Netflix
From the return of hit Netflix crime drama The Gentlemen to a miniseries about the infamous Lizzie Borden murder case – these are the best series to watch and stream.
Netflix
1. The Gentlemen
There is never too much crime in Guy Ritchie’s universe, including the second season of this popular series inspired by his 2019 film of the same name. Theo James returns as Eddie, the dashing Duke of Halstead, whose inheritance included a title, an expansive estate, and the marijuana farm on its grounds. Bridgerton was never like this. Eddie is now all in on that criminal enterprise run by Susie (Kaya Scodelario) and her father, Bobby (Ray Winstone). Daniel Ings returns as Eddie’s shambolic brother, Freddy, with Joely Richardson as their mother, Lady Sabrina, and Giancarlo Esposito as a US drug dealer, Stanley Johnson. As Bobby’s empire expands, the setting moves from the UK to Italy, where Sergio Castellitto plays an Italian crime boss. Hugh Bonneville joins the cast as a character called Lord Hawthorne, who is likely a lot shadier than Bonneville’s Lord Grantham from Downton Abbey.
The Gentlemen premieres 3 September on Netflix internationally
Apple TV+
2. Last Seen
Patrick Brammall stars in two very different shows this month. Far from the comedy of Colin from Accounts (coming up below), he is in the midst of drama and suspense in this thriller set and shot in Victoria, Australia. Brammall is intense as Ian Ridley, a police dispatcher and former detective whose three-year-old daughter was kidnapped 11 years before. No trace of her was found, and since then Ian’s marriage has crumbled and he has spiralled into alcoholism. When he takes an emergency call from a young woman he believes is his daughter, he becomes determined to find her even if no one else believes him. Maxine Peake also stars, and is touching in her role, as we follow where the clues lead Ian and how that will impact his already troubled life.
Last Seen premieres 9 September on Apple TV internationally
3. Colin From Accounts
This third season will be the last for the Sydney-set romantic comedy that started when brewery owner Gordon and medical student Ashley – Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, the real-life couple who created and wrote the series – found themselves co-parenting a dog they named Colin From Accounts. The previous season ended with Ashley balking at Gordon’s marriage proposal, humiliatingly offered in public at a friend’s wedding, and the new story picks up three years later when they accidentally run into each other one more time. The will-they or won’t-they picks up again, but it can’t last forever. “We don’t want to flog a dead horse,” Brammall told the Guardian about their creative decision to end the series. In that joint interview Dyer jumped in with the kind of dry comic line that could have come straight from the show. “It is not that the horse is dead yet – we don’t even want to find it is having trouble breathing,” she said.
Colin From Accounts premieres 10 September on Paramount+ in the US and will premiere on BBC iPlayer in the UK later this year
Britbox
4. Agatha Christie’s Tommy & Tuppence
Can an Agatha Christie mystery survive a transplant from her usual country estates and vicarages in the 1920s and 30s? The answer is a solid yes in this deft contemporary version of her stories and novels featuring the detecting pair of Tommy and Tuppence. This version of Tommy (Josh Dylan) is a mystery writer who runs into Tuppence (Antonia Thomas), his ex from university, at a friend’s wedding. Of course, there is a murder, and when they team up to investigate a new detective firm is born. But their mutual attraction is a problem because Tuppence is married and Tommy is soon flirting with a helpful, pretty detective (Callie Cooke). Imelda Staunton plays Tommy’s Aunt Ada, who in wry voiceover narrates the story. Christie’s five Tommy and Tuppence books saw the characters grow and age from 1922 to 1973. Why not let them leap into the 21st Century?
