Best TV shows on Apple TV+

Baltimore in the 1960s is the backdrop for an engrossing drama based on the book by Laura Lippman that has much more to it than just a murder investigation. Natalie Portman is Maddie Schwartz, a well-to-do housewife so disaffected by family life that she abandons it to look into two local killings, of a white girl and a black bartender.

Jagged timelines allow the bartender, played by Moses Ingram, to be a parallel main character in a show laden with a sense of disquiet and foreboding.

Jack Seale

Terry Gilliam’s 1981 film adventure is rebooted in the hands of producers, co-stars and What We Do in the Shadows creators Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. Dorky, history-obsessed British kid Kevin (Kal-El Tuck) opens his wardrobe to find a time portal, through which he steps into the past — and joins a band of time-travelling thieves who are not very good at stealing stuff.

Lisa Kudrow is in her element as the group’s eccentric leader, and the show’s huge visual effects budget doesn’t stop it majoring on silly, quirky gags.

Jack Seale

These days, we tend to think of John Grisham as the king of the legal thriller, but back in the 1980s it was Scott Turow who ruled the courtroom, thanks to the suspenseful bestseller Presumed Innocent. Its story of a prosecutor put on trial for the killing of his mistress has made it to the screen before, in a rather dry 1990 movie starring Harrison Ford.

But this new version, with Jake Gyllenhaal as brooding lawyer Rusty Sabich, has more emotional depth — these first two episodes feel like a spiralling mid-life crisis wrapped in a gripping murder mystery.

David Brown

Eva Longoria, once of Desperate Housewives, brings spiky energy to an agreeable fish-out-of-water comedy drama. She’s Gala, a posh New Yorker who has to leave Manhattan pronto when it turns out her husband is in debt to gangsters. With her cynical teen daughter and incorrigible elderly mother (Pedro Almodóvar regular Carmen Maura) in tow, she flees to a small rural town in Spain, a place with significance in the family’s past.

The wine flows, the scenery glows, and bittersweet secrets are spilled as the initially bewildered locals begin to adjust to the brash new arrivals.

Jack Seale

Reality is about to get bent out shape for physicist college professor Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) who, after being attacked and knocked unconscious at night by a masked man, wakes in a life that is not his own. He’s no longer married to his artist wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and their son Charlie has never been born — in short, it’s the ultimate existential crisis.

Adapted from the inventive 2016 bestseller by Blake Crouch (who retains creative control over this TV version), what follows feels kind of like a sci-fi Sliding Doors with high-stakes chase scenes taking the place of romantic comedy as Jason gets to grips with nefarious and shadowy adversaries forcing him to travel down the roads not taken.

David Brown

Revolutionary politics is a serious business in a drama telling the true-ish story of how Black Panther leader Huey P Newton (André Holland) fled from America in 1974, via an elaborate plan concocted by red-hot film producer Bert Schneider (Alessandro Nivola): what looks like a film about an escape to Cuba is cover for the real thing.

The plan suffers from numerous setbacks and features a cast of oddball supporting characters, but the capering is offset by a diligent, slightly worthy examination of the experiences and injustices that made Newton so determined not to give in to the US authorities.

Jack Seale

Private investigator John Sugar (Colin Farrell) feels like a man out of time. His beat may be contemporary Los Angeles, but he very much draws on that mythic figure of hardboiled detective stories, Philip Marlowe.

Black-and-white fragments from Humphrey Bogart movies flash through Sugar’s mind, while world-weary voiceover narration settles like cigarette smoke from a bygone era over the 21st-century action. Why this stylistic device has been employed isn’t yet clear, but it’s a mystery that’s as diverting as the one that Sugar’s employed to solve — that of the granddaughter of a Hollywood mogul who has gone missing.

David Brown

Kristen Wiig is an interloper with nothing to lose in a richly styled dramedy: in Palm Beach, Florida in 1969, a group of middle-aged women rule the social roost from their perch at the exclusive Palm Royale members club. Maxine (Wiig) isn’t a member and has a murky, tenuous claim to being worthy of high society but she’s determined to sit at the top table. The show isn’t sure how malevolent or sympathetic it wants Wiig to be and it could do with being either sillier or more vicious — as it is, it’s a diverting enough swirl of secrets, schemes and gossip.

