15 Great TV Shows To Look Forward To This Year

Based on Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer-winning novel, All The Light We Cannot See is about Marie-Laure, a blind French girl and her father Daniel, who flee German-occupied Paris with a legendary diamond to keep it from falling into the hands of the Nazis. Relentlessly pursued by a cruel Gestapo officer who seeks to possess the stone for his own selfish means, Marie-Laure and Daniel soon find refuge in Saint-Malo, where they take up residence with a reclusive uncle who transmits clandestine radio broadcasts as part of the resistance. Yet here, in this once idyllic seaside city, Marie-Laure’s path also collides inexorably with the unlikeliest of kindred spirits: Werner, a brilliant teenager enlisted by Hitler’s regime to track down illegal broadcasts, who instead shares a secret connection to Marie-Laure as well as her faith in humanity and the possibility of hope.

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In this spin-off of the South Korean hit drama, 456 players will enter a real-life Squid Game competition show in pursuit of a life-changing reward of $4.56m. As they compete through a series of games inspired by the original series – plus surprising new additions – their strategies, alliances and characters will be put to the test while competitors are eliminated around them.

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Based on the novel by Thomas Mallon, Fellow Travelers is an epic love story and political thriller, chronicling the romance between two very different men who meet in McCarthy-era Washington. Matt Bomer plays charismatic Hawkins Fuller, who maintains a financially rewarding, behind-the scenes career in politics. Hawkins avoids emotional entanglements until he meets Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey), a young man brimming with idealism and religious faith. They begin a romance just as Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn declare war on ‘subversives and sexual deviants’, initiating one of the darkest periods in 20th-century American history. Over the course of four decades, we follow the characters as they cross paths through the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, the drug-fuelled disco hedonism of the 1970s and the Aids crisis of the 1980s.

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Fool Me Once follows Maya Stern (Michelle Keegan) who is trying to come to terms with the brutal murder of her husband Joe (Richard Armitage). But when Maya installs a nanny-cam to keep an eye on her young daughter, she is shocked to see a man she recognises in her house – her husband, who she thought was dead. Meanwhile, Maya's niece and nephew are trying to find out the truth about their mother's murder several months earlier. Are the two cases connected? 

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Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story is a tale of success against adversity for the £1 Formula 1 racing team. Starring Keanu Reeves as host and F1 legends Ross Brawn, Jenson Button, Nick Fry, Rubens Barrichello and Christian Horner, the unscripted documentary series tells the remarkable story of how Ross Brawn made the impossible happen in 2009. Competing in the most expensive and technologically advanced racing series on Earth, his understaffed, underfinanced and independent team won the drivers’ and constructors’ championships. Go behind the scenes of this fairy tale with the people who were there – on the track, in the garage and the boardroom – to see Brawn taking on the sport’s titans with a team he bought for £1.

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The first series of Time told the story of Mark (Sean Bean), who was sentenced to four years in prison after accidentally killing a man. Series two is an original new story told through the lens of three very different inmates, this time inside a women’s prison. Arriving at Carlingford HMP on the same day, Kelsey (Bella Ramsey), Orla (Jodie Whittaker) and Abi (Tamara Lawrance) are thrown together to face an unfamiliar world. But even with the ever-present threat of violence within the prison’s walls, they discover that an unexpected sense of community and a shared understanding might be possible.

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The sixth and final season of The Crown will air in November. Getting ever closer to the present day, the series will take viewers to Scotland in the early 2000s. Prince William (Ed McVey) has started university at St Andrews, where he hopes to lead as normal a life as possible before taking up his royal responsibilities. Little does he know that his future begins on campus when he meets fellow student Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy).

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Coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the launch of Robbie Williams’s solo career, this is the definitive four-part documentary series on the most successful UK solo artist of all time. Drawing from hundreds of hours of intimate, never-before-seen personal archive spanning 30 years – as well as exclusive access to Williams – this series is the first to explore the human being behind the sometimes salacious headlines.

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The Buccaneers is an eight-episode drama inspired by Pulitzer-winning author Edith Wharton’s unfinished final novel of the same name. The music-driven series depicts 19th-century English aristocratic life against a modern soundtrack produced by Stella Mozgawa (of the band Warpaint) – it’s packed with songs from top female performers including Taylor Swift, Boygenius, Maggie Rogers, Bikini Kill, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Angel Olsen. The series follows a group of fun-loving young American girls as they explode into a tightly corseted London season of the 1870s, kicking off an Anglo-American culture clash as the land of the stiff upper lip is infiltrated by a disregard for centuries of tradition. Sent to secure husbands and titles, the Buccaneers’ hearts are set on much more than that – and saying ‘I do’ is just the beginning.

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Mary & George is inspired by the unbelievable true story of Mary Villiers (Julianne Moore), who moulded her beautiful and charismatic son George (Nicholas Galitzine) to seduce King James VI of Scotland and I of England and become his all-powerful lover. Through outrageous scheming, the pair rose from humble beginnings to become the richest, most titled and influential players the English court had ever seen, and the king’s most trusted advisors. And with England’s place on the world stage under threat from a Spanish invasion and rioters taking to the streets to denounce the king, the stakes could not have been higher. 

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Three Little Birds is written by Sir Lenny Henry and  inspired by his mother’s stories about leaving Jamaica in the 1950s for Great Britain, which became her lifelong home. Written with scriptwriter Russell T Davies, the drama comprises six fictional episodes. It tells the story of gregarious sisters Leah and Chantrelle, who hail from St Anne’s district in Jamaica, and their virtuous, bible-loving acquaintance, Hosanna, as they board a cruise ship heading for a new life over here.

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This stylish new thriller stars Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Gemma Arterton, Niamh Algar, Ned Dennehy and Eddie Izzard. The drama kicks off where most crime stories end: after a high-stakes heist, when the crew of elite criminals have gone their separate ways and have tried to leave their old lives behind. Past and present collide when a ruthless assassin starts targeting them one by one. Why are they being stalked, who is behind the mayhem, and will they be able to find one another in time to protect themselves and the people they love?

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Joanne Froggatt plays frontline hospital consultant Rachel Clarke in Breathtaking, which is based on Clarke’s unflinching personal memoir of the greatest public health crisis in living memory. Produced by Jed Mercurio’s production company, the drama recounts the devastating impact of Covid-19 through the eyes of one doctor and how frontline medical staff endured fear and frustration as they desperately tried to save the lives of coronavirus patients.

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Maestro is the new biopic that centres on the relationship between American composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia Montealegre. Directed by Bradley Cooper, who also plays Leonard, Maestro is a fearless love story chronicling the lifelong relationship of the composer and Felicia (Carey Mulligan). The film will hit cinemas in November, before being released on Netflix in December.

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The upcoming third season of critically acclaimed espionage drama Slow Horses lands in December. The darkly humorous series follows a dysfunctional team of British intelligence agents who serve in a dumping-ground department of MI5 known unaffectionately as Slough House. At the outset of the new season, a romantic liaison in Istanbul threatens to expose a buried MI5 secret in London. When Jackson Lamb and his bunch of misfits are dragged into the fight, they find themselves caught in a conspiracy that threatens the future not just of Slough House but of MI5 itself.

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