MY WORLD OF TRUTH
Sunday, 16 March 2025
The Leopard to The Studio: 10 of the best TV shows to watch this March PART 2
Good American Family
Ellen Pompeo and Mark Duplass star as Kristine and Michael Barnett in a series inspired by a tabloid-ready real-life case. The Barnetts adopt a seven-year-old Ukrainian orphan named Natalia Grace (Imogen Faith Reid), who has a rare form of dwarfism, and whose first adopted family has returned her. The trailer hints at a good deal of heightened drama, as Kristine begins to suspect that they do not know the truth about their child's age. "Michael, I don't think she's a little girl," she says, a suspicion that eventually takes the couple all the way to court. Dule Hill plays a detective investigating the tangle of accusations and fears, and it is tangled. The actual events, which began in 2010, are so unusual and the saga so ongoing that it has already inspired three seasons of a documentary series on the Investigation Discovery Channel.
Good American Family premieres 19 March on Hulu in the US and 7 May on Disney+ in the UK
NetflixThe Residence
Netflix is calling this murder mystery from Shonda Rhimes's production company a "screwball whodunit," with Uzo Aduba as Cordelia Cupp, a brilliant detective investigating a murder in the White House during a state dinner. With a comic tone and a cast of 157 suspects, it's Upstairs Downstairs at the White House with a corpse, as Cupp questions everyone from the assistant usher (Susan Kelechi Watson) and the pastry chef (Bronson Pinchot) to the president's mother-in-law (Jane Curtain) and oldest friend (Ken Marino). Randall Park plays an FBI agent who investigates with Cordelia, and as the trailer reveals, Giancarlo Esposito plays the murder victim, who had the important job of chief usher and was not popular with his staff. The show was created by Paul William Davies, a writer on Rhimes's White House-set series Scandal, who has gone for a very different tone here. His goal for the show was to "Keep it FUN," he told Netflix. "I want people to be entertained, I want them to laugh." The Residence arrives in a very different political landscape to the one in which it was created, and it will be interesting to see whether finding laughter in the White House now lands as escapist entertainment or tone-deafness.
The Residence premieres 20 March on Netflix internationally
Playground TelevisionWolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light
Viewers in the US have had to wait four months to see the series the Guardian called "utter TV magic" when it premiered on the BBC last November, but here it is. The second instalment of Wolf Hall, it is based on the last of Hilary Mantel's trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, the savvy but doomed advisor to Henry VIII. Just as Mantel set the standard for historical novels, the first Wolf Hall series, adapted from the first two books, did the same for smart, beautifully made historical TV dramas. Nine years later, the ensemble that put that first part together is back, on screen and off, with Mark Rylance as Cromwell, Damian Lewis as Henry and Jonathan Pryce as Cardinal Wolsey. The series was adapted by Peter Straughn, who was nominated for an Oscar this year for Conclave (he's good at writing men in robes) and directed by Peter Kosminsky. The story picks up in 1536, the blood still fresh from Anne Boleyn's head rolling, and although history tells us how badly it all ends, watching the court intrigue unfold here in such ravishing detail is exhilarating.
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light premieres 23 March on PBS in the US
Apple TV+The Studio
Hollywood studios are an irresistible target of satire, from Robert Altman's 1992 gem The Player to Armando Iannucci's recent series The Franchise. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the co-creators of this series, have now made them the subject of a very funny romp, overflowing with cameos from real-life actors and directors. Rogan plays Matt Remick, a production executive who longs to greenlight art films. That's an unlikely goal after he is promoted to head of Continental Studios, with the mandate to make commercial hits. One project his corporate bosses insist on: a film based on Kool-Aid. If a product-inspired movie worked for Barbie, why not a soft drink? The first episode includes cameos from Martin Scorsese and Steve Buscemi. Paul Dano, Olivia Wilde, Charlize Theron, Anthony Mackie and many others play outsized versions of themselves. And the casting of the regular characters is inspired. Ike Barniholtz plays Matt's second-in-command and best friend, Catherine O'Hara is the mentor whose job Matt took, and Kathryn Hahn the studio's brash head of publicity.
The Studio premieres 26 March on Apple TV+ internationally
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