The Diplomat
The dance continues
Streaming: Netflix
US ambassador Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) finished the first season of The Diplomat with a big problem: the realisation that the deadly attack that destroyed a British ship was less likely to be the work of a rival foreign power than of the British prime minister. But how can she act on that knowledge when she’s in the UK and who – apart from her nearly ex-husband Hal (Rufus Sewell), who survived the explosion at the end of the first season – can she even trust? In the dance of diplomacy, the pace is picking up.
A Remarkable Place to Die
Resort to murder
Screening: TVNZ1, 8.30pm, Sundays
Streaming: TVNZ+
The chances of being murdered in the actual Queenstown are very slight when compared to the rest of the country but that hasn’t stopped crime dramas setting up shop there every few years. A Remarkable Place to Die follows Top of the Lake and One Lane Bridge as a story of a cop new to the Southern Lakes beat taking charge. Chelsie Preston Crayford plays Detective Inspector Anais Mallory in the series of 90-minute murder mystery episodes, which say its makers, isn’t as cosy crime as The Brokenwood Mysteries but isn’t as dark as its aforementioned Queenstown predecessors. No stranger to the district having starred in Under the Vines, Rebecca Gibney plays Crayford’s mother, and the cast also includes Matt Whelan, Alex Tarrant, and Roimata Fox.
Dead And Buried
Didn’t you kill my brother?
Streaming: ThreeNow
When young Derry mum Cathy McDaid (Annabel Scholey, The Split) bumps into Michael McAllister (Colin Morgan, Merlin), the man who killed her brother 20 years earlier, she is shocked. When she discovers that he has been a free man for years, she is enraged and embarks on a scheme to reel in the killer by adopting a fake online persona, stalking him and trying to ruin his comfortable new life. The Irish Times’ reviewer found the BBC Northern Ireland four-parter absurd (“none of the characters behaves rationally”) but entertaining.
Daddy Issues
A winning comedy about losers
Screening: Three, Thursdays, 8.05pm
Streaming: ThreeNow
A very modern comedy about a 24-year-old party girl (Aimee Lou Wood, Sex Education) who becomes pregnant after a random hook-up in an aeroplane toilet. She has to take on her beaten-down, divorced dad (David Morrissey, in a rare comedic role) as a flatmate, for practical and emotional support he is not well-equipped to provide. Let’s not get started on the rest of the family. The show, the first sitcom from comedian, TV writer and podcaster (Do the Right Thing) Danielle Ward, won rave notices from UK critics when it debuted in August. The Daily Telegraph called it “deft, daft, and deliciously watchable” and the Guardian praised its “potent blend of wit and charm”. A second season has already been commissioned.
Inside No. 9
The last of the strange stories
Screening: Sky Arts, 9pm, Thursdays
The award-winning British anthology series racked up its ninth – and final – season in 10 years without a notable change in the recipe: each stand-alone 30-minute story features creators Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith (The League of Gentlemen), an array of guest stars, a darkly comedic plot-with-a-twist, and a brass statue of a hare. This farewell season won the show’s fourth Bafta and was hailed by the Times as “exquisite”.
Citadel: Honey Bunny
The Indian version
Streaming: Prime Video
The Russo brothers designed their spy thriller Citadel as the basis of a “universe” and this is the second non-English-language spin off within it, after the Italian Citadel: Diana. Written and directed by the blockbuster Indian film-making duo Raj & DK, Honey Bunny stars Varun Dhawan as Bunny, a stuntman who recruits struggling actress Honey (Samantha Ruth Prabhu) for a gig that hurls them into a world of danger and espionage. Years later, their past catches up and they must reunite to protect the daughter they had along the way – who is a childhood version of ace spy Nadia Sinh from the original series. So, it’s effectively a prequel to Citadel. But mostly, it’s a big, glossy stunt fest with some culturally specific jokes and a lot of elaborately choreographed violence.
Bank Under Siege
A dramatic true-life story from Spain
Streaming: Netflix
Spain’s emergence into democracy in the early 1980s was perilous. In February 1981, a group of military officers staged an attempted coup, occupying the lower house of the Spanish Parliament and holding MPs hostage for 18 hours. Their bid to restore a Francoist regime was defeated with the public intervention of King Juan Carlos. This five-part limited series, produced in Spain as Operation Banco Central, is about what happened three months later – the storming and occupation of a crowded bank by armed gunmen who threatened to begin executing hostages if their demand for the release of the coup leaders was not met. Opt for the subtitled version, because the English-language dubbing is terrible.
Yellowstone
There’s a new boss at the ranch
Screening: Sky 5, 9.30pm, Mondays
Streaming: Neon
In the modern fashion, this is not season six of Yellowstone, but part two of season five – even if it is nearly two years since part one concluded. The big thing that’s happened in the interim is the departure of Kevin Costner as the patriarch John Dutton, meaning another of the saga’s characters must take over the running of the ranch (series creator Taylor Sheridan has said his original story arc was always written with Dutton gone by the end). Cole Hauser recently confirmed that his character, Rip Wheeler, is the new boss. Rumours in the screen industry press that Yellowstone will not end as planned with season five seem less solid.
