From Nicole Kidmanโs latest crime thriller to a new sitcom from Ted Lasso creator Bill Lawrence, starring Steve Carell, and the return of The Comeback.
1. DTF: St Louis
Sex and murder drive the narrative of this show, but the tone leans toward deadpan comedy as much as drama. Jason Bateman is Clark, a television weatherman in St Louis, and David Harbour is the bumbling Floyd, who does ASL signing for the weather. Both men are bored in their marriages. Capturing the showโs absurdist tone, Floydโs wife, Carol (Linda Cardellini) works part-time as a baseball umpire, and seeing her in uniform has permanently turned him off. Things start to unravel when Clark discovers a website called DTF: St Louis, short for local people โdown toโ โ to put it politely โ have sex. The showโs writer and director, Steven Conrad, toldย Vanity Fairย about the setting, โPeople who donโt live in the Midwest make these suppositions that the people who live there are a little more normal. St Louis became a way to surprise the audience.โ Besides, he added, โOther peopleโs kinks are funny.โ
DTF: St Louis premieres 1 March on HBO and Max in the USย ย
2. Young Sherlock
Guy Ritchie, who directed two entertaining Sherlock Holmes films starring Jude Law more than a decade ago, is the executive producer and a director of this series, which adopts a similar irreverent, action-fuelled style. The story โ inspired by Andrew Laneโs series of YA books about Sherlockโs youth โ springs from the idea that he had to start detecting somewhere, and in this version itโs the University of Oxford. Thatโs where the 19-year-old stumbles across a murder and meets another student who introduces himself as John Moriarty, better known to us as the archvillain of Arthur Conan Doyleโs stories. Hero Fiennes Tiffin plays the young Sherlock and Donal Finn is Moriarty, with a cast that includes Tiffinโs real-life uncle Joseph Fiennes as his father, Natascha McElhone as his mother and Max Irons as his older brother, Mycroft. Colin Firth, with a huge Victorian moustache and a face full of whiskers, plays a professor, Sir Bucephalus Hodge. That character is not in the Lane novels or in Conan Doyle, so for now heโs just one more tantalizing mystery to us.
Young Sherlock premiere 4 March on Prime Video internationally
3. Vladimir
Rachel Weisz plays the unnamed character at the centre of this darkly comic story of erotic obsession. She is a college professor with a long-standing writing block and a problematic husband, also a professor, played by John Slattery. He has been accused of sexual assault because of affairs with students years before, which he insists were consensual, and might be fired. That crisis sends Weiszโs character spiralling into fantasies about her new young colleague, Vladimir, played by Leo Woodall. The show is written by Julia May Jones, based on her sly 2022 novel, and throughout the protagonist breaks the fourth wall to talk to the audience. โWhat she wants you to think is a little distant from the total truth,โ Weisz hasย saidย of her character, a conspicuously unreliable narrator. But Vladimir does become her muse, jump-starting her writing again, so at least thereโs a silver lining to her tumultuous inner life.
Vladimir premieres 5 March on Netflix internationally
4. Rooster
In this sitcom set on a college campus (not nearly as fraught as the campus in Vladimir), Steve Carell plays Greg Russo, author of best-selling novels about a hero named Rooster, books even he calls โbeach readsโ. But when he visits his daughter, Katie (Charly Clive), an art history professor who is going through a humiliating divorce from her cheating husband, he is roped into staying around to teach. Bill Lawrence, a creator of some of the best recent comedies including Ted Lasso and Shrinking, is the co-creator here, so itโs no surprise that the writing is sharp, and the cast even sharper. Phil Dunster โ Jamie on Ted Lasso โ plays Katieโs estranged husband, a scholar of Russian, who has been sleeping with a grad student. Like Jamie heโs a narcissist, but an educated narcissist. Danielle Deadwyler is wry as a poetry professor and Gregโs neighbour, and John C McGinley is the scene-stealing, gossiping college president. None of it is remotely believable, but itย isย very amusing.
