drama series - page 2

London is under threat from shopping-mall car bombers and espionage masterminds, and somehow Gary Oldman’s MI5 screwups once again end up in the middle of the action. That’s according to the new Slow Horses season four trailer for the black-comedy spy-thriller series.

The Emmy-nominated and BAFTA-winning series stars Oldman as MI5’s irascible Slough House section chief Jackson Lamb. The six-episode season premieres September 4 on Apple TV+.

UPDATE: Season 4 of Slow Horses gets underway Wednesday with the first episode, entitled “Identity Theft,” on Apple TV+. “A London bombing triggers and explosive hidden past,” notes the streamer’s tagline. A season review in The Guardian calls the show “faultlessly directed,” notes the cast is even better than before and says “Gary Oldman roars like a bear dipped in chip fat.”

First Apple TV+ unveiled The New Look, a World War II drama depicting French fashion designers heroically carrying on with their vital work in Nazi-occupied Paris. Now the trailer for La Maison, a melodramatic family saga about a fictional French fashion house in crisis, struts down the catwalk. And it’s entirely in French. Hey, it could be great. Or, as the trailer suggests, it could be preposterously self-important.

And check out that tagline: “The fabric of power.” Seriously?

On the plus side, the show is brought to us by some talented folks behind good stuff — The Returned, Lupin and Le Bureau des Légendes. So I’ll leave out the “La Maison du Merde” jokes for now. La Maison debuts on Apple TV+ September 20.

A talented Mexico City medical student studies hard by day and saves lives by night, hurtling around the sprawling metropolis in her family’s private ambulance. But it looks like something’s got to give under the strain of it all in the trailer Apple TV+ dropped Tuesday for the upcoming Spanish-language drama series Midnight Family.

Sure, you might need subtitles, but it looks like a rewarding ride. The 10-episode series, based on a documentary, debuts on Apple TV+ September 25.

The Apple TV+ crime drama Presumed Innocent has been among the most watched shows on streaming since launching in mid-June, according to analysts. Season one of the series — which stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a man who might, or might not, have murdered the woman he’s having an affair with — recently wrapped up, and the opportunity to bingewatch all the episodes pushed the show to become the most viewed on any streaming platform, according to analysts.

Plus, the reimagining of Time Bandits found a big audience, and Natalie Portman’s Lady in the Lake had another strong week.

At first glance a Baltimore crime story set in 1966, the limited series Lady in the Lake soon turns into a surreal nightmare, as shown in the trailer Apple TV+ dropped for it recently. As the streamer said in press materials, the show, starring Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram, turns into a “feverish noir thriller and an unexpected tale about the price women pay for their dreams.”

So it’s a bizarre and arresting trailer. It includes “live performances” that are like fever dreams. The seven-part series debuts with its first two episodes on Friday, July 19.

Update: The new Apple TV+ drama series Lady in the Lake is now streaming, as of Friday. Reviews look a bit mixed — with some offering high praise for Portman in her TV debut — but you should see for yourself and watch the new show here.

Apple TV+ subscribers are getting new comedies and thrillers to enjoy in summer 2024. And there are plenty of big-name stars, too. Eight new shows debuted between the beginning of June and the end of August (and a film to boot).

Here’s what’s new on Apple’s streaming service or coming in the next two months.

Here’s your eagerly awaited dead drop, Slow Horses fans: The fourth season of the BAFTA Award-winning espionage series returns to Apple TV+ on September 4, according to the “first look” the streamer gave Thursday. That’s the image above. And once again, some makeup artist deserves major awards for making Gary Oldman look like sagging spymaster Jackson Lamb, poster boy for decades of booze, smokes, greasy food, stress and betrayal.

Looks like Cate Blanchett might get a vile taste of her own medicine at the hands of Kevin Kline in upcoming psychological thriller Disclaimer, according to a “first look” at the limited series Apple TV+ put out Tuesday. That could be dawning horror on the Oscar winner’s face in the new image, above.

Notably, Academy Award winner Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Gravity, Roma) created and directed the show. Based on a bestselling novel, Disclaimer premieres on Apple TV+ October 11.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s character wants people to believe he “did not kill her,” as he forcefully states a full dozen times in the space of about 2 minutes in the first full trailer for Presumed Innocent, a drama series coming soon to Apple TV+.

So yeah, he totally killed her. Isn’t that what movie stars playing jilted stalkers do? Or maybe not. It’s a guessing game.

Gyllenhaal and multi-Emmy Award winners David E. Kelley and J.J. Abrams bring the eight-part remake to Apple TV+ June 12.

The first trailer for Apple TV+’s The Big Cigar, below, looks like so much fun I almost don’t want to know how true the “incredible true story” about Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton actually is. And as of Friday, the show’s on with its first two episodes.

The upcoming drama series tells the tale of Newton enlisting a Hollywood producer to fake out the FBI, providing cover for the political activist’s escape to Cuba in 1974. That came after Newton jumped bail on murder and assault charges he called false.

UPDATE: The Big Cigar now airs on Apple TV+. The first two episodes came out Friday. The third episode airs May 24.

Did you know Mexico established an all-female police force decades ago? Well, now you do, thanks to the first look Apple dropped Friday for the Women in Blue crime series (aka Las Azules). The new Spanish-language, 10-part drama is set in 1970 against the backdrop of a serial killer’s spree.