Blackshore
Irish detective show
Streaming: ThreeNow
A new series from writer Kate O’Riordan (Smother, The Bay). Lisa Dwan (Top Boy) stars as Detective Inspector Fia Lucey, who returns to her isolated rural hometown under a cloud around her actions on the job in Dublin and finds herself on the case of a missing local woman. She has to find her way back into the community and – as ever – come to grips with her own dark past there. The Irish Times called it “silly and watchable”.
Bad Sisters
Moving on from the murder
Streaming: Apple TV+
Sharon Horgan’s black comedy about a group of sisters committing and covering up the murder of an abusive husband was originally written as a limited series – it was based on the single season of the Belgian series Clan – but she told Variety recently she was happy to step up and continue the story after the show became a hit. In this second season, the Garvey sisters appear to be moving on from the many bad choices they made in season one – but a surprise discovery brings a clever new cop onto the scene and their troubles begin again. It’s not just the murder, it’s the menopause.
Say Nothing
Nothing but Troubles
Streaming: Disney+
Patrick Radden Keefe’s tense, compelling Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland may be the best book written about the Troubles of Northern Ireland. Indeed, the New York Times placed it the top 20 of its 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. So, there is a lot to live up to for this limited series – and since the release of the trailer, some concern that director Michael Lennox (Derry Girls) has turned the book into an action caper centred on Dolours and Marian Price, the real-life sisters prepared to kill for a free Ireland. The series reportedly unfolds, like the book, from the IRA’s shocking abduction and murder of Jean McConville, a single mother suspected of being a British Army informant.
Cross
The detective psychologist
Streaming: Prime Video
Alex Cross, a Washington DC homicide detective and forensic psychologist depicted in the novel series (all 20 of them) by James Patterson, has been played on the big screen by both Morgan Freeman and Tyler Perry. Now Aldis Hodge (Black Adam) takes the lead in this TV adaptation by Ben Watkins (Burn Notice). Cross, a father still grieving the death of his wife, must stop a sadistic serial killer who has left a trail of bodies around the city. To do that, he needs to get inside the killer’s head while keeping his own.
Cruel Intentions
Everybody’s mean
Streaming: Prime Video
The 1999 film Cruel Intentions, which worked the 18th-century French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses into an arch romantic comedy set at a posh American college, was not greeted warmly by critics. But somewhere along the way it became a cult classic for a generation. In this TV adaptation, Sarah Catherine Hook takes the role (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar in the film) of Caroline Merteuil, who rules the social hierarchy, by fair means or foul, along with her step-brother Lucien Belmont (Zac Burgess). The girl they scheme to seduce has been upgraded from the headmaster’s daughter, as in the film, to the daughter of the vice president of the US. Your university days were never like this.
The Day of the Jackal
The icon gets an update
Streaming: TVNZ+
Screening: Duke, Fridays, 9.30pm
Is there a better-known spy thriller than Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal, based on a real plot to assassinate French president Charles De Gaulle? A more iconic movie in the genre than the film version that followed two years later? This TV adaptation by Ronan Bennett (Top Boy) steps into some big shoes. Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) plays the title role and recently told Entertainment Weekly that he had grown up loving the original film and was drawn to the project by the chance to “reimagine” its plot for contemporary audiences. It is, he says, “a completely different piece” that has “been reconceived and contemporised with a new target”.
Starting Soon
In Cold Water: The Shelter Bay Mystery
Kiwi on trial in Canadian true-crime case
Screening: Sky Open, from Monday November 18 to Wednesday November 20, 8.30pm
Streaming: Prime Video
The convoluted Canadian case which saw former Napier city councillor Peter Beckett go on trial for murder twice after the 2010 death of his wife while on they were on a fishing vacation in the Rocky Mountains gets a true-crime series which is debuting in NZ on Sky Open just as it starts streaming around the world on Prime Video. The three episodes recount the case and the investigation of the drowning of teacher Laura Letts-Beckett which led to her Kiwi husband’s conviction, and which was quashed on appeal. Beckett appears in the series alongside interviews with Letts-Beckett’s friends and family, lawyers, forensic experts and police.
Dune Prophecy
The spice girls
Screening: HBO, from 8.30pm, Monday November 18
Streaming: Neon
The sci-fi year kicked off with director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, his acclaimed movie adaptation wrapping up Frank Herbert’s epic novel. Now, before the director’s Part Three film which adapts the sequel book Dune: Messiah, comes a six-part series from HBO set in the same universe. Dune Prophecy doesn’t have Villeneuve’s direct involvement (he’s an executive producer), and it’s set thousands of years before the films. But – judging by the trailer – the look and interplanetary political intrigue and feudal rivalries go way back. The series is loosely based on the non-Herbert novel Sisterhood of Dune and follows Valya and Tula Harkonnen (Emily Watson and Olivia Williams) as they fight for their all-female nun-like sect of superhuman “truthsayers”, the Bene Gesserit. Both are ancestors of the House Harkonnen, which betrays Paul Atreides and his father in the Dune movies.
