The Four Seasons
Old friends and lovers
Streaming: Netflix from May 1
Co-creator Tina Fey stars alongside Steve Carell in this dramedy following three couples on four vacations over the course of a year. Relationships and friendships alike are upturned by the news that one of the couples is about to split. Among the guest stars is Alan Alda, on whose 1981 feature film of the same name the series is based.
Hunting Party
Killers on the loose
Screening: TVNZ 2, 8.30pm, Thursdays from May 1
Streaming: TVNZ+
Another crime procedural from US network television, but it does kick off with a spectacular premise. When The Pit, a secret prison for the very worst criminals, is destroyed in an explosion, not everyone inside ends up dead or accounted for. There are sociopathic killers on the loose and it’s up to FBI profiler Bex Henderson (Melissa Roxburgh, Manifest) to hunt them down while the agency tries to keep the whole thing a secret. Somewhat inevitably, she has her own past to contend with. Variety deemed it a “strong procedural” with “the legs to go the distance”.
Ten Pound Poms
Settling in for the second
Streaming: TVNZ+ from May 2
Creator and writer Danny Brocklehurst has promised that the cliffhangers from season one of the Downunder immigrant drama will be resolved – along with new stories and characters. “There’s a consistent theme about not being able to escape yourself,” he says. “You can go to the other side of the world and try to build a new life in the sunshine, but in the end you always take yourself with you, and the baggage of yourself comes along too. Whereas the first season was about the arrival and the sense of what we encountered when we got there, series two is much more about ‘we’re here now; how do we bed-in; how do we become Australian?’”
Choir Games
Singing the same tune
Screening: Sky Open, 7.30pm, Sundays from May 4
Streaming: Neon and Sky Open from May 4
The debut of a four-part documentary series that goes behind the scenes on two choirs – one from New York, one from Kaitāia – as they prepare for and participate in the 2024 World Choir Games in Auckland. To read more about the show go here.
Vise Le Coeur
French procedural with a twist
Streaming: TVNZ+ from May 4
It’s a familiar police procedural set-up – two cops with a complicated personal past are obliged to work together – but there’s a bit more going on here. Vise le Coeur (it means “aim for the heart”) is the creation of French screenwriters Fanny Robert and Sophie Lebarbier and its protagonist, Captain Julia Scola (Claire Keim) is on treacherous ground at work after testifying against two fellow officers accused of rape. Then she discovers her new superintendent is Novak Lisica (Lannick Gautry), her boyfriend as a teenager, and is not happy about it. He persuades her to stay with a bet – which clearly worked, given that that are two seasons of weird murder investigations to watch on TVNZ+, with a third to come.
The Feud
Neighbours at each other’s throats
Screening: TVNZ 1, 9.30pm Sundays from May 4
Streaming: TVNZ+
When Emma and John Barnett (Jill Halfpenny, The Cuckoo, The Long Shadow, and Rupert Penry-Jones, Spooks, Our House) decide to add a kitchen extension to their house in a quiet cul-de-sac, it seems their only challenge is getting planning permission. But the plan sparks a spiralling feud in the street – and there’s a murder. A cast jam-packed with British TV faces includes Jamie-Lee O’Donnell (Derry Girls), Larry Lamb (Gavin & Stacey), Amy Nuttal (Downton Abbey), Ray Fearon (His Dark Materials) and James Fleet (The Vicar of Dibley). The six-episode limited series has had mixed reviews – The Telegraph scorned its “hackneyed script” but iNews deemed it “an assured weeknight pot-boiler”.
Abused By Mum: The Ruby Franke Scandal
Bad influencer
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.30pm, Mondays from May 5
Streaming: TVNZ+ from May 5
For years, American Ruby Franke was a successful “momfluencer”, running the YouTube parenting channel 8 Passengers with her husband Kevin. Not anymore. In 2022, the couple separated, and in 2023, Ruby’s badly emaciated son escaped the family home and begged a neighbour for food and water. The neighbour called 911 and Franke and her partner in a parenting advice business were both charged with six counts of felony child abuse, to which they pled guilty. They were jailed in February, with Franke sentenced to serve between four and 30 years. As is the way of these things, this 90-minute ITN production comes only three months after the premiere of Hulu’s docuseries Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke.
