New feature: Click on the titles to take you to where they will be streaming. You can view them when available or add programmes to your watchlist for later.
Starting this week
The wild life of a queen
Streaming: ThreeNow, from Sunday November 23
This drama about the life of the infamous Italian noblewoman Catherine de’ Medici, who married into the French court at the age of 14 and ruled as Queen of France for 15 years, does not care to restrain itself. Both Samantha Morton as the older Catherine, and Liv Hill as the younger, break the fourth wall with abandon. The soundtrack is contemporary (Patti Smith’s Gloria accompanies the end credits in episode one) and there are lashings of sex, violence and costumery. The Times deemed it, “Raunchy, raucous and faintly daft, but all the more entertaining for it.” Possibly one for fans of The Great or Mary & George. Full season.
The intrigues of motherhood
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Sunday November 23
An eight-part adaptation of Celeste Ng’s novel about life and motherhood in a wealthy Ohio suburb in the late 1990s. It originally aired on Hulu in 2020, sending the book to the top of The New York Times bestseller list. Reese Witherspoon produces, plays the lead as journalist Elena Richardson and isn’t the only thing that may remind you of Big Little Lies. The Guardian’s critic fretted that it “throws a lot of fraught themes at the wall” but ultimately deemed it “compulsively watchable”. Full season.
Third time’s a charm
Streaming: Netflix from Monday November 24
There might have been some hype about the Australian version of The Office but the best Oz workplace sticom in ages has been Fisk, the third season of which scooped every comedy catgeory at the country’s Logie Awards in August. That’s the one finally arriving here via Netflix. The ABC show set in a humble North Melbourne legal practice continues to star and be written and directed by Kitty Flanagan, who plays Helen Tudor-Fisk, an average lawyer and now partner in a humble North Melbourne legal practice. There, she’s joined by the familiar face of Aaron Chen (as George, the legal clerk and IT guy) and Julia Zemiro as Roz another partner in the firm. It’s presided over by the taciturn Ray Gruber, played by comedian Marty Sheargold, who is on safer ground here with a script than he has been in his other job as a prominent radio host who was fired earlier this year for his sexist comments about women’s sport. Probably needed a better lawyer.
There were carnivorous kangaroos?
Streaming: Apple TV+, from November 26
The CGI wildlife show vaults from the Cretaceous to the Pleistocene, moving from the “big freeze” of the Ice Age to the “big melt” as the climate changes, the ice recedes and the former giants find themselves out of time. Features woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed cats, dwarf elephants and carnivorous kangaroos.
All things must end
Streaming: Netflix, from November 26
It became one of the biggest shows of the streaming era for all sorts of reasons – among them its great young cast and its story combining mad scientists, hellish horror, Cold War rivalry, and that Kate Bush song. But now Stranger Things is wrapping up the madness in a fifth and final series that arrives in three chunks. Season five volume one (four episodes) arrives on November 26, volume two (three episodes) comes at Christmas and the finale is on New Year’s Eve. To read more go here and if you want to see the first five minutes of the first episode, it’s right here...
Voulez-Vous Coucher Avec Moi Ce Soir?
Streaming: Neon, from November 27
The list of films and TV series inspired by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses gains another entry (a rough count indicates this is the 21st). Described variously as a prequel, a “reworking” and a “free adaptation” of the book, this French six-part series for HBO Max tells the story of Marquise de Merteuil (Anamaria Vartolomei), who sets out to become Paris’s leading courtesan after being betrayed by libertine Vicomte de Valmont (Vincent Lacoste). The trailer is as saucy as you might expect.
Later in the Month
Daft but diverting thriller
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.35pm Saturdays from November 28
Streaming: TVNZ+
David Suchet (Poirot) takes up his first TV role since 2018 for this UK Channel 5 production. He’s the diabetic father of Zoe Dalton (Sally Bretton), a woman who seems to have a perfect life with two stepchildren and her own baby on the way – until the arrival of a French au pair who stirs up secrets from the past. The plot is outlandish, but the Daily Telegraph gave it a pass as “the sort of schlocky, mindless fun that makes you binge the lot”.
PRISONER 951
A political kidnapping
Streaming: TVNZ+
Narges Rashidi (Gangs of London) plays Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman who was abducted and imprisoned by the state during a visit with her daughter to her parents in Iran in 2016. Joseph Fiennes is her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, who campaigned for her release for six years. Remarkably, work on the four-part dramatisation of the story began while Zaghari-Ratcliffe was still in prison. It’s written by Stephen Butchard (Baghdad Central), who described it as both a political thriller and an insight into the way people under duress can “summon the strength to keep going forward, to keep hoping, to keep fighting”.
