Turn this November into YESvember, by getting hooked on a brand new streaming obsession or catching up with a returning fave show! The month will include a final goodbye to the dastardly Duttons of Yellowstone, as well as our first encounter with Dune’s Bene Gesserit in a lush new prequel series.
Whether you’re taken with Kathy Bates as a genderflipped golden oldie character of legal TV, or keen to learn more about the Troubles in startling true stories, make sure to add each exciting title to your watchlist: that way you’ll be notified as episodes drop.
Citadel: Honey Bunny: Season 1
Citadel: Honey Bunny
Amazon still has its fingers crossed that the super-expensive Citadel series can rise to take over the world, following up last month’s spin-off Diana with this new, Mumbai-set edition of espionage thrills. The freshest iteration has a few things going for it, namely a vibrant 90s setting and some Bollywood flavour, courtesy of Indian directing team Raj and DK. It’s also a prequel, showing the origins of the duelling spy factions that have dominated the world of the show…if not the memories or small screens of viewers, going by the scant statistical gossip we’ve heard. Hopefully newcomers to the “Citadel universe” who missed last year’s opening chapter can jump right in without too much intel research to be done.
Cross: Season 1
Cross: Season 1
A family man, a detective, a PHD in psychology—and, at various points ever since James Patterson first wrote him into existence, Morgan Freeman, Tyler Perry, and now Aldis Hodge: Alex Cross is truly a man of many facets. With Hodge suiting up as the determined cop for this episodic adaptation, literary crime fans will get an extended session with one of the most dependable thriller protagonists around. This time, the D.C. homicide cop is on the trail of a sadistic serial killer, with Cross obviously uncovering a dark connection between the fresh slayings and his late wife’s passing. Hodge is one of those talents who’s deserved a big, juicy lead role for a while now, able to switch fluidly from sympathy to intimidation: he’ll certainly do Patterson’s much-adapted hero justice.
The Day of the Jackal: Season 1
Based on a true account of a failed assassination, and embellished by author Frederick Forsythe with juicy espionage details, novel The Day of the Jackal has made its way onto the big screen before with great success. Now, Eddie Redmayne stars as the titular assassin, a steely killer going toe-to-toe with Lashana Lynch’s MI5 agent, who must capture the cunning hitman before he commits a devastating act with international implications. The story’s been shifted to a modern setting, with the target of Forsythe’s original plot being French President Charles de Gaulle: those who’ve read the book, or anyone else who merely has an appetite for thrilling and finely-characterised spy sagas, should be left breathless as the elaborate plot unfurls.
Dune: Prophecy: Season 1
Dune: Prophecy - Season 1
Reckon Timmy pulled off some pretty exciting stuff in Denis Villeneuve’s stunning Dune adaptations? Ya girls the Bene Gesserit—a witchy sisterhood of space prophets, always pulling the strings of their own agenda in the background of the empire’s scheming—have been at it for much longer…10,000 years, to be precise. Nerds who’ve followed Frank Herbert’s impenetrable lore since forever will eat up this prequel series with pleasure, as it follows Harkonnen sisters played by Emily Watson and Olivia Williams. Just how did their eerie sect get started? And who came up with the sick costumes? I personally don’t mind if this spin-off spins off in its own sinister direction and leaves a few franchisey questions unanswered, keeping the house of Atreides at a distance. As long as we get a sandworm sequence or two thrown in there.
Get Millie Black: Season 1
A Scotland Yard cop returning to her hometown. A missing girl. A rich and powerful family with dark business secrets. The elements in this fresh HBO mystery are all familiar, but it’s distinguished by a vibrant and often bleak Jamaican setting, the dialogue brightened with patios and characters burdened by the hard truths of their environment. The eponymous Millie (Tamara Lawrance) is both admirable and a little scary, willing to burn bridges and put her life at risk to right wrongs of the past—and her relationship with her sister Hibiscus (Chyna McQueen) lends the cop procedural story a piercingly personal element, as transwoman Hibiscus forces Millie to reconsider the childhood trauma they both struggle to leave in the past. Upsetting, addictive, and full of gasp-worthy twists.