Octopus!
A cephalopod-cast
Streaming: Prime Video from May 8
Fleabag star and creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge expands her screen career into natural history territory by narrating and executive producing this two-part documentary series about the giant Pacific octopus. While the episodes feature people who have spent much of their scientific careers studying the largest of the octopus species, the show also has among its talking heads sea-creature obsessed comedian Tracy Morgan (30 Rock), whose extensive home aquarium houses a giant Pacific octopus named Bwyadette. The publicity for the show, which follows in the tentacles of 2020 Netflix hit My Octopus Teacher, promises it will “make us laugh, cry, and question our own place on this planet along the way”.
Poker Face
Their lyin’ eyes
Screening: Duke, 8.30pm Fridays from May 9
Streaming: TVNZ+ from May 9
Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) and her abundant red hair are back for a second season of amateur sleuthing, based on her unerring ability to tell when someone is lying, and on the long roll of guest stars she encounters on her unending road trip around the USA. This season’s turns include our own Melanie Lynskey, as well as Kumail Nanjiani, Giancarlo Esposito, Katie Holmes, Gaby Hoffmann, Margo Martindale, John Mulaney, John Cho, Haley Joel Osment and many more. The first episode kicks off with Wicked star Cynthia Erivo playing sextuplets, which clearly involved much visual witchcraft. Creator Rian Johnson has said the inspiration for the show’s weekly guest star format was the 70s detective series Columbo, which had a Hollywood who’s who – and, on one occasion, Johnny Cash – playing dastardly characters in its day. This season launches with three episodes, then a new one each week.
Long Way Home
Trans Europe express
Streaming: Apple TV+ from May 9
Buddies Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman are back on their bikes, this time exploring “the countries on our own doorstep”, in Europe, over 10 parts. On their temperamental vintage motorcycles (quite a change from Long Way Up’s modern electric Harleys) they pass through 17 nations: up through the Nordic countries to the Arctic circle, down to the Baltic states, and through the Alps and across France. The trailer suggests they and their bikes don’t always remain upright on the roads, but they still know how to have a good time.
Scrublands: Silver
Hometown homicide
Streaming: ThreeNow, from May 11
The second season of Australian crime drama Scrublands takes its name – and its plot – from Chris Hammer’s sequel to his original Scrublands novel. Investigative journalist Martin Scarsden (Luke Arnold) has left the Victorian town of Maldon with a new partner, Mandy Bond (Bella Heathcote), and a degree of trauma. A new life beckons for the couple in his Western Australia hometown Port Silver. But Scarsden arrives to find his childhood friend has been murdered – and Mandy is the chief suspect. As he works to absolve Mandy and identify the real killer, Scarsden is forced to confront some secrets about the town – and about his own past. There’s a third book in Hammer’s Scarsden series, Trust, and it seems a good bet that will also find its way to the screen.
The Other Mrs Jordan
A bigamist exposed
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.30pm, Mondays from May 12
Streaming: TVNZ+, from May 12
Scottish woman Mary Turner Thomson published her book The Other Mrs Jordan: A True Story of Bigamy and Betrayal in 2007. It was the story of how she discovered that her husband, William Jordan, was not, as he had told her, a CIA agent but a conman and convicted paedophile. And that he was also married to a woman she had never met and had fathered children with both of them and with the other family’s nanny. The book was published a year after Jordan was sentenced to five years’ prison for a variety of offences – but he was subsequently released and deported to the US, where he continued to deceive and victimise women. This three-part documentary is, according to The Times’ reviewer, both “jaw-dropping” and evidence that “no one is con-proof”.