Agatha Christie’s Tommy & Tuppence premieres 15 September on Britbox in the US
Netflix
5. Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story
This fourth instalment of Ryan Murphy’s Monster anthology, with its creepy look at human evil and violence, is about one of US culture’s most iconic killers, the person who inspired a familiar rhyme starting, “Lizzie Borden took an axe / And gave her mother forty whacks.” Ella Beatty (daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening) is seen in Netflix’s publicity photos with a blood-splattered face as Lizzie, accused but never convicted of the axe-murders of her father and stepmother in 1892. Vicky Krieps plays the Bordens’ maid, with Billie Lourd as Lizzie’s sister and Rebecca Hall and Charlie Hunnam (killer Ed Gein in the previous Monster instalment) as the ill-fated parents. Beatty has said, “This season gives us our first female monster and delves into female rage and repression.” In that vein, the story detours into other real-life women murderers, with Sarah Paulson as Aileen Wuornos, who was played by Charlize Theron in the 2003 film also called – homage or coincidence? – Monster.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story premieres 17 September on Netflix internationally
Apple TV+
6. Slow Horses
In the latest season oftelevision’s best spy series, someone is systematically killing off former MI5 agents who once worked out of Slough House, people that the endlessly smart, always slovenly Jackson Lamb – played with such shrewd wit by Gary Oldman – calls “my Joes”. River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) suspects his paid-assassin father (Hugo Weaving), but there are plenty of possible villains. Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas), head of MI5, is under more pressure than ever. And because the team has been targeted, many of the Slow Horses have to go into hiding together. Guess how badly that turns out. The returning cast also includes Saskia Reeves as Catherine, Christopher Chung as Roddy, Aimee-Ffion Edwards as Shirley and a surprise. The show’s previous season wasn’t its best, as it inadvertently made you wonder how the often-clueless Roddy ever managed to become a spy, computer genius or not. But it returns at full strength with all its drollness, action, and impeccable acting.
Slow Horses premieres 18 September on Apple TV internationally
Apple TV
7. Brothers
A real-life rumour, based on a teasing hint dropped by Matthew McConaughey’s mother, has it that he and his friend Woody Harrelson are actually half-brothers from a brief encounter between Matthew’s mother and Woody’s father. The True Detective stars have taken that idea as the premise for this heavily fictionalised meta-comedy. They play versions of themselves, but actors take over the roles of the fictitious family members in the wacky story, which has Woody, his wife and two daughters arrive in Texas to visit Matthew, his wife and their three children. Holland Taylor plays Matthew’s brash, hard-drinking mother, whom everyone calls Ma Mac and who drops her explosive hint to Woody. At times the story slyly alludes to reality, as it does when the fictional Matthew decides to run for governor of Texas: that speculation has swirled around the actual McConaughey, who so far has chosen not to run. In general the series mixes sitcom silliness from Woody with a dash of serious emotion from Matthew – very on brand for both of them.
Brothers premieres 23 September on Apple TV internationally
FX
8. American Horror Story
There have already been a dozen instalments of Ryan Murphy’s horror anthology, but because this is the 13th, it has special meaning for the superstitious and also for the casting. The show rounds up an all-star lineup of actors from previous seasons, playing a number of their old characters. Among the series’ most iconic and high-profile returns, Jessica Lange plays all four of her prior characters and Sarah Paulson does six. Evan Peters, Emma Roberts, Kathy Bates, Angela Bassett and Billie Lourd also come back in a story that promises to swirl around and make fans’ heads spin. Murphy has said, “It’s like The Avengers. They all come together to defeat the ultimate evil.” A 14th season is already in the works, so whatever these horror-Avengers banish, it’s obviously not one more Ryan Murphy show.
American Horror Story premieres 24 September on Hulu in the US and 25 September on Disney+ in the UK
Netflix
9. A Different World
This dramedy is not a reboot but a sequel to the spin-off of The Cosby Show that ran from 1987 to 1993. The producers have obviously decided that enough time has passed for an update to escape the taint of Bill Cosby’s sexual assault scandal, and in fact the spinoff quickly veered away from that show’s Huxtable family. Like the original Different World, this features a group of students at the fictional Hillman College, now centred around Deborah Wayne (Maleah Joi Moon), the daughter of characters from the first series. Alum from the original, including Jasmine Guy and Jada Pinkett Smith, will make nostalgic guest appearances here. In its day, the old show was notable for drawing attention to HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities) and for tackling issues like race, class and sex. Felicia Pride, the new series’ showrunner, has said it was similarly important for her team to listen to young black people today, “what they need, what they are dealing with and what they are facing,” while staying true to the themes of “love, family relationships, heart”.
A Different World premieres 24 September on Netflix internationally
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