11 TV shows to watch this February

Caryn James picks out the biggest offerings – from the return of Netflix hit You to a revival of cult sitcom Party Down and a new travel series with Schitt’s Creek star Eugene Levy.
(Credit: ITV)

(Credit: ITV)

1. Nolly

Nearly forgotten in the UK and never known in the US, Noele Gordon, known as Nolly, was the star of the soap opera Crossroads, but her long run came to an end in 1981 when she was abruptly fired at the height of her popularity, leaving viewers to wonder why. Helena Bonham-Carter brings her back to life in this series from superstar creator Russell T Davies, of the great It’s a Sin, and former and future iterations of Doctor Who. Davies has said that one of his first television jobs was writing a script, never produced, for Crossroads, and “I’ve wanted to write the story of behind the scenes on that show for 40 years”. Another long-forgotten outrage worked for Hugh Grant as disgraced politician Jeremy Thorpe in Davies’s previous period miniseries A Very English Scandal, so Bonham-Carter may well have similar success playing this rediscovered popular entertainment heroine.

Nolly premieres on 2 February on ITVX in the UK and at a later date on Masterpiece on PBS in the US

(Credit: Getty Images)

(Credit: Getty Images)

2. Murder in Big Horn

Missing and murdered Native American women, whose disappearances are often brushed aside as accidental, have been the focus of plenty of dramas, including the 2017 film Wind River and the current Hilary Swank ABC series Alaska Daily. The non-fiction series Murder in Big Horn looks at several real-life cases in Montana, in interviews with those closest to the victims and crimes, including their families and local law enforcement officers. The co-directors know the subject areas well. Razelle Benally, of Oglala Lakota and Dine ancestry, has written for the superb AMC Native American drama Dark Winds, and Matthew Galkin directed Showtime’s docuseries Murder in the Bayou. Shown at the Sundance Film Festival last month, the series may give the lost women who are at its centre the justice and attention so many of them never got.

Murder in Big Horn premieres on 3 February on Showtime

(Credit: ABC)

(Credit: ABC)

3. Not Dead Yet

Smart, popular network sitcoms have been on the rise lately, with shows like the award-winning Abbott Elementary and the US version of UK comedy Ghosts. The latest attempt to reach that status stars Gina Rodriquez as a journalist who gave up her career to follow her boyfriend’s dream of opening a restaurant, only to find herself a cautionary tale a decade later, alone and jobless. She lands at a local newspaper in Pasadena, California, a lowly obituary writer. The twist? She sees dead people, the ghosts of her subjects, played by guest stars from sitcoms past, including Martin Mull and Rhea Perlman. Rodriguez, still beloved from her role as Jane the Virgin, may be the real draw here.

Not Dead Yet premieres on 8 February on ABC in the US

(Credit: Netflix)

(Credit: Netflix)

4. You

Penn Badgley returns for a fourth season as the most charming serial killer since Dexter. After killing his equally homicidal wife and faking his own death, the guy we know as Joe surfaces in London as a tweedy university professor who goes by the name Jonathan Moore and is already cranky about the elite poseurs around him. His season three obsession Marienne (Tati Gabrielle) is still around – while Charlotte Ritchie (Call the Midwife) looks set to be the latest target of his affections, playing Kate, an art gallery owner. You is among Netflix’s most successful series, and as with so many returning hit shows, the season will be split in two, with a month between them.

You premieres on 9 February on Netflix internationally

(Credit: Netflix)

(Credit: Netflix)

5. African Queens: Njinga

Jada Pinkett Smith narrates, and her company produces this new series that combines documentary with dramatisations to tell the stories of real-life African royalty. Season one is an account of Njinga, a 17th-Century warrior. Trained as a military and political leader, she fought against Portuguese colonisers, and ruled the lands of Ndongo and Matamba in what is now Angola. Netflix has positioned the series well. The success of films like The Woman King and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever have primed audiences for more stories of African women who led their people, and the series arrives during Black History Month in the US.

