The top 10 TV shows to put in your diary for the second half of the year
In the streaming era, television is a 52-weeks-a-year industry. There’s always something new to watch. With the viewing year half over, here’s a preview of what’s to come: 10 promising shows debuting over the next six months. Take notes because we’ve got plenty to choose from.
The Agency (Paramount+, TBA)
Devotees of espionage thrillers – hello, it’s me! – will tell you that the best series in the genre over the past decade was The Bureau (Le Bureau des Legendes), a French drama that debuted in 2015 and ran for five seasons. It was a detailed, gripping procedural – notable for its spycraft and breaking-point psyches.
Transposed to London, the English-language remake has cast the perfect lead, with The Killer’s menacingly still Michael Fassbender playing a deep cover CIA agent who returns after years in the field but is unable to shake his dual life.
Vince Vaughn in an out-there crime tale, Carl Hiaasen’s Bad Monkey.Credit: Apple TV+
Bad Monkey (Apple TV+, August 14)
Newspaper columnist turned author Carl Hiaasen has spent decades writing pungent comic thrillers about the criminal intrigue and wild eccentrics that define Florida. There’s been one terrible Hollywood adaptation, 1996’s Striptease with Demi Moore, but now Ted Lasso and Shrinking co-creator Bill Lawrence is taking on Hiaasen’s 2013 novel about a former cop working as a health inspector who won’t let go of a case that begins with a severed arm. It’s an out-there crime tale, with Vince Vaughn – hopefully at his high-octane best – in the lead role.
Keira Knightley plays a spy, Helen Webb, in Black Doves.Credit: Netflix
Black Doves (Netflix, TBA)
If you haven’t seen Netflix’s 2019 Tokyo-meets-London crime drama Giri/Haji, I suggest you do so as soon as possible. That will also prepare you for creator Joe Barton’s new series, also set in London, where a British spy, Keira Knightley’s Helen, has to cross over into the city’s underworld after her lover becomes victim to it. Accompanying her on the murky quest is an old friend, Ben Whishaw’s Sam. The latter was a delight as the nebbish Q to Daniel Craig’s James Bond, but I like the idea of him mixing it up in the field.
Critical Incident (Stan, TBA)
Set in Sydney’s western suburbs, this crime drama from creator Sarah Bassiuoni (The Heights) is attuned to timely issues that are central to what Australia is and was: the struggle for effective policing, the stress points in multicultural communities, and the plight of the individual against an entrenched system. It starts with a young police officer, “Zil” Ahmed (Akshay Khanna), pursuing a teenage suspect, Dalia (Zoe Boe), only for the arrest to go tragically wrong. Can Zil make amends or does he pursue a cover-up?
Prestige television: Cate Blanchett in Disclaimer.Credit: Apple TV+
Disclaimer (Apple TV+, October 11)
Now this is capital-P Prestige television. Cate Blanchett headlines a psychological thriller about an esteemed British documentary filmmaker, Catherine Ravenscroft, who is anonymously sent a novel which appears to be about her life, including references to a secret she has hidden from the world.
Adapted from Renee Knight’s novel of the same name, the limited series is written and directed by Alfonso Cuaron, the magisterial Mexican filmmaker responsible for Children of Men, Gravity, and Roma, with a supporting cast that includes Kevin Kline and Sacha Baron Cohen.
Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes (Binge, August 4)
There are movie stars, there are Hollywood icons, and then there is Elizabeth Taylor. A 1940s teen queen turned screen siren – imagine Zendaya going full Angelina Jolie – whose fame helped birth the celebrity industry, Taylor did it all (including eight marriages to seven men). Compared to today’s non-stop coverage of the famous, she lived a comparatively private life, which makes the discovery of the previously unheard interview tapes that underpin this documentary all the more fascinating. The forthright Taylor, in her own words, is a tantalising prospect.
Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist (Binge, September 6)
The period costumes are going to be wild. The setting is Atlanta in 1970, with Muhammad Ali making his comeback to professional boxing after years of legal strife. When a local hustler, “Chicken Man” (Kevin Hart), hosts an after-party for visiting celebrities that gets held up by armed criminals, he has to convince both the city’s criminal milieu and the pioneering black police detective assigned to the case, J.D. Hudson (Don Cheadle), that he’s innocent. Look for Samuel L. Jackson and Empire leads Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard as fellow players.
Four Years (SBS, TBA)
SBS continues to reflect on the global lives that are experienced by those who relocate to Australia, with this romantic drama about a young Indian couple – Yash (Akshay Ajit Singh, 24: India) and Sridevi (Shahana Goswami, A Suitable Boy) – whose love for each other is tested when the former lands a four-year long medical traineeship here soon after their wedding. He leaves for Australia, she stays in India, with the series exploring their contrasting days, the demands on them, and the difficulty of reuniting as different people.
The Penguin (Binge, September TBA)
The era of making spin-off series from blockbuster movies is probably going to be a short one, but the big two looming are Dune: Prophecy (reportedly a tumultuous production) and this limited series that sees Colin Farrell putting back on the extensive prosthetic make-up that transformed him into Oswald Cobblepot, aka The Penguin, from 2022’s superhero reboot, The Batman.
Thankfully, this is not an origin tale, but instead is set a week after the movie’s events concluded. Fingers crossed it can stand on its own two feet.
The Perfect Couple (Netflix, TBA)
Finding juicy roles for Nicole Kidman should be a priority of the streaming era, and this old-money mystery looks promising. The Australian star plays Greer Garson Winbury, a famous novelist and matriarch of a wealthy American family, who disapproves of her son’s outsider fianceé, Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson, Bad Sisters). The wedding’s frosty mood changes, and allegiances shift, when a body is found on the beach of the family’s enclave. Liev Schreiber (Ray Donovan) and Dakota Fanning (Ripley) co-star, but let’s just savour Kidman’s perfectly snooty name here: Greer Garson Winbury.
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