savage steps off the transatlantic steamer expecting love and a tidy marriage to an English lord, and walks straight into something far stranger.

Her husband Hugo barely wants her there — his heart belongs to one of the most prominent men in town. Rather than wilt, Lucy throws herself into Tangier's loud, decadent, dangerous underworld, where her path crosses that of the dominatrix Cherifa Lamor, plus gun-runners and the spies feeding on a dying empire. Juno Temple charts Lucy's shift from bewildered bride to a woman done apologizing for what she wants. The supporting roll-call includes Jean-Marc Barr, Nina Sosanya and Rossy de Palma, and the heat and dust of the city all but rise off the screen.

Directed by Stacie Passon and loosely drawn from the erotica of Anaïs Nin, this is a tale of two women tearing free of the roles handed to them. It suits anyone after a lush, faintly scandalous drama with fierce heroines and the rot of colonialism in the background. Stream Little Birds (2020) online on iFILM.