A Man On The Inside: Season 1
A new Netflix comedy series, based on an Oscar-nominated Chilean documentary? Um, sure, especially if it stars Ted Danson. If you missed 2020’s The Mole Agent, it followed an elderly “spy” tasked with checking into and checking out an old folks’ home, his eyes and camera pen open to notice any signs of elder abuse. Sounds like heavy stuff, but since even that non-fiction film had its funny and heartwarming moments, sitcom auteur Michael Schur is now turning it into an even funnier series, with Danson as our tech-challenged mole. Schur has worked with Danson before on existential comedy The Good Place, and the cast also includes Mary Elizabeth Ellis and Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s Stephanie Beatriz, amongst a who’s-who of winning older talent. Watch it and then go visit your nanna.
Matlock: Season 1
I have bad news and good news. First is the tragic shock that screen legend Kathy Bates is retiring, apparently sick of giving us everything we could want from a career of colourful characterisations: “Everything I’ve prayed for, worked for, clawed my way up for, I am suddenly able to be asked to use all of it…and it’s exhausting”, she complained to press recently. Noooo Kath! Now the good news: we’re getting one, final role from Bates, in a gender-flipped and modernised take on the classic legal telly drama. The OG Matlock, Andy Griffiths, was a cantankerous and folksy attorney who used his unassuming wiles to win case after case, and Bates is more than capable of putting her own spin on such an archetypal character. With season one of the revamp premiering in September in the US, it’s already been successful enough to warrant a greenlit second season. No time to rest just yet, Kathy…
Say Nothing: Limited Series
Say Nothing: Limited Series
Based on the bestselling non-fiction chronicle of the same name from writer Patrick Radden Keefe, this miniseries should be an absorbing education in the main players, bloodiest stand-offs, and long-repressed secrets of the IRA movement. I absolutely chomped through the book recently, and indeed many of its most shocking turns feel ready for a screen dramatisation: with weighty questions about how violence begets violence, and institutionalised aggression versus rangier grassroots activism, the text and its stories deserve to be heard by a bigger audience. The cast of characters include leaders Gerry Adams and Brendan Hughes, but the heart of the story might be rebel Dolours Price, whose hunger strikes whilst imprisoned for London car bombings should be incredibly difficult to watch if portrayed accurately.
Silo: Season 2
Silo: Season 2
Like the oblivious spectators in Plato’s Cave, the dystopian dwellers in this Apple TV+ sci-fi series have little choice but to believe what they’ve been shown of a ruined outside world, safe (whatever that means) inside a tremendous silo of 144 levels. We wouldn’t want to spoil just how that illusion turned out at the end of Silo’s compelling first season, but it’s safe to say that star Rebecca Ferguson has a lot more apocalyptic adventuring ahead of her if she’s ever going to arrive at the awful truth of what happened to humanity. “You won’t want to move into this glorified bunker any time soon, but by god you’ll want keep returning televisually”, Luke Buckmaster praised of the addictive opening chapter: “I smashed through the entire first season in a few days.”
Yellowstone: Season 5 Part 2
Yellowstone: Season 5
Time to hang up your Stetson: the very last part of the fifth and final instalment of Yellowstone is upon us, and whew mama did the first batch leave things on a tantalising note. Kevin Costner’s steely patriarch John got sworn in as Governor of Montana in the fifth season’s first episode, and episode eight ended with his own traitorous kid Jamie (Wes Bentley) calling for his impeachment…and planning more mortal ends if that didn’t turn out, too. Unbeknownst to him, sister Beth (Kelly Reilly) has similarly murderous objectives in mind: so who’s gonna grab control of the vast family estate, and who’s going to end the series pushing up daisies?