The cast, meanwhile, is a treat: Allison Janney raising a spiky eyebrow as the incumbent queen bee, Ricky Martin with his shirt off more than it’s on, and Laura Dern as a leader of an uncertain but growing feminist movement.

Jack Seale

Abraham Lincoln is one of American history’s most high-profile casualties, his killer John Wilkes Booth a name synonymous with assassination. What isn’t as well known is the story of the 12-day chase that followed the murder of the president, but this fast-paced seven-parter reveals what happened after the shooting.

On one side, there’s Anthony Boyle as the fugitive Booth, and on the other, Lincoln (Hamish Linklater) and his friend and war secretary Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies), who personifies the pursuit. Swirling between them is the grim possibility of the Civil War reigniting…

David Butcher

Chocks are finally away on this epic drama that began shooting in 2021 and is rumoured to be among the most expensive ever made. Based on Donald L Miller’s book, it follows the men of the American Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group as they embark on some of the most dangerous bombing raids of the Second World War, hitting targets in Nazi Germany in broad daylight.

Like a lot of war epics, the opening episodes introduce a bewildering array of characters, but the cast — including Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Ncuti Gatwa and Barry Keoghan, some of whom are rather more famous now than they were when this was filmed — soon make us care about their fates. The aerial scenes, and the location shots, are spectacular. And for further viewing, don't miss documentary film The Bloody Hundredth about the people Masters of the Air was based on.

Jack Seale

The legend of the 18th-century English highwayman is fuel for a jolly period comedy that pitches itself somewhere between Horrible Histories and Our Flag Means Death. Noel Fielding is Dick, the son of a butcher who, in this telling, is a vegan who is reluctant to kill animals. Rejected by his father, he accidentally joins a gang of thieves before accidentally becoming their leader, which brings him to the attention of preening lawman Jonathan Wilde (Hugh Bonneville).

Some well-played silliness — such as the scene where Wilde reluctantly brings his misbehaving young son with him to work —and a great supporting cast make it a fun ride.

Jack Seale

Astronauts are exposed to sights those grounded on Earth wish they could see, but this genre-bending eight-parter asks us to question what it is that scientist Jo (Noomi Rapace) is witnessing. She’s on the ISS at the time of a disaster, but life soon proves terrifying when she finds she can no longer trust her own eyes.

Part sci-fi drama, part psychological thriller, the show’s aim is to spark debate about its ambiguities. Has Jo’s brain been starved of oxygen? Might she have been exposed to something? Could she be dead? Or is this all just some nightmare that Jo is experiencing while separated from loved ones? In space, no-one can hear you dream…

David Brown

The birth of modern fashion is recounted in a riveting, disquieting period drama that pulls together a cast as high-end as the fashion houses it chronicles.

In Paris 1955, Christian Dior (Ben Mendelsohn) is overcome with anxiety ahead of a retrospective of his most famous designs (it’s here we get a scintillating morsel of the jaw-dropping costume that will later follow in this ten-part series). Meanwhile, Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche) is 70 years old and speaking to the press about her comeback. “Print this: Christian Dior ruined French couture,” she scoffs. “And I’m coming back to save it.”

Their rivalry must wait, though. We soon wind back to 1943 and find both Dior and Chanel amid the brutality of the Second World War and the Nazi occupation of the French capital. Here their threads are sparsely interwoven, but they’re both doing what they must to put their families first and survive. Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Maisie Williams and Claes Bang are among the stellar support.

Frances Taylor

One of Apple TV Plus’s first original series, The Morning Show is an intense drama about the cut-throat world of breakfast TV, with Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carrell starring as the hosts of the titular network series.

When Alex Levy’s (Aniston) longtime co-host Mitch Kessler (Carrell) is fired over sexual misconduct allegations, she tries her best to keep her spot as the programme’s top dog despite the arrival of popular new anchor Bradley Jackson (Witherspoon), with whom she develops a rivalry. An Emmy-winning drama featuring hypnotic performances from its charismatic cast, The Morning Show is a flashy look at life as a breakfast TV host.

Given recent indictments of the Metropolitan Police, it would be naive for TV dramas to now portray all serving officers in the traditional manner as our saviours and protectors. So, I suspect the examination of prejudice within the force that we see in Criminal Record will be the first of many. But writer Paul Rutman (whose previous screen credits include Indian Summers and Next of Kin) has undoubtedly set the bar high with his urgent state-of-the-Met thriller, which pits a detective fresh to CID (played by Cush Jumbo) against a seasoned veteran (Peter Capaldi) who’s determined to protect his legacy.