From Earlier This Month
Notorious neighbour
Streaming: Netflix, from Thursday November 13
Claire Danes returns as Aggie, another woman-on-the-verge character in a Hitchcockian cat-and-mouse thriller. It has producer creative ties to her hit series Homeland, as well as The X-Files. Danes plays an acclaimed author whose life and career have been on hold since the death of her young son. But she finds her next book might be about the guy who has shifted next door, weirdly charming real estate mogul Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys), a man who had been the main suspect in the unsolved disappearance of his wife. They forget an agreement over some boundary access if he’ll let her write about him for her new book, but things don’t go to plan. Complicating factors include the disappearance of someone connected to Aggie’s son, the pair’s respective spouses and their art world ties, and a development project run by Jarvis and his menacing father (Jonathan Banks) meeting public opposition. All eight episodes are available on debut.
A TV detective solves real crimes
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.30pm, Sundays from November 16
Streaming: TVNZ+, episodes weekly
The cosy crime wave continues. Timothy Spall stars as John Chapel, who has retired from playing a detective on TV and moved to a quiet Welsh village, only to find himself forming an unlikely partnership with local detective sergeant Janie Mallowan (Gwyneth Keyworth, Alex Rider) to crack one murder mystery after another. It’s genre all the way, but most reviewers have praised its bent towards humour in the hands of writer-creator Paul Doolan (who has previously written the out-and-out comedy series Bloods and Trollied). “I wanted to see a comedy crime drama that was funny but would still satisfy the people who love a proper mystery,” Doolan told the BBC. “It’s Midsomer Murders with jokes,” The Guardian concluded. “Not everything has to be The Wire.”
Tommy is the new boss
Streaming: Prime Video, from Monday November 17
With the death of M-Tex Oil CEO Monty Miller in the season one finale, the second season of the Taylor Sheridan-created oil industry drama is a very different scene. Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) has somewhat reluctantly agreed to take the helm of his old friend’s company, which is now owned by Monty’s widow Cami (Demi Moore), who doesn’t know much about the oil business. He’s under pressure and the company isn’t all he has on his plate – there’s the local cartel boss (Andy Garcia) and his own father (Sheridan favourite Sam Elliott) to be reckoned with.
School reunion
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Saturday November 1
The fourth season of the semi-improvised dysfunctional teacher comedy arrives with Taika Waititi joining his What We Do in the Shadows castmates and Educators regulars Cohen Holloway, Jackie van Beek, Jonathan Brough, Yvette Parsons and Kura Forrester for a one-episode guest turn. He plays Tony, the brother of Holloway’s woodwork teacher Ra, who turns up to ask the kids help him build a coffin, a ghetto-blaster shaped casket for the imminent funeral of a former break-dancer. It’s funnier than that sounds. Other guests to feature in this series include English comedy couple Julian Barratt and Julia Davis – the UK’s answer to Educators’ co-creator couple van Beek and Jesse Griffin. All episodes available.
Vanishing act
Streaming: ThreeNow
Screening: Three from November 9, 9.50pm
Our own Morgana O’Reilly is the lead in this Australian mystery drama playing Joni, a child psychologist in a small town still affected by the disappearance of her best friend Gracie Darling during a seance when they were 14. Almost three decades later the local kids get kicks with the game “Playing Gracie Darling” until another girl disappears and Joni is forced to revisit what might have happened all those years ago. British actors Dame Harriet Walter and Rudi Dharmalingam also star in the series by expatriate Kiwi director Jonathan Brough.
More misadventures
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Tuesday November 4
Screening: TVNZ 2, 6.30pm, Thursdays, November 6
The gentle mockumentary about the state of American healthcare and set among the staff of the titular hospital in Oregon returns for season two. New developments include the place getting a new birthing unit, and a run of guest stars, including onetime Flight of the Conchords stalker-fan Kristen Schaal and the possibility that we’ll see some more of the home life of the characters. Though one fundamental mystery remains, who’s shooting that doco and what for?
EARTH OVEN WITH TEMUERA MORRISON
A cook’s tour
Screening: Sky Open, 8.30pm, Wednesdays, from November 5
Streaming: Neon
The first episode of Morrison’s travels looking at how different cultures use underground cooking techniques is in Jordan and you have to wonder if he demanded, “Cook this man some figs.” See our interview with the man here.
Happy accident
Streaming: Apple TV+, from Friday November 7
Vince Gilligan who started his television writing career on The X-Files before creating Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul returns to New Mexico and to sci-fi (possibly). The show is about Carol (Rhea Seehorn from Saul), a cynical writer of historical romance novels who is seemingly the only person unaffected by a mysterious global virus that creates the psychological effect of making everybody happy. And she’s not happy about everyone’s happiness. The trailer has her being addressed directly by a White House official through her television set, telling her they will bring “whatever help you need. “Rest assured, Carol. We will figure out what makes you different … so we can fix it. So you can join us.” Gilligan has said the show came about because he was over writing bad guys but wondered what the downside of a world where everyone got along just fine. Gilligan says the show is a hero’s journey with Carol’s job to save the world from its new found sense of optimism. Interestlingly, Apple TV+ seems to have withheld advance press screeners until its release. But it’s likely it will appeal to fans of the streamer’s other zeitgeist-y, mind-games, blacky comic drama, Severance. Or just people who think happiness is way overrated.
