As we March into another month of searching for the perfect thing to watch, a whole new autumn harvest of shows lands on our screens. There’s a distinct flavour of sarcasm and satire spreading across the month, from take-downs of Hollywood execs and corrupt televangelists to murder mysteries with a somewhat camp sensibility.
Add each title to your Flicks watchlist for personalised notifications as new episodes drop: happy watchlisting!
Adolescence: Limited Series
The great Stephen Graham grapples with weighty questions of nurture versus nature, in this grim new psychological thriller. The Guardian has already made the big claim of calling its story—of a baby-faced schoolkid accused of brutally murdering a classmate—”the most terrifying TV show of our times.” And Graham isn’t just responsible for acting the hell out of such a bleak yarn: he co-wrote the script, too.
With each of its four episodes unfolding over just one, real-time shot (a la Graham’s work on Boiling Point), this might be a hard one to shake once you turn off the TV.
Daredevil: Born Again
Matt Murdock rides again! A blind lawyer by day and the red-suited avenger of Hell’s Kitchen by night, poor Daredevil (Charlie Cox) has been yanked in and out of MCU canon a few times, delivering a really solid Netflix series before going unmentioned and unseen for far too long. Now, baddie Vincent D’Onofrio returns, on a collision course with Daredevil once more in what’s hopefully a more grounded and meaty alternative to Marvel’s weightless episodic programming of late.
The contrast between the justice Murdock delivers in the courtroom versus his more gruff antics on the streets has always proven fruitful for narrative pathos, so it’s a welcome revival, we’d say.
Dope Thief: Season 1
Based on an acclaimed novel, this gritty Philly narc drama has been besieged by a few on-set dramas—co-star Wagner Moura had to step in last minute, after another actor got kicked off the project, and then production was halted again for the Writers Guild strike. However, with the towering talents of Brian Tyree Henry and director Ridley Scott helming the pilot, all the chaos could be well worth it.
The shit-hits-the-fan plot follows a pair of buddies posing as DEA agents to rob a random house of some drugs, only to stumble onto a much bigger operation and wind up running for their lives.
Good American Family: Miniseries
An American family adopts a European orphan, and begins to suspect that she’s actually far older than they’ve been told. This could be both the plot to the splashy horror movie Orphan, and the tragic true story of Natalia Grace, a child with dwarfism who was shockingly accused by her foster parents of only pretending to be a vulnerable child.
It’s lurid tabloid stuff, now seemingly put to rest through courts and health diagnostics (Grace was indeed eight-years-old when her suspicious new family took her in). So, of course, there’s gonna be a miniseries dramatising the events, with Ellen Pompeo and Mark Duplass as the Midwestern parents in question. The drama is retold from multiple points of view, capturing the assumptions and biases that lead to a troubling case like this.
The Leopard: Miniseries
I adore the seminal Italian novel upon which this new series is based; the great Burt Lancaster starred in a 1963 Luchino Visconti adaptation, too. Big, ornate leather boots to fill. The heartbreaking story follows a riches-to-rags arc of sorts, chronicling a fading prince and his family throughout 19th-century Sicily as the fast-paced modern world leaves them behind. The prose of the book is so glittering and acute, it’ll be quite the feat if director Tom Shankland and his Italian cast can translate it to the small screen.
Long Bright River: Miniseries
Ever since we watched Kate Winslet solving a murder and suckin’ on a vape, it’s become a go-to for prestigey actors to get their own Mare of Easttown. You know: to star in a gritty limited series about a depressed small town cop, whose investigation of a missing/dead girl brings back painful memories of their own past?
The tradition does goes back beyond Winslet’s ace turn, but here we are witnessing Amanda Seyfried’s take on the material. Her character’s unusual name? ‘Mickey’. The location? Philadelphia. The ongoing systemic crisis that’s really to blame for a string of suspicious deaths? Probably opioids. Keen to tune in and see how this one bucks tradition.
Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue: Limited Series
What an intriguing, nihilistic name for a TV show. Does it mean that our cast of stranded characters, lost in the Mexican wilderness after their plane crashes, are doomed from the word go? Or could some unlucky guest-corpses take their place, as we wind our way backwards to figure out a troubling turn of events?
Borrowing an Agatha Christie-esque structure, with passengers forced to a solve a mystery that’s picking them off one by one, the series is created by novelist Anthony Horowitz, who penned many of my favourite books as a child. Notably, it was originally made for streaming service Quibi before getting rescued by BBC. A true survival horror tale!
The Residence: Season 1
Set in the “upstairs, downstairs and backstairs” of the White House and featuring pop queen Kylie Minogue (!!) in a supporting role as herself, there’s plenty of reasons to tune into this political whodunnit—including the fact that it’s the latest venture from super-producer Shonda Rimes.
Uzo Aduba plays the detective tasked with solving a murder that occurred during a high-profile state dinner, interrogating butlers, ushers, secretaries and maids to get to the ugly truth. Julian McMahon plays the Prime Minister of Australia!
The Righteous Gemstones: Season 4
Danny McBride’s hilarious and sacrilegious comedy delivers its final sermon with this fourth season—all good things must come to an end! But by the majesty of Eli Gemstone, will I be sad to see the Gemstone family saga wrap up. Punching up at the corruption and idiocy of moneyed so-called religious leaders, and simultaneously delivering some surprisingly deft character development, don’t let Gemstones be one of those shows you only catch years after its peak, leaving you falling to your knees and praying for forgiveness that you weren’t around for the comic rapture.
The Studio: Season 1
A streaming TV show about how big screen cinema is dead and buried…hmm. Seth Rogen leads this star-studded satire as a guy who once loved movies but now worries his job as an exec is to kill cinema as an artform, a fear which is confirmed in a cameo from a hateful Martin Scorsese.
The ensemble cast is packed with your fave best friend/comic relief/character actor-type-actors, from Catherine O’Hara and Kathryn Hahn to Bryan Cranston and Ike Barinholtz. One for the cinephiles, methinks.
