Streaming platforms are not fooling around this April, delivering brand new high-concept series about spies, criminals and aliens—whilst some of our fave continuing shows make welcome returns.
Eliza Janssen picks the top 10 buzziest shows arriving on our small screens over the month, on services like Netflix, Paramount+, Apple TV+, and more.
Ripley: Limited Series
Ripley: Limited Series
Patricia Highsmith’s fictional creation Tom Ripley is a man of a thousand faces, able to charm and disturb in equal measure. That descriptor could also apply to Irish acting powerhouse Andrew Scott, who plays the sociopathic social climber in this slick new series adaptation. Sent to Italy to convince glamorous playboy Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) to return to the US, Tom is instead cast into a web of lies, murder, and desire—and he’s the spider at its centre.
Crooks: Season 1
Crooks: Season 1
With its simple title and bare-bones, crime-intrigue plot, this German thriller series brings together all your fave bits of gangster, heist, and odd couple stories. It’ll follow a retired safecracker who must team up with a two-bit hood, as they chase a priceless coin that every gang in Europe’s trying to get their grubby mitts on. Not the first show on this list about sulky, handsome men posing with cars…
Star Trek: Discovery: Season 5
Star Trek: Discovery - Season 5
The last season of this galaxy-trotting Trek series arrives very soon, meaning you have limited time to get up to date with disgraced (and now re-graced!) Commander Michael Burnham’s intergalactic exploits. After the time-jump and sweeping Federation reforms of the last few seasons, this concluding chapter has the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery tackling a mysterious and ancient power. Live long and etc.
Parasyte: The Grey: Season 1
Parasyte: The Grey - Season 1
Things get Cronenbergian in this creepy South Korean sci-fi series, with alien parasites latching onto humanity and taking control. Do they have a right to nest inside us for their survival? How do we get rid of the slippery lil buggers? Director Yeon Sang-Ho, of Train to Busan fame, has the grisly answers. The gnarly CGI effects will have you craving a good thorough shower after each episode.
Sugar: Season 1
Sugar: Season 1
“Good and bad can be in the eye of the beholder”, Colin Farrell narrates in the trailer for his new crime drama: how very noir of him. The Irish actor goes all California for this private detective series, also acting as executive producer. He’ll solve the disappearance of a Hollywood producer’s granddaughter, but certainly get caught up the City of Angels’ most devilish secrets, temptations and dangers along the way.
Heartbreak High: Season 2
Heartbreak High: Season 1 (2022)
We don’t have a trailer yet for the second instalment of this hit Aussie coming-of-age series—but you can bet Netflix has picked up on everything audiences loved about season one, and will wisely double down. Our writer Cat Woods was pretty positive about those 2022 episodes: “This show, as the original, provides a vehicle for teenagers to start conversations with their friends, their parents, or strangers on social media: about sexual consent, gender identity, monogamy, and the fractious nature of friendships.”
Franklin: Limited Series
Franklin: Limited Series
Folks on our social media pages are already griping about Michael Douglas’s casting as founding father Benjamin Franklin: should he have just slapped on a bald patch for authenticity’s sake? Nevertheless, we have faith that Douglas can convince us of Franklin’s electrifying intellect, here retelling the man’s secret mission to France as revolutionary war threatens the future of a United States still in its infancy.
Fallout: Season 1
Fallout: Season 1
The rust-bucket, mid-century, post-apocalyptic aesthetic of the Fallout video game franchise is just begging to be adapted to the screen, and this epic sci-fi series attempts just that. I’m most keen to see my boy Walton Goggins, sans nose, as mutant gunslinger The Ghoul, but Ella Purnell, Kyle MacLachlan, Matt Berry and Aaron Moten certainly sweeten the deal. It should be a lot of fun exploring this wasteland—especially for die-hard fans of the games.
The Sympathizer: Miniseries
If Ripley didn’t sate your desire for shape-shifting, double-dealing main characters, let director Park Chan-Wook take care of it. The Korean auteur adapts a Pulitzer Prize winning novel about a French-Vietnamese Communist spy (Hoa Xuande), exiled to the US after the Vietnam War. Sandra Oh is always a welcome face, and recent Oscar-winner Robert Downey Jr. is set to appear in multiple antagonistic roles—seems he still wants to push himself after escaping the Marvel mines and stunning us in Oppenheimer.
Knuckles: Season 1
Taking place in between the second and third feature films about that pesky blue hedgehog, red echidna Knuckles (Idris Elba) gets his time in the limelight in this high-octane spin-off. One for the kids, surely, as it adopts the mega-successful Sonic films’ blend of live-action and slick CGI, to follow Knuckles and a hapless human companion (Adam Pally) on a journey of self-discovery across the American West.
