From Killing Eve to Line of Duty and Game of Thrones: all the best TV to look forward to this spring
The weather is slowly getting warmer but that doesn't mean that the TV schedules aren't groaning with exciting new programmes. Emma Thompson will soon be starring in Russell T Davies's family saga Years and Years, Line of Duty will be keeping us on tenterhooks once again, TV's most stylish psychopath Villenelle is back in Killing Eve and Suranne Jones will be starring as the "first modern lesbian" in Gentleman Jack. And, of course, it'll soon be time to say goodbye to Game of Thrones. These are the best new arrivals to watch out for this spring.
Victoria
The sumptuous historical drama returns and the year is now 1848. Victoria (Jenna Coleman) is, yet again, pregnant and revolution is sweeping Europe, with monarchy after monarchy being deposed. In Britain, meanwhile, the Chartists are gaining in power and popularity.
ITV, March 24
Line of Duty
Jed Mercurio’s hugely popular police procedural is back for another nail-biting series following the work of the fictional AC-12 as they dig out corrupt officers. Stephen Graham joins the cast as the team’s target.
BBC One, March 31
Our Planet
Netflix muscles its way into the natural history genre with this sweeping new series narrated by David Attenborough for an English audience, Salma Hayek for Latin America and Penelope Cruz for Spain (viewers can select whose voice they wish to listen to). The series has taken four years to make, by 600 crew members, and spans 50 countries.
Netflix, April 5
The Widow
The latest drama from Harry and Jack Williams (The Missing, Liar, Baptiste) is a high-octane co-production between ITV and Amazon Prime. Kate Beckinsale makes her TV lead debut as the eponymous widow who suspects that there’s more to her husband’s death in a plane crash. Charles Dance also stars as a former intelligence officer.
ITV, April 8
The Durrells
The bucolic family drama returns for a fourth and final series, though this time the Durrell family find their lives in Corfu disrupted by the onset of the Second World War.
ITV, early April TBC
Game of Thrones
After an excruciating 20 month wait, so comes the final season of what is possibly the definitive TV series of the 2010s. Will Jon Snow and Daenerys’s blossoming relationship survive? How will they fight the White Walkers? Who will end up on the Iron Throne? We’ll find out in six epic feature-length episodes.
Sky Atlantic, 15 April
The Victim
What happens when the mother of a murdered child becomes a criminal herself? In this legal thriller, Kelly MacDonald stars as Ann, whose nine-year-old son was killed 15 years ago, as she’s accused of revealing his murderer’s new identity online and conspiring to have him murdered. But has she got the wrong man?
BBC One, April TBC
Chambers
This supernatural drama series follows a young heart attack survivor (Sivan Alyra Rose) who begins to take on the characteristics of her heart donor. Uma Thurman appears as the donor’s mother who finds that her daughter is not as dead as she thought she was.
Netflix, end of April TBC
Chimerica
Lucy Kirkwood adapts her own Olivier Award-winning play for this drama series, which spins fiction out of the famous Tank Man photo taken in Tiananmen Square. It stars Alessandro Nivola as Lee Berger, the photographer known for taking the shot, who, 30 years later, is accused of having doctored the image.
Channel 4, April TBC
Years and Years
This epic family saga from Russell T Davies spans 15 years and takes in global and national politics across a 15 year period, beginning in 2019. Emma Thompson stars as a populist, Trump-style MP whose rise to prominence is viewed through the eyes of the Lyons, an ordinary family from Manchester.
BBC One, May TBC
Chernobyl
Screenwriter Craig Mazin, best known for daft comedies such as The Hangover films, tackles a very different project in this stark and horrifying drama that recounts the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, and its far-reaching consequences. Jared Harris and Emily Watson star as a pair of Soviet scientists who fight to get the authorities to realise the severity of the incident.
Sky Atlantic, 7 May
Gentleman Jack
Happy Valley writer Sally Wainwright adapts the extensive – and often coded – diaries of Anne Lister, often called "the first modern lesbian", for this drama series set in the early 19th century. Suranne Jones stars as Lister, a Yorkshire landowner who returns to her ancestral home determined to turn her family’s fortunes around – and search for a wife.
BBC One, May TBC
Hatton Garden
Mysteriously postponed last year, this real-life drama from Jeff Pope has, it seems, finally made its way back into the schedules. Timothy Spall leads the cast in this four-parter about the 2015 Hatton Garden heist that saw a group of aging burglars escape with £14million-worth of jewellery.
ITV, May TBC
When They See Us
Based on the story of the Central Park Five, a group of black teenagers who were wrongfully convicted of rape and incarcerated in 1990, Selma director Ava DuVernay’s powerful, hard-hitting drama series chronicles their 25-year ordeal.
Netflix, May 31
Good Omens
Neil Gaiman has adapted the fantasy novel that he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett for this big-budget series that stars David Tennant and Michael Sheen as an angel and a demon who team up to try and stop the apocalypse.
Amazon Prime, 31 May
Big Little Lies
This gripping, scenic drama set among the rich families living in Monterey, California, adds Meryl Streep to its already star-studded cast as it returns for a second season. Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern and Zoe Kravitz are all back as the show picks up in the aftermath of the death of the abusive Perry (Alexander Skarsgård).
Sky Atlantic, June TBC
Killing Eve
When Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s stylish cat-and-mouse thriller debuted last year it proved to be a breath of fresh air. It returns for a second run to find the psychopath assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer) still alive and once again she and MI5 agent Eve (Sandra Oh) are on each other’s tails.
BBC Three, June TBC
Catch-22
George Clooney directs and stars in this offbeat adaptation of Joseph Heller's seminal novel that satirises wartime bureaucracy. It follows a US Air Force bombardier (Christopher Abbott) in the Second World War who finds himself stuck between the Army, who keep increasing the number of dangerous missions their crew must fly in order to complete their service, and trying to avoid those missions (and being shot down by enemy fire). But avoiding them leaves him in violation of Catch-22 – a bizarre rule which dictates that being concerned for one's own safety makes you sane, therefore only insane men would be willing to fly such dangerous missions, but you can only be exempt from duty if you are certifiably insane.
Channel 4, TBC
Beecham House
Gurinder Chadha, who wrote Bend it Like Beckham and Viceroy’s House, is behind this period drama set in 19th-century India. Tom Bateman stars as John Beecham, a former soldier who owns the imposing, eponymous mansion in Delhi. But his hopes of starting a new life with his family are troubled by past secrets and dangerous enemies.
ITV, TBC
The Virtues
This bold new drama series from This is England’s Shane Meadows sees Stephen Graham (Line of Duty, Taboo) in what may become the performance of a lifetime. He stars as Joseph, an addict who grew up in care homes. When his former partner takes his child and emigrates to Australia, a hungover Joseph boards a ferry to Ireland to confront his traumatic past.
Channel 4, TBA
Summer of Rockets
Writer Stephen Poliakoff draws inspiration from his Russian ancestry for this new drama set during the Cold War. Toby Stephens stars as an inventor of bespoke hearing aids who is approached by MI5 to spy on his friends (played by Keeley Hawes, Linus Roache and Timothy Spall).
BBC Two, TBC
Wild Bill
This intriguing new police drama has a synopsis that sounds better suited to a sitcom. American actor Rob Lowe stars as an acerbic and tough police chief who moves to the UK with his daughter and ends up joining the force in Boston, Lincolnshire.
ITV, TBC