Created by International Emmy Award winner Fernando Rovzar and featuring Ariel Award nominee Bárbara Mori, the show debuts July 31 on Apple TV+.

The BAFTA Television Craft Awards — a branch of the BAFTAs, often thought of as the British Oscars — awarded wins to Apple TV+ hit series Slow Horses and Silo, the iPhone giant said Sunday.

The acerbic espionage drama Slow Horses won for best editing and best sound. Sci-fi series Silo landed wins for best production design and best original music.

In addition, Apple TV+ received further nominations in the upcoming BAFTA Television Awards.

The new Apple TV+ trailer for LA-noir detective series Sugar asks an important question: Who is John Sugar? Well, apparently, the gumshoe played by Colin Farrell is a tough dude who “does one thing and one thing only: Find the missing.”

A legendary film producer played by veteran actor James Cromwell utters the line in the trailer, which Apple TV+ dropped Sunday. Having cast members like Cromwell adds some serious gravitas to a moody and engrossing-looking series (as if Farrell wasn’t enough).

You can see the new Sugar trailer, and the previous one, below. They should whet your appetite for some good ol’ fashioned-yet-contemporary LA crime noir. It comes up from time to time to great acclaim (see LA Confidential among others).

Colin Farrell takes the lead in Sugar, an upcoming Apple TV+ series about a private detective searching for the missing granddaughter of a Hollywood magnate.

The trailer shows the series coming in April will be dark and violent.

Apple TV+ dropped a trailer Wednesday for a companion documentary film to hit World World II drama series Masters of the Air. The  documentary, The Bloody Hundredth, tells the stories of the airmen in a particularly hard-hit B17 bomber group through some of the survivors themselves as well as series filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.

“Watch The Bloody Hundredth and get an in-depth look at the real stories of the brave Airmen that inspired Masters of the Air,” the streaming service said. “Streaming March 15th on Apple TV+.”

Apple TV+ has not officially said if British crime drama series Criminal Record is a go for season two. But its star and executive producer, Cush Jumbo, says it’ll happen.

She said so on a talk show late Sunday night.

Competing designers in World War II Nazi-occupied Paris — Christian Dior, Coco Chanel, and others — launched modern fashion and helped bring the war-torn world back to life, the trailer for upcoming The New Look drama series on Apple TV+ implies.

Who knew? And with a cast including Ben Mendelsohn (Dior), Juliette Binoche (Chanel), John Malkovich, Maisie Williams, and other familiar faces, who cares if it’s letter-perfect history? It looks like a good time. Speaking of captivating performances, check out this take on Amanda Peet hot in a compelling role.

The 10-part series The New Look premieres on Apple TV+ on Valentine’s Day, February 14.

Sure enough, last week’s hints of looming unrest blossom this week in a full-scale coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in alt-history drama series For All Mankind, season 4, episode 3, “The Bear Hug.” And who’s in the middle of it all? Why, the former head of NASA, of course — Margo Madison.

In the span of one episode — released Wednesday instead of Friday for the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend — she gets horribly tortured and finds herself in a big new space-agency job. But it ain’t NASA this time. I’d say you can’t make this stuff up, but someone did. Meanwhile, another coup unfolds at private space-exploration company Helios Aerospace.

Last week’s season four opener of Apple TV+ alt-history drama series For All Mankind went necessarily big to catch everyone up and start off with a bang. So it’s not surprising episode two establishes a more practical stride, focusing on the realities of life in a working Mars colony.

Turns out life sucks for the working man up there in more ways than just an alarming chance of fatality. Life in Happy Valley, Mars, also tells a deeply unfair tale of haves and have-nots, just like on Earth.

Legends Christian Dior and Coco Chanel launched modern fashion design amid the horrors of Nazi occupation in Paris, according to the first look Apple TV+ provided Wednesday for The New Look.

Boasting a star-studded cast, the 10-episode historical drama series premieres February 14.

Alternative-history space-race drama series For All Mankind returned to Apple TV+ Friday with a season 4 opener that handled two tough jobs pretty well — painfully looking back at past tragedies and peering ahead with trepidation to probable new ones. After all, space is dangerous and so are people.

In an episode called “Glasnost,” set 8 years after the end of season 3, For All Mankind sets its sites on asteroid wealth and a joint mission led by the United States and Russia to get it. And it doesn’t take long for people to start dying up there.

Apple TV+ just released the first trailer for Silo, an upcoming a drama series based on a bestselling trilogy of dystopian novels.

In the series, a few thousand people are left on earth hiding in a mile-deep silo. But what if everything they’ve ever been told about the outside world is a lie?

Apple TV+ bought the rights to Sugar, a new genre-bending mystery series starring Colin Farrell and created by Mark Protosevich.

There was a lot of interest in the project, with Netflix also reportedly bidding on it.

The first trailer for the upcoming historical drama The Essex Serpent dropped Tuesday. It gives a preview of a very complicated relationship between characters played by Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston. Also, there might or might not be a giant sea serpent involved.

The limited series premieres May 13 on Apple TV+.

Apple TV+ landed Hijack, a thriller starring Idris Elba set on a plane that’s been hijacked. It will be a seven-episode series covering seven hours of action, so it’ll be told in real time — a technique that should be familiar to fans of 24.

Apple’s streaming service loves thrillers, and already has quite a few of them, with more on the way.