The catalyst for bringing the pair into each other’s orbit is a desperate anonymous phone call that is soon found to have links to an old murder case. But with this discovery come questions about institutional failings, as well as crackling tension between the two series leads.

David Brown

Godzilla/Kong monster movies successfully transition to episodic television in a series that strikes a good balance between creature spectacle and character drama. In Tokyo, when a woman taking care of her late father’s affairs discovers he had a secret second family, a new monster-tracking team is born. Meanwhile, a team of three monsterologists are investigating a site they think contains dormant super-beasts…and they’re dangerously correct.

With twin timelines exploring the origins of the story and a juicy conspiracy to unravel, there’s plenty more going on here than just reptiles stomping on skyscrapers.

Jack Seale

This drama is based on a novel by Edith Wharton, author of The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth — but Wharton’s last book was unfinished when she died in 1937, which means liberties can be taken…

The story of American debutantes disrupting the social scene in 1870s London emerges at first as a frothy affair, but it’s not quite as light as it seems in the opening, which plays like a cross between Bridgerton and a 1980s pop video.

Kristine Froseth leads the wild young things as Nan, with Christina Hendricks, Fenella Woolgar and Amelia Bullmore playing tutting, scheming grown-ups.

Jack Seale

Apple TV+’s The Essex Serpent is that rare, mythical beast: an adaptation that feels just as compelling as its celebrated source material.

Based on Sarah Perry’s bestselling book, the series stars Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston and is set in Victorian England. Danes is heartbreakingly wonderful as Cora Seaborne, a recently widowed amateur naturalist who relocates to Essex to investigate rumours of a monstrous serpent. Meanwhile, the series is beautiful to look at, in particular, the evocation of the bleak - but bewitching - wintry landscape Cora finds there.

Flora Carr

A solid three-part documentary looks back at the murder in 1980 of John Lennon, assembling an impressive array of people who directly witnessed the crime and its aftermath, plus startling archive footage of the reaction on US TV news. After episode one, the focus is on the criminal investigation and the question of whether the gunman, Mark Chapman, was mentally robust enough to stand trial.

That’s not a story that amounts to very much, but it’s comprehensively told.

Jack Seale

It’s already one of the most well-chronicled cases of the possibly supernatural, but this docuseries offers fresh chills thanks to its unsettling conceit. In a re-creation of that notorious north London house, actors lip-sync to recordings made by paranormal investigator Maurice Grosse, who captured hundreds of hours of audio footage while in the company of the Hodgsons, victims — as they claimed in the late 1970s — of poltergeist activity. The whole thing has a strange, uncanny air.

David Brown

A bewitching, beguiling drama, not least because it takes a long time before we understand exactly what we’re watching.

In New York in 2010, shy bookworm Apollo (Lakeith Stanfield) experiences love at first sight in a library, but his romantic story will not be a straightforward one. While that narrative gradually introduces disturbing, possibly supernatural elements, we go back to the 1960s and 70s, where Apollo’s mother Lillian (Adina Porter) lives through her own imperfect version of marriage and parenthood in a city where something always seems to be moving in a dark corner nearby.

Jack Seale

From the late 1980s to mid-90s, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell ruled the roost as supermodels. They all came of age together in the fashion industry and in this four-part series are candid about their humble beginnings and big breaks. But the series doesn’t shy away from the less savoury aspects of the business, also reflecting on events in a post-#MeToo, post-Black Lives Matter landscape.

With contributions from designers Donatella Versace and Michael Kors, photographers Arthur Elgort, Martin Brading and Peter Lindbergh, plus Vogue trailblazers Grace Coddington and Edward Enninful, it’s an illuminating must-watch for any fashion faithful.

Laura Rutkowski

In 2018, Carlos Ghosn, the then CEO of Renault and Nissan, was arrested in Japan on suspicion of financial fraud. One year later, having been granted bail, he made an audacious escape: hiding in a box and arranging to have it smuggled out of the country.

This gripping four-part series recounts the events leading up to his flight. It paints a portrait of a mogul who managed the impossible in turning around the fortunes of two enormous car companies, before allowing himself to be consumed by greed. Of course, the man himself doesn't see it that way.

Stephen Kelly