Every Friday, TMINE lets you know when the latest TV shows from around the world will air in the UK
Plenty of acquisitions this week, and all but one comes with premiere dates.
Acquisitions
Sundance Now has picked up Sjónvarp Símans (Iceland)’s Stella Blómkvist, which is based on a series of books about a hard-nosed lawyer who takes on mysterious murder cases. It’ll be available in the US from January 31, but it looks like we’ll have to hold out until April before we get it here.
Premiere dates
Star Trek: Short Treks (US: CBS All Access; UK: Netflix)
Premiere date: Available now
Cunning hidden away in the “trailers and extras” section of the Netflix menu system for season two of Star Trek: Discovery are these short movies focused on individual characters from the series, both heroes and villains. Haven’t watched them, since I’ve been saving them for Lovely Wife until now.
Four part 2018 drama set in Brisbane that revolves around a group of five friends whose sailing holiday of a lifetime to Indonesia takes an unexpected turn when they come across a boat overloaded with desperate asylum seekers.
Dull US remake of the Sky Atlantic Julia Davis comedy about a group of city friends going off camping together to celebrate a birthday. David Tennant, trialling his inadvisable American accent again, is the lucky man in question, Jennifer Garner his controlling wife, Juliette Lewis their flaky friend along for the trip.
Nightflyers (US: Syfy; UK: Netflix)
Premiere date: Friday, February 1
Nightflyers is set in the year 2093 and follows a team of scientists aboard The Nightflyer, the most advanced ship ever built, as they embark on a journey to find other life forms. Their mission takes them to the edge of the solar system, and to the edge of insanity, as they realise true horror isn’t waiting for them in outer space – it’s already on their ship.
This sci-fi horror piece based on a George RR Martin novella is a frustrating affair, that’s intermittently good and bad, with a tediously inconclusive final episode. It has some good ideas and a great cast (including Blake’s 7‘s Josette Simon), but ultimately, it proves a great big waste of time.
Rush follows the lives of members of the prestigious Tactical Response team (TR), which is based on the real life Victoria Police Critical Incident Response Team, a highly mobile unit that fills the operational gap between general duties police and the SWAT-like Special Operations Group. The team is seen responding to violent incidents such as carjackings, suicides and armed offences.
It’s a bit of an old one this (2008), so you can treat yourself watching all manner of “before they were famous actors”, such as Rodger Corser (Glitch, Doctor, Doctor) and Claire van der Boom (Hawaii Five-0).
Dirty John tells the true story of how a romance between Debra Newell and the charismatic John Meehan spiralled into secrets, denial, manipulation, and ultimately, a fight for survival for an entire family. Their fast-tracked romance creates tension between Debra and her two daughters Terra and Veronica, leaving the girls no choice but to investigate the man who has swept their mother off her feet, while the backstory of Debra and her mother Arlane (Jean Smart) provides insight into why Debra was so vulnerable.
The eight episode drama series is based on the articles and breakout true crime podcast from Los Angeles Times reporter Christopher Goffard. It stars Connie Britton, Eric Bana, Julia Garner, Juno Temple and Jean Smart.
Netflix Original written by, starring and directed by Ricky Gervais. It tells the story of Tony (Gervais), who had a perfect life. But after his wife Lisa dies, Tony changes. After contemplating taking his own life, he decides instead to live long enough to punish the world by saying and doing whatever he likes from now on. He thinks it’s like a superpower – not caring about himself or anyone else – but it turns out to be tricky when everyone is trying to save the nice guy they used to know.
It also stars Kerry Godliman, Tom Basden, Tony Way, David Bradley, Ashley Jensen, Penelope Wilton, David Earl, Joe Wilkinson, Mandeep Dhillon, Jo Hartley, Roisin Conaty, Tim Plester and Diane Morgan.
Every week or so, TMINE flags up what new TV events BAFTA is holding around the UK
BAFTA seems to be adding precisely events to its February line-up at the rate of precisely 1 event/week, so add to the previous two events (Matthew Hall on Writing and a look back at Manhunt) this new one, which is a preview of ITV’s The Widow. I should point out that when I posted a trailer for it on Tuesday, I billed it as Amazon’s The Widow – it’s actually a co-production between ITV and Amazon and will air here on ITV, but the trailer (which you can see below as well) is Amazon’s for overseas audiences.
TV Preview: The Widow
Monday, 18 February 2019 – 6:45pm
Princess Anne Theatre, 195 Piccadilly, London, W1J 9LN
A preview of the new ITV drama followed by a Q&A with the creative team.
From BAFTA nominated screenwriters Harry & Jack Williams (Liar, The Missing), The Widow tells the story of Georgia Wells (Kate Beckinsale) who has her life turned upside-down with a phone-call in the middle of the night. Her husband of over 10 years, Will, has been reported dead after a plane crash in the Congolese jungle.
Three years later, with her old life now a thing of the past, Georgia learns something shocking. Something that will take her to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, looking to uncover the truth about his disappearance.
The eight-part series is a Two Brothers Production directed by Sam Donovan (Humans, Liar) and Olly Blackburn (Donkey Punch, Glue). With Kate Beckinsale playing the lead role, key cast also includes Alex Kingston (ER, Doctor Who), Charles Dance (Game of Thrones, Godzilla), Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Trapped, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald) and Louise Brealey (Sherlock, Clique).
It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week
It only took about a week before WHYBW missed its scheduled slot, but given how much new stuff has recently arrived and how much old stuff has returned to Tuesdays and Wednesdays, please forgive me. Still, I was wondering what I was going to do on Thursdays…
Please peruse them at your leisure, whether you intend to watch the shows or not.
ABC’s Schooled
New shows
Coming up in the next week, I’ll be reviewing The CW’s Roswell reboot, Roswell, New Mexico. Season two of The Punisher will be hitting Netflix this Friday, so I’ll undoubtedly be watching that. And if anything else pops up I’ll review that, too, if I can.
After the jump, though, despite my already extensive viewing schedule, there’ll be reviews of two other new shows I managed to catch: Schooled (US: ABC) and Fam (US: CBS). Gosh, mid-season replacements that are also sitcoms. Cos they’re always funny, hey?
I’ll also be talking about series five of Cuckoo (UK: BBC Three), which I know isn’t a new show and it’s not even a show new to me, but I think it’s probably the first time I’ll have talked about it on the blog.
The regulars
Although Counterpart decided to take a break this Sunday, a whole bunch of other shows decided to return this week. That means that after the jump, there’ll be the season (and probably series) finale of the one remaining regular, HappyTogether, as well as new episodes of returning regulars Magnum P.I., Corporate and True Detective. Joining them will be the second episodes of both Cavendish and Project Blue Book.
And for reasons that will become clear, I’ll also be talking about every episode of The Orville that’s aired since I gave up on it after its third episode.