Interior Chinatown
Main character comedy
Streaming: Disney+, from Tuesday November 19
Taika Waititi’s name has been all over the advance publicity for this adaptation of Charles Yu’s award-winning satirical novel, as co-creator and executive producer, and director of the first episode. Jimmy O Wang (Silicon Valley) plays Willis, a character actor stuck in background “Asian guy” character roles in a fictional police procedural. He longs to be the hero of the story, but after he witnesses a crime, he’s plunged into a real-life web of crime in Chinatown. Also starring sometime Daily Show host Ronnie Chieng as Willis’s friend Fatty Choi and Marvel universe fixture Chloe Bennet as an on-screen detective who is more than she seems.
A Man on the Inside
Undercover at the rest home
Streaming: Netflix, from Thursday November 21
Ted Danson stars as a bored retiree who takes on a whole new adventure when he answers an ad placed by a private detective and becomes a mole at a retirement home, investigating the theft of a family heirloom. The series has been adapted by Mike Schur, creator of The Good Place, from the Oscar-nominated 2021 Chilean documentary The Mole Agent. Schur has described the original documentary story as “a beautiful meditation on ageing, a subject we are uniquely terrible in this country at confronting, dealing with, or discussing.” It also had a happy ending, which appears to set the tone for Schur’s comedic adaptation.
The Helicopter Heist
Swedish true-crime drama
Streaming: Netflix, from Friday, November 22
An eight-part series adapted from the Swedish novel Helikopterrånet, which was inspired by the 2009 robbery of a cash depot in suburban Stockholm, where the perpetrators used a stolen helicopter as their getaway vehicle. Created and written by Ronnie Sandahl, whose last work was football drama Tigers.
Based on a True Story
Still making a killing
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Friday November 22
A second season for the satirical black comedy about a podcast that gets its creators tangled up with a serial killer. Ava and Nathan (Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina) are dealing with parenthood and striving for a quieter life away from the true-crime scene – but a new series of murders pulls them back in.
Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the Case of Conan Doyle
Haunted by the detective
Screening: Sky Arts, 7.00pm, from Thursday November 21
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s name is forever associated with that of his most famous literary creation: Sherlock Holmes. But, as Lucy Worsley explains in this engaging three-parter, Doyle had distinctly mixed feelings about the character that brought him fame and fortune. Doyle, a talented, ambitious and fairly weird man, came to resent the fact that Holmes was effectively more famous that him. “On the surface,” Worsley says, “his life was golden, but he was not happy because it was not the success he dreamed of. He wanted to be taken seriously as an upmarket, respectable establishment figure.”
Return To Paradise
Hometown mysteries
Screening: BBC First, 8.30pm, from Monday November 25
Streaming: Neon
This spin-off of the beloved Death in Paradise sets up in classic cosy-crime style: DI Mackenzie Clarke (Anna Samson, Dead Lucky) returns from her investigative role with the London Metropolitan Police to her hometown of Dolphin Cove to help her ageing mother. She’s not happy about it – when she departed six years earlier, she left her fiancé Glenn (Tai Hara, Colin from Accounts) standing at the altar, and the locals haven’t forgotten. It’s supposed to be a temporary thing, but when an accusation of evidence-tampering throws the job in London up in the air, she’s stuck. When a murder case shocks the local community, she decides to join the team at Dolphin Cove Police Station to try to get to the bottom of it.
The Madness
Contemporary conspiracy tale
Streaming: Netflix, from Thursday November 28
Colman Domingo (who won a slew of award nominations for his role in last year’s Netflix feature Rustin) stars as political consultant and media pundit Muncie Daniels. He is fighting to clear his name after he stumbles on the murder of a notorious white supremacist and a conspiracy begins to take shape. A strong cast also includes Marsha Stephanie Blake (When They See Us), Gabrielle Graham (Twenties), John Ortiz (Promised Land) and Tamsin Topolski (Slow Horses). Eight episodes.
Beatles ‘64
The American invasion
Streaming: Disney+, from Friday November 29
Martin Scorsese has his name as a producer on this film about The Beatles’ momentous arrival in America in 1964, but you can’t keep Peter Jackson away from a Beatles retrospective. Jackson’s Park Road Post 4K-restored rare footage from pioneering documentarians Albert and David Maysles, and WingNut Films “demixed” the audio from the band’s first US concert at the Washington, DC Coliseum and their Ed Sullivan appearance so the tracks could be remixed by Giles Martin. There are also new interviews with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, who are on board as executive producers, along with Olivia Harrison and Sean Ono Lennon.
Senna
The life and death of a driver
Streaming: Netflix, from Friday November 29
A six-part dramatisation of the life of the great Formula One driver Ayrton Senna, telling the story from his move to Britain to drive Formula Ford in 1981 to his tragic death in the infamous 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. Brazilian actor Gabriel Leone plays the lead role (he also starred as Alfonso De Portago in Michael Mann’s film Ferrari last year). Most of the big names in racing of the era are portrayed, including Senna’s perpetual rival, Alain Prost. Note that the highly praised 2010 documentary of the same name is also available to stream on Netflix.
See our guide to other recent new shows in the October, September, August, July, and June viewing guides.
