Television is playing host to some of Hollywood’s biggest names this spring, from Amanda Seyfried taking on the role of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes to Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto chronicling the fall of WeWork. And hotly anticipated returning favourites include Killing Eve, starring Jodie Comer which is back for its fourth and final series, and season two of Bridgerton. Here we’ve rounded up the must-see new TV shows to catch over the coming weeks
The Best New TV Shows
Everyone’s favourite fashion-forward assassin is back for Killing Eve’s fourth and final season. The cat-and-mouse game between Villanelle (Jodie Comer) and Eve (Sandra Oh) will be played out across various European locations and is set to reach dizzying new heights of tension as the pair rush towards the climactic finale.
Each season features a new female head writer (Phoebe Waller-Bridge famously penned the first and Oscar winner Emerald Fennell the second) and this time it’s the turn of Sex Education’s Laura Neal to tackle the much-anticipated final eight episodes. Eve is out on a revenge mission, while Villanelle has found a brand-new community where she is hoping to prove that she’s not a full-blown monster. Fuelled by all the passion and obsession we’ve come to know and love over the last three seasons, we’re expecting a gloriously messy conclusion.
BBC, 28 February
Hot on the heels of Shonda Rhimes’s gripping Netflix drama Inventing Anna, which follows the story of the ‘fake heiress’ Anna Delvey, comes another must-watch show featuring a high-profile con woman. Amanda Seyfried stars as Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of blood test company Theranos, which promised to revolutionise the diagnosis of diseases – before an investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed the company was struggling to make the technology match up to Holmes’ big claims.
Based on the ABC News podcast of the same name, the show will take a closer look at what turned a promising Stanford student and a Silicon Valley entrepreneur billed as ‘The Next Steve Jobs’ into a fraudster, and answer the question of how the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire lost it all in the blink of an eye.
Disney Plus, 3 March
Based on renowned crime novelist Karin Slaughter’s bestselling novel of the same name, Pieces of Her is the riveting new Netflix thriller that’s bound to get everyone talking. Created by House of Cards’ Charlotte Stoudt, the show follows 30-year-old Andy (Bella Heathcote), who finds herself caught in a deadly mass shooting at her local diner, only to be saved by her mother (played by Oscar nominee Toni Collette), who seems to have no trouble incapacitating the shooter – much to Andy’s surprise.
The event rocks Andy to her core and leads her to start questioning her mother’s past. Determined to uncover the truth, she embarks on a journey across America that draws her closer to the dark, dangerous secrets that lie at the heart of her family. Full of twists and turns, it explores the mother-daughter relationship and asks how well we really know the people around us – even our parents.
Netflix, 4 March
If you were gripped by the Wondery podcast that revealed the scandalous truth behind hip co-working space WeWork, you’ll be just as glued to this Apple TV+ adaptation. Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway play the start-up’s husband-and-wife co-founder team Adam and Rebekah Neumann, a pair of deeply narcissistic, jet-setting New Age executives.
Spread across eight episodes, the show will recount the decade-long saga behind the company’s meteoric rise and catastrophic fall, focusing on the brand’s origin story as well as featuring the accounts of former friends and collaborators whose initial passion for the WeWork model quickly turned to scepticism and disillusionment. Inspired by actual events, the compelling love story between Adam and Rebekah will be at the centre of it all.
Apple TV+, 18 March
Despite the disappointing lack of season one pin-up Regé-Jean Page, excitement levels could not be higher for the return of Bridgerton. For season two, a different eligible bachelor takes centre stage in the form of Daphne’s brother, Lord Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey).
The second instalment of the racy Regency romp is set to be just as much fun as the first, with the romantic lead setting his sights on newcomer Edwina Sharma (Charithra Chandran). Her older sister, Kate (Simone Ashley), isn’t sure about the match and tries to disrupt their union – but the more she intervenes, the closer she ends up getting to Anthony herself. Expect plenty of stolen glances, furtive frissons and a whole lot of scandal.
Netflix, 25 March
When Korean-American author Min Jin Lee’s novel Pachinko was released in 2017 it went on to become a New York Times bestseller and was hailed by the newspaper as one of the best books of the year. Now the epic tale is being turned into an eight-episode TV series, following four generations of a single Korean family in the 20th century as they strive to forge a new life for themselves in Japan.
Told in Korean, Japanese and English, the show will be the first major trilingual US series to hit the small screen. Starring Oscar winner Youn Yuh Jung and Korean superstar Lee Minho, the story begins with a forbidden love and crescendos into a sweeping saga of war and peace, love and loss, triumph and reckoning.
Apple TV+, 25 March
Sienna Miller returns to the small screen in this hotly anticipated new crime drama, adapted from Sarah Vaughan’s novel of the same name. Miller plays Sophie Whitehouse, the doting wife of a charismatic government minister (played by Rupert Friend), whose life is turned upside down when her husband James is accused of rape. The pair find themselves thrust into the spotlight, but Sophie is determined to prove her husband’s innocence and protect her family.
Joining her in the tense courtroom drama are Michelle Dockery as lawyer Kate and Naomi Scott as James’s accuser, Olivia, a young parliamentary researcher who previously had an affair with him. Set in the shadowy offices of Westminster, the six-part thriller is set to lay bare the relationship between privilege and power, as well as tackle entitlement, truth and boundaries of consent.
Netflix, 15 April
Whether the BBC can follow up on the fevered hysteria that accompanied their adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People during lockdown remains to be seen, but there’s hardly a household in the land that won’t be tuning in as they tackle the Irish author’s debut novel, Conversations With Friends.
Having drafted in the same creative team behind the runaway success of their first adaptation, the 12-part series will delve into the book’s unique depiction of relationships, exploring themes of class and romance. The story centres around Dublin university students Frances and Bobby (played by newcomers Alison Oliver and Sasha Lane), as they become entangled with an older married couple, played by Jemima Kirke and Joe Alwyn – resulting in familiar angst-ridden consequences.
BBC, May 2022