African Queens: Njinga premieres on 15 February on Netflix internationally

(Credit: Apple TV+)

(Credit: Apple TV+)

6. Hello Tomorrow!

Anyone who has seen Billy Crudup as a network executive on The Morning Show knows that he can make an ever-smiling but manipulative character fun to watch. In this new series, he stars as another slippery type, Jack, a salesman peddling real estate on the moon to buyers in a US straight out of The Jetsons. The cars and clothes look like the 1950s, but there are robots to do chores, and futuristic inventions like a self-tying necktie. Jack and his band of door-to-door sales people are actually selling unhappy people the promise of a fresh start in space. There is a plot turn too spoilery to reveal, but the safe disclosures include the appealing cast. Hank Azaria plays a salesman with a gambling problem, Jackie Weaver is Jack’s mother, and Alison Pill is a dissatisfied housewife ready to bolt to the moon.

Hello Tomorrow! premieres on 17 February on AppleTV+ internationally

(Credit: Apple TV+)

(Credit: Apple TV+)

7. The Reluctant Traveller With Eugene Levy

The star and co-creator of Schitt’s Creek, Levy has also been deadpan hilarious in several Christopher Guest mockumentaries, including A Mighty Wind. It might seem like this new project would be a mock-doc too, but no, it’s a real adventure-travel show. Levy takes viewers around the world to exotic places, even though, as he says in the trailer, “I’m more the great indoors type of guy.”  His aversion to leaving his comfort zone is the comic thread that runs through the series, as he ends up in the Arctic, the Maldives, the jungle in Costa Rica and a national park, complete with an elephant, in Africa. He might still be deadpan hilarious, even if he’s staring at a volcano.

The Reluctant Traveller With Eugene Levy premieres on 24 February on AppleTV+ internationally

(Credit: Starz)

(Credit: Starz)

8. Party Down

The previous season of this great, mordant cult classic about disgruntled Los Angeles cater-waiters ended in 2010. Now season three arrives with most of the same cast, more famous now than they were back then. Adam Scott, who played Henry, the smart one, is now better known for Severance. Other returning stars include Jane Lynch, Martin Starr, Ken Marino and Megan Mullally, with Jennifer Garner added as Henry’s love interest. After 13 years, some of the waiters have left the company and others not, so how they all get together again is still a mystery, but promo photos have them in their familiar pink-bow-tied uniforms. The spiky humour should remain the same, along with the format. Each instalment features a new party to cater at a different obnoxiously rich person’s house – the better to snoop around or break valuable glassware in.

Party Down premieres on 24 February on Starz

(Credit: Amazon Prime Video/Alamy)

(Credit: Amazon Prime Video/Alamy)

9. The Consultant

Sociopath or garden-variety boss from hell? Christoph Waltz is one of those things as Regus Patoff, newly hired as a consultant at a gaming company. In this dark comic thriller, the consultant soon takes sinister control of the business and does more than make employees nervous; he may actually ruin their lives. Queasy comic villainy is one of Waltz’s specialties, of course, honed in the Quentin Tarantino films Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. He seems a perfect match for a show likely to make you a little bit less hard on your real-life boss.

The Consultant premieres on 24 February on Prime Video internationally

(Credit: Apple TV+)

(Credit: Apple TV+)

10. Liaison

Vincent Cassel and Eva Green star in this glossy thriller about international intrigue, featuring spies, sex, betrayal and computer hacks. Cassell plays a private security contractor, a mercenary hired by a shady French company to get information from hackers who stole intel from Syria. Green is a British government official working in cybersecurity and Peter Mullan plays her demanding boss, at a loss when hackers toy with the UK’s main computer systems. Set in several cities, but mostly London and Paris, the action includes gunfire and explosive collisions on rail lines, all while the series teases an old, steamy connection between Cassel and Green’s characters.

Liaison premieres on 24 February on Apple TV+ internationally

(Credit: ITV)

(Credit: ITV)

11. Unforgotten

When Nicola Walker’s character, DCI Cassie Stuart, died in a car crash in the last season of Unforgotten, it could have been the end of this tense drama about detectives looking into unsolved cases from years or decades before. So it was great news to hear that the series would continue with Sanjeev Bhaskar as DI Sunny Khan, Cassie’s loyal backpack-wearing number two. Bhaskar is as reliable as Sunny himself, who now reports to a new DCI named Jessica James (Sinead Keenan), whose first day on the job arrives while the team is still in mourning. The show has always done a terrific job of merging the often guilt-ridden characters involved in the season’s cold cases with the detectives’ bloodhound work and often frazzled personal lives. Let’s hope that dear, sane Sunny doesn’t unravel the way Cassie did. 

Unforgotten premieres later this month on ITV in the UK and later this year on Masterpiece on PBS in the US

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