Rooster premieres 8 March on HBO and Max in the US
5. Scarpetta
There is hardly a break between one Nicole Kidman series and the next, and in this latest she plays Kay Scarpetta, the chief medical examiner of Virginia. Patricia Cornwellโs 29 novels featuring the character go way back to 1990, with the most recent published last year, but somehow they have not been brought to the screen before. Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays Kayโs sister, Dorothy, are among the executive producers who finally made that happen. The story begins with Scarpetta returning for a second go-round as medical examiner, having left the job but feeling uneasy about the way it ended. It turns out a new murder has unsettling echoes of her very first case. Bobby Cannavale plays a former detective and Ariana DeBose is Dorothyโs daughter. ย There is a pattern with Kidman series. Some people love them and others find them hilariously over-the-top.ย Vultureย said of theย trailer, โItโs the kind of show where she furiously pushes things off a shelf.โ
Scarpetta premieres 11 March on Prime Video internationally
6. Sunny Nights
Will Forte and DโArcy Carden, both actors expert at being droll, play American siblings, Martin and Vicki, who go to Sydney to start a spray-tan business, living at a run-down motel with the nonsensical name Sunny Nights. And their wrong-headed moves are just getting started. With the business floundering, they deal with loan sharks, get on the wrong side of a crime boss named Mony (Rachel House) and have to go on the run. Along the way Martin is blackmailed because of a sex tape. When the show premiered in Australia in December, theย Guardianโs four-star review called it โvery entertaining and sassy,โ and said, โbeneath the playful surface, this is fundamentally a crime story โ one told with a disarmingly light comedic touch.โ And if Australian comedies make you think of Colin from Accounts, that actually makes sense. Both shows have the same director, Trent OโDonnell, and Patrick Brammall from Colin makes a guest appearance here.
Sunny Nights premieres 11 March on Hulu in the US
7. The Madison
Theย Taylor Sheridan multiverseย keeps spinning on. One of his new series is not a Yellowstone spinoff, but as usual it is set in scenic Montana and everyone gets to wear cowboy hats. And like 1923, with Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, it has some big-name stars. Michelle Pfeiffer is Stacy and Kurt Russell is her husband, Preston, matriarch and patriarch of the Clyburns, a family that moves from New York to the Madison River Valley of Montana to deal with grief. Their younger daughter, Paige (Elle Chapman) and her husband, Russell (Patrick J Adams) are a cosmopolitan couple in New York, but the Clyburnsโ older daughter Abigail (Beau Garrett) and her daughter move West. Aย trailerย showing the desolate Stacy in, presumably, a morgue has led to muchย speculationย that poor old Preston is only seen in flashbacks. Meanwhile, back among the Duttons of Yellowstone, Marshals is a direct spinoff from the origin-show, with Luke Grimes as youngest son Kayce, who now tracks down bad guys as a US Marshal. โYellowstone is gone,โ he says in theย trailer. We beg to differ.ย
The Madison premieres 14 March on Paramount + in the US and UK
8. Imperfect Women
In this thriller, three women have been close friends since college until now, when one of them is murdered. This melodramatic plot is elevated by an all-star cast. Elisabeth Moss is Mary, the overwhelmed mother of three. Kerry Washington is Eleanor, whose family money is behind the philanthropy she runs, and Kate Mara is the working-class Nancy, who married into a wealthy family, and who, we find out right away, is the murder victim. As the investigation into the killing goes forward, the story also flashes back in time, revealing the friendsโ tangled relationships, secrets and betrayals. Joel Kinnaman is Nancyโs husband, whose family has hated her from the start. Corey Stoll plays Maryโs husband, an unemployed academic, Leslie Odom Jr is Eleanorโs protective brother and Ana Ortiz is the Los Angeles detective determined to find the truth. In addition to melodrama, the show adds a gloss of real-estate envy just from Nancy and Eleanorโs homes.