Struck twice
Streaming: Netflix, Thursday November 6
Another streamer takes on another whiskery 19th-century US presidential assassination following Apple TV+’s Manhunt from last year about the search for the killer of Abraham Lincoln. This one follows the strange story of James A Garfield, the Republican 20th US president who was in office for only six months in 1881 before his term was cut short. He initially survived the bullet but died of infection from his medical treatment. Garfield is played by Michael Shannon and Matthew Macfadyen (Succession) plays his killer, Charles Guiteau, a Garfield supporter who thought his work on his election campaign should have been rewarded with a consulship. The title comes from something Garfield wrote before he won the presidency: “Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning.”
Mother’s ruin
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Friday November 7
Irish crime writer Andrea Mara’s best seller about the mother of a missing child gets a television adaptation starring Sarah Snook (Succession). She plays mum Marissa Irvine whose life is turned upside down when she goes to pick up her son Milo from a playdate, finds the woman who answers the door doesn’t have Milo and has never heard of him. As well as Aussie Snook, the series, which was shot in Melbourne, also stars Americans Jake Lacy, Dakota Fanning, and Michael Peña and it’s made by the producers of The Day of the Jackal and Lockerbie: A Search for Truth. The series debuts with four episodes followed by double episodes weekly.
Losing patients
Streaming: TVNZ+
The 2023 first series of Malpractice starred Niamh Algar (The Iris Affair) as an overworked doctor in a UK hospital, who faced investigation after an overdose patient died in her care – or the care of the junior doctor she assigned to look after her – after making a gunshot victim her priority. It was written by Grace Ofori-Attah, who spent 10 years as a doctor in the NHS before becoming a screenwriter. Her past experience also informed the switched-at-birth series Playing Nice that also starred Algar. In a second series of Malpractice, Ofori-Attah turns towards acute mental health care. James Ford (Tom Hughes, Prince Albert in Victoria), is an on-call psychiatric registrar also juggling two patients – one is a new mother whose GP has contacted him with grave concerns after a postnatal checkup, the other a crack-directed pregnant woman who appears to need sectioning under the Mental Health Act. It’s fair to say one’s patient outcomes brings in the Medical Investigations unit (Helen Behan and Jordan Kouamé from the first show), which again pulls apart the doctor’s personal life to examine his actions. The series screens over five nights.
Screening: TVNZ1, 9.30pm, from Sunday November 9
Streaming: TVNZ+
A seven-part dramatisation of The Guardian and New York Times investigation of Rupert Murdoch’s The News of the World’s work phone hacking brought down the tabloid. It stars David Tennant, Toby Jones and Robert Carlyle as key figures in the uncovering of the scandal. You can read Russell Brown’s story about The Hack here.
A lack of good will
Streaming: Three Now, from Tuesday November 11
From Chris Lang, the writer of hit UK detective drama Unforgotten, comes a knotty family mini-series involving the apparent death of a rich patriarch. Two ex-wives and his children are fighting over his estate while a police investigation attempts to determine his cause of death. It’s told with flash-forward interviews bookending each episode. The familiar face of Trevor Eve plays the dearly departed, and his extended family – who are suspects in his possible murder and perplexed by what his will says – includes John Simm and Zoë Tapper (both from Grace), as well as Gemma Jones and Nikki Amuka-Bird.
Life is a beach
Streaming: Apple TV+, from Wednesday November 12
The first season of the 1969-set oddball retro-styled black comedy about Maxine Simmons (Kristen Wiig) and her efforts to social-climb her way into Palm Beach country club membership got a fairly lukewarm critical response, but that hasn’t stopped another season. Wiig is back as the scheming Maxine among the club’s ladies-who-lunch, including executive producer Laura Dern, Allison Janney (The Diplomat), Leslie Bibb (White Lotus) and 92-year-old Carol Burnett as the slowly expiring rich aunt of Maxine, whose jewellery she keeps pilfering.
Donkey’s years
Streaming: Netflix, from Wedensday November 12
A dim view of Eddie Murphy’s career was that he made some very big movies in the 1980s – 48 Hrs, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America – then tried to make them all over again in the decades that followed. He was also happy to be in anything requiring a fat suit and buckets of latex (The Nutty Professors, Norbit), while some of his films, like The Adventures of Pluto Nash, are legendary bombs. Still, he remains a beloved figure in American comedy ever since his early days on Saturday Night Live and this feature-length doco looks like it will be leaning on Murphy as a man who broke down some barriers. “My stuff took off because they had never seen a young black person take charge,” he says in the trailer. Expect a sizable Hollywood chorus singing his praises, including Jerry Seinfeld, Arsenio Hall, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle and Jamie Foxx.
For pointers to other new shows, go to the October Viewing Guide here.