Shows You Should Be Watching
Honest reviews. Zero hype.
Kaliane Bradley’s debut novel becomes a six part BBC series with A24 producing, and the pedigree alone makes this one of 2027’s most interesting bets. The premise: a secret government department rescues people from history, and a civil servant named…
Megan Park, who directed one of the best recent teen films in My Old Ass, created this eight episode coming of age drama for Prime Video, with Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage of Gossip Girl pedigree producing and Margot Robbie's LuckyChap aboard. Ella Rubin leads as Annie Jacobson, a 17 year old New Yorker who inherits a remote Canadian island from the estranged grandfather she was never allowed to meet, and travels north with her twin brother, played by Keen Ruffalo, and their adoptive father, played by Jay Duplass, to untangle why her mother cut the family off.
The premise is a perfect sitcom engine: Ashley and Gordon, two flawed, funny strangers in Sydney, are brought together when a spontaneous car moment leads to them hitting and jointly caring for an injured dog they name Colin. The dog is the McGuffin; the show is about two people who keep choosing each other despite every sensible reason not to. Real life married couple Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall write and star, and the chemistry is not acted, it is just documented.
The Early Word: Netflix is betting big on Steinbeck. Zoe Kazan, whose grandfather Elia Kazan directed the 1955 film, adapts the full novel as a seven episode limited series, and the big selling point is structural: the 1955 movie only covered the book's second half, so the Trask family's founding generations, the Civil War arc, and the full Cathy story have never been filmed. Florence Pugh plays Cathy Ames, literature's most chilling sociopath, with Christopher Abbott as Adam, Mike Faist as Charles, and Hoon Lee as the family's cook and moral center Lee, a role whitewashed out of every previous adaptation.
Singles get engaged without ever seeing each other, then meet and have to decide if love really was blind. The experiment is nonsense sociology and irresistible television: the pods conversations are genuine vulnerability and the altar scenes are the best…
Shonda Rhimes does Regency romance, and the result is the most-watched Netflix original of its era: gorgeous gowns, string quartet covers of pop songs, and a different sibling finding love each season. The Lady Whistledown gossip column narrates it all…