Imperfect Women premieres 18 March on Apple TV internationally
9. The Lady
News events have suddenly made this fictionalised version of a true story timelier than ever. The series is not about Sarah Ferguson, recently in theย headlinesย because of her ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But itโs not exactlyย notย about her either. The focus is on Mia McKenna-Bruce as Jane Andrews, who, despite modest origins and a thick Northern accent, answered an ad in The Lady magazine in 1988 and was hired as the royal dresser to Sarah (Natalie Dormer), the Duchess of York. The two became close friends, but when Jane was dismissed nine years later, she spun out of control. In 2001 she was convicted of killing her boyfriend, sentenced to life in prison and was released in 2019.ย All that is true. Dramatising events, the series goes back to Janeโs girlhood and her lifelong struggle with mental health issues that she managed to hide from the Duchess. But the real lure of the story is likely to come from Dormerโs scenes as Sarah, shown binging chocolate biscuits during an emotional meltdown and recklessly flirting with an Italian.ย
The Lady premieres 18 March on Britbox in the US and is currently on ITVX and ITV1 in the UK
10. The Comeback
If a show is called The Comeback, thereโs no telling how many times it will do just that. This is the third season over a 20-year span of the satire starring Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish, who was once the star of a hit sitcom and has been trying to stay employed and relevant as an actress ever since. The first season, which premiered in 2005, had Valerie starring in a behind-the-scenes reality show documenting her return to television. The actual Comeback was cancelled but gained a cult following. Season two arrived in 2014, and here we are again, with Valerie now cast in a sitcom written by artificial intelligence and plunged into the world of influencers. Michael Patrick King, the producer who created the show with Kudrow, returns for this new instalment. Looking back on the distance from it start, he said toย EW, โIs it possible that everybody turned into Valerie Cherish โ curating their lives on camera for social media?โ Dan Bucatinsky returns as Valerieโs publicist, and Andrew Scott joins the cast as the head of a Hollywood studio.
The Comeback premieres 22 March on HBO and Max in the US
11. Bait
Riz Ahmed has made his name in dramas, earning an Oscar nomination for The Sound of Metal, but he reveals his comic side in this series he wrote and stars in. He plays a struggling actor named Shah Latif, who gets an audition to play the next James Bond. Word leaks to the public and everyone around him, especially his large Anglo-Pakistani family, goes wild with expectations and advice, throwing his life into chaos. โItโs almost like his life starts to resemble the spy thriller that heโs auditioning for,โ Ahmed toldย Colliderย when the show premiered at Sundance. โHeโs in a long chase sequence in a way.โ He got the approval of Bond producer Barbara Broccoli, he toldย Deadline, by explaining that the show isnโt really about 007. Itโs about Shah and โthat crazy distance between our public and our private selves,โ he said. But come to think of it, Ahmedย couldย be James Bond.
Bait premieres 25 March on Prime Video internationally
12. Something Very Bad is Going to Happen
The Duffer Brothers ofย Stranger Thingsย are the executive producers of this series, which stars Camila Morrone, last seen running for her life as Roxana, the duplicitous girlfriend of an arms dealer, in The Night Manager. Here she plays Rachel, a bride who is seen in theย trailerย taking a slow-motion walk down the aisle with horror-movie sound effects in the background, never a good omen for the marriage. The series takes place during the week before the wedding of Rachel and Nicky (Adam DiMarco), and among the signs she should probably pay attention to is an actual hand-written placard in blood-red ink reading โDonโt marry himโ. The showโs creator, Haley Z Boston, has compared its tone to a mixture of Carrie and Rosemaryโs Baby. โMy natural approach is from a place of character and dialogue and humour and then infusing that with unsettling horror,โ sheย said. That doesnโt mean the story is unrelatable. โThe show is about the fear of marrying the wrong person,โ she added.
Something Very Bad is Going to Happen premieres 26 March on Netflix internationally
Credit: BBC