Sullivan’s Crossing
Gone up north for a while
Streaming: TVNZ+, from May 13
One reviewer has called this Canadian romantic drama “Northern Exposure if it had been made for the Hallmark Channel.” The set-up is familiar enough: Maggie Sullivan (Morgan Kohan) is a successful neurosurgeon in Boston when something goes terribly wrong and she’s forced to return to the place she grew up – a campground in Nova Scotia that is still owned and operated by her estranged father, “Sully” Sullivan (Scott Patterson, Gilmore Girls). Like Virgin River, it’s based on a novel series by Robyn Carr and adapted for television by Roma Roth. The first three episodes land on TVNZ+ this week, followed by weekly episodes. The show is into its third season in Canada, so there’s plenty of romance to come.
Untold: The Liver King
Flesh in the pan
Streaming: Netflix, from May 13
Like a number of other stupid ideas, the all-meat diet craze took off in the years following the Covid pandemic. Pop psychologist Jordan Peterson claimed a diet of beef, salt and water had cured his chronic depression. But among all-meat influencers, no one was bigger than Brian Johnson, aka the Liver King. Johnson was making a staggering US$100 million a year by the time an email leak revealed that his muscular physique wasn’t the product of a raw-meat diet and an “ancestral lifestyle”, but of his consumption of anabolic steroids and human growth hormones. The film is the work of culture documentarian Joe Pearlman (his last job was a Robbie Williams docuseries), who got interviews with Johnson and his family. Johnson recently described the story as, “even crazier than I could have imagined”.
Homebound 3.0
Fake it until you make it
Screening: Three, 8.30pm, Thursdays from May 15
Streaming: ThreeNow, from May M15
It’s two years since Sam Wang’s sharp local sitcom about a struggling sci-fi writer and his relentlessly matchmaking parents introduced the concept of “Chinese Tinder” to the mainstream. Henry (Wang) and Melissa (Michelle Ang), who faked a relationship to mollify their families, have wound up as a real couple. But they’re not done yet. If they can successfully pretend they’re having a baby, they’ll unlock an early inheritance from overseas relatives. What could possibly go wrong?
Overcompensating
Taking a punt
Streaming: Prime Video, from May 15
College comedies aren’t a new thing, but this one is about as “now” as it gets. Creator Benito Skinner came up through TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, via his character Benny Drama (Vogue called him “the only funny thing to happen in 2020”). Charli XCX is on board as executive producer of music and a guest star. Skinner plays Benny, a former high school footballer who’s still in the closet (Skinner’s own high school football past has been a regular feature of his comedy). He befriends outsider Carmen (Wally Baram), and they face all the usual college challenges, including bad hookups and fake IDs.
Duster
Throwback thrills
Streaming: Neon, from May 16
Josh Holloway became a television star during his stint as the ever-sarcastic character of Sawyer in Lost, the mid-2000s show co-created by Hollywood wiz JJ Abrams. Abrams has given Holloway another gig in Duster, a crime thriller series made for HBO, set in the American southwest of the early 1970s. Holloway plays a getaway driver who comes to the attention of a young, gifted and black FBI agent played by Rachel Hilson (The Good Wife) as she attempts to take down a crime syndicate. The trailer suggests much high-speed muscle car action on desert highways, a groovy period soundtrack, and a vibe that’s nostalgic for television shows of the period in which it’s set.
Murderbot
Thinking of going out on his own
Streaming: Apple TV+, from May 16
Ever since his extended vampire stint in True Blood, Alexander Skarsgård has added a few more cold-blooded characters to his resumé. In this blackly comedic adaptation of Martha Wells’ sci-fi book series The Murderbot Diaries, set in a universe of warring mega corporations, he’s gone full cyborg as the security detail on a scientific mission to an alien planet. Only he’s developed free will and is hiding the autonomy upgrade from his overlords. He’d rather be left on his own to watch soap operas and ponder his existence. This first series, another addition to Apple TV+’s array of brainy sci-fi shows, adapts All Systems Red, the first in seven books in the series. The 10-part season starts with a double episode debut then one a week.
Code of Silence
Helping the police with their inquiries
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Sunday May 18
Yes, it’s another series with a gifted outsider aiding police detectives. In this case it’s a British crime drama about deaf catering worker Alison (Rose Ayling-Ellis, Eastenders), who takes on a job lip-reading the conversations of dangerous criminals. When her translation skills catch the attention of DS Ashleigh Francis (Charlotte Ritchie, You) and DI James Marsh (Andrew Buchan, Black Doves), she gets recruited for a covert operation keeping tabs on a gang planning a major heist. But when she forms an attachment with gang recruit Liam Barlow (Kieron Moore), she risks blowing her cover and much more.
Tucci In Italy
Pasta the point of no return
Streaming: Disney+, from Monday May 19
A few years back, Stanley Tucci brought his charm and wit to the role of host in two seasons of his Emmy-winning foodie travelogue Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy. Now, having apparently found it, the American-born actor has gone back to the land of his forebears for an encore. Tucci in Italy is a five-part National Geographic series (Searching was for CNN) in which he’s again exploring regional cuisines and meeting the people behind them. He’s out to show how, as he says in the trailer, “the shape of your pasta and the sauce you serve it with differentiates the character and history of each region, sharply”. Having lived in Florence for a year as a teenager, he starts out in Tuscany, where there are encounters with local cowboys. Subsequent episodes have him in the northern Lombardy and alpine Trentino-Alto Adige for a spot of skiing and fly-fishing. Then it’s off south to Abruzzo and the Lazio region around Rome. Best viewed after dinner.
Grosse Pointe Garden Society
Overdoing the blood and bone
Screening: TVNZ 2, 8.30pm, from Tuesday May 20
Streaming: TVNZ+, first three episodes then double episodes weekly from May 20
A comedy mystery melodrama made for NBC in the US that has had comparisons to Desperate Housewives and How to Get Away with Murder. It opens in Grosse Pointe, a wealthy suburb of Michigan, where Alice, Brett, Catherine, and Birdie all work at the Grosse Pointe Garden Club. Six months later, it’s revealed that the four are mixed up in a murder, and they’ve buried the body at the garden club only to find that’s not such a good idea.
Nine Perfect Strangers
Cooling her heals
Streaming: Prime Video, from Thursday May 22
Nicole Kidman reprises her role and Bond villain accent as dubious Russian wellness guru Masha Dmitrichenko, who invites a new nonet to an Austrian Alps retreat for more mind games. Like the first season, the nine will be confronting their darkest secrets, possibly with the help of the psychoactive drugs she dosed her clientele with the first time round. The first season was based on the Liane Moriarty book of the same name. Kidman starred in the earlier hit Moriarty adaptation Big Little Lies, which, like Nine Perfect Strangers was adapted for television by veteran producer David E Kelley.
Moriarty isn’t behind the story to the second season, and its predecessor got so-so reviews, some comparing it unfavourably with The White Lotus, another drama set among privileged resort guests. Aussie actor Murray Bartlett, who memorably played the hotel manager in season one of that show, is among the cast of this one. Other new cast members include Henry Golding, Lena Olin and Christine Baranski.
Sirens
Staging an intervention
Streaming: Netflix, from Thursday May 22
This dark comedy series is named not for the sound of emergency services but the mythological figures with alluring powers. Meghann Fahy (The White Lotus, Drop) plays Devon, a woman who turns up at the lavish Martha’s Vineyard estate where her younger sister Milly Alcock (House of the Dragon) is employed as a PA by – and seems to be under the spell of – owner Michaela Kell (Julianne Moore), who looks suspiciously like some sort of cult leader. It’s created by Molly Smith Metzler (Maid) and based on her 2011 play Elemeno Pea. It also stars Kevin Bacon as Michaela’s husband.
Clarkson’s Farm
Having a bar of it
Streaming: Prime video, from Friday May 23
It’s back to Diddly Squat Farm for a fourth season of Jeremy Clarkson’s life in the slow country lane. This series picks up a few months after the previous events of series three. Clarkson’s long-suffering young sidekick Kaleb Cooper is on tour, partner Lisa is developing a new product line, and Clarkson’s left to manage the farm alone. Having been thwarted in his plans for a farm-to-fork restaurant, Clarkson has bought a local pub, added a shop and renamed it The Famer’s Dog, from which he has banned British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and James May. What a scallywag.
For a guide to other recent new shows, go to the April Viewing Guide.
