March is the month of surprise snowstorms, dayslong downpours, and wild temperature fluctuations, when we all go a little batty waiting for winter to finally end. So maybe it’s taken a juicier-than-usual TV lineup to effectively distract us from the heartbreak of false spring. Whatever the reason, the highlights of March 2026 include randy college professors, louche London socialities, and a trio of crime-adjacent family businesses, both real and fictional.
Dynasty: The Murdochs (Netflix)
Rupert Murdoch has a reputation for cheating at family games of Monopoly. As scandals go, this doesn’t exactly rise to the level of News of the World hacking famous phones. But it’s pretty telling from a psychological standpoint; what kind of person needs to win that badly, even when the stakes are nil and the opponents your kids? Director Liz Garbus (What Happened, Miss Simone?) picks up on the metaphor in the fascinating four-part docuseries Dynasty: The Murdochs, which visualizes the Murdoch children’s very public succession battle as a gilded board game presenting various paths to the ultimate objective: inheriting the patriarch’s throne.
It’s a clever way of structuring a story that has already been told in every imaginable format, from an armload of buzzy books to Succession—a fictionalization of the Murdoch family drama so insightful, it ended up catalyzing actual drama within the Murdoch family. If you’re already an expert, you won’t necessarily learn anything new from Garbus’ doc. Nor will you see fresh interviews with the Murdochs themselves, who, to no one’s surprise, declined to participate. Yet it’s still a propulsive and penetrating account of Rupert’s rise (which differs markedly from his self-made mythos), how his hunger for power reshaped political landscapes on multiple continents, and particularly how, late in his life, the 95-year-old media mega-mogul has torn apart his family in service of the empire he built. Considering the clash of interests involved, it’s probably for the best that it’s told mostly by journalists, both veteran media reporters and those who experienced the inner workings of News Corp. Whether you want to understand the current state of journalism or are just curious about the real-life Logan Roy, Dynasty is worth a look.
Ladies of London: The New Reign (Bravo)
When it comes to being rich, the British simply do it better. Oh, sure, they’re upholding a monarchical class system that dates back some 1200 years—but at least they have taste, not to mention a vicious, dry sense of humor. These are the principal delights of this recast revival of Bravo’s mid-2010s reality soap Ladies of London, which is essentially a Real Housewives for women too titled or glamorous or self-aware to identify as housewives. You needn’t have watched the original (I didn’t) to enjoy The New Reign; you just have to love haute mess.
What makes the show so much better than its many stateside counterparts? First and foremost, it’s the cast. Martha Sitwell is like Marlene Dietrich meets Marianne Faithfull, a brassy blonde whose bumpy ride through life has included teen motherhood, homelessness, modeling for Vivienne Westwood, marriage and divorce from a baronet. Speaking of nobles: Lady Emma Thynn beat out a certain other TV star to become the first woman of color to marry into the British aristocracy. An American expat who has fully embraced British eccentricity and emotional opacity, Kimi Murdoch could be a Toni Collette character. She can often be found trading witticisms with Mark-Francis Vandelli, a self-described professional aesthete, reality-TV veteran, and the rare man to merit main-cast status on this kind of show. While actor Margo Stilley made her name in the notoriously explicit film 9 Songs, Myka Meier is a Pollyannaish etiquette coach. Ladies’ first big blowup concerns a rumor that an old fair-weather friend of Myka’s is a madam. There has also been some remarkable headwear. What more could a Bravo devotee ask for?
Sunny Nights (Hulu)
If you ever wished Breaking Bad were less a descent into the abyss of the human soul and more “Yeah, bitch! Magnets!,” your new favorite show has arrived. I don’t mean that as a slight to Sunny Nights, a lively Australian crime comedy starring and executive produced by Will Forte and D’Arcy Carden. Jesse Pinkman’s exclamation of awe at the wonders of science was no throwaway; it was the payoff of years’ worth of sharp character development that began with a science teacher enlisting his burnout former student to help him cook meth.
Forte and Carden might both be best known for their roles in surreal network sitcoms. He created and starred in Fox’s even-weirder-than-it-sounds postapocalyptic comedy The Last Man on Earth; she broke out as a sort of supernatural AI guide in NBC’s afterlife-set The Good Place. But they’re excellent, individually and especially as a team, in this grittier, more grounded tale of American siblings trying to launch an innovative spray-tan product in the beachy environs of Sydney. To pursue this venture, Forte’s mousy Martin Marvin has left behind a stable job as a risk analyst, though it seems doubtful he would’ve made the trip if it didn’t also give him a chance to reunite with his estranged wife, Joyce (Ra Chapman), who recently returned to her native Australia. A bold, blunt ne’er-do-well who says things like “Remember how I used to run dope for Uncle Rick down in Mexico?,” Carden’s Vicki Marvin is simply short on other options. [Read the full review.]
This City Is Ours: A Crime Family Saga (AMC+)
The Sopranos gave us a gangster in therapy for panic attacks. Now, here’s This City Is Ours, whose protagonist is a gangster (James Nelson-Joyce from A Thousand Blows) whose low sperm count and eager-to-conceive girlfriend (Hannah Onslow of This Is Going to Hurt) have him making repeat visits to a fertility clinic. Don’t worry—that isn’t what the show is actually about. But creator Stephen Butchard’s choice to frontload it sets up a crime drama that, like a lesser (yet still quite good) Sopranos, distinguishes itself more through the care it takes in developing characters and relationships than for its empire building and bloodbaths.
The actual premise is nothing special. Smart, capable, and loyal, Nelson-Joyce’s Michael has spent years as the invaluable deputy to Ronnie (Sean Bean, great as ever), a Liverpool crime boss. He has a long-term plan to get out of the game and escape into a quiet life with Onslow’s Diana, with whom he’s trying to have an extremely un-Sopranos-like partnership grounded in honesty. Then things get complicated. A shocking betrayal pits Michael against Ronnie’s brash son Jamie (Jack McMullen) to become the aging patriarch’s successor. This might not sound too compelling if you’re not already a fan of the gangster genre. But if you are predisposed to enjoy this kind of thing, strong writing paired with excellent performances by Nelson-Joyce and Bean in particular sets This City Is Ours apart. As a bonus, for the Derry Girls hive, that show’s hilarious star Saoirse-Monica Jackson has a small but memorable role as a big-haired mob wife.
Vladimir (Netflix)
In the series premiere of Netflix’s Vladimir, Rachel Weisz awakens from troubled sleep to a cascade of texts, sighs deeply, and addresses the camera with pleading eyes. “All I want is a life free of complications,” says her unnamed lead. “If I can’t have power, can I at least be free from other people’s drama? Free from their behavior? Free from their needs and desires?”
It feels appropriate that free appears four times in this monologue, one of the character’s many fourth-wall-shattering asides. She is a blocked novelist who teaches English at a liberal arts college. And there is no setting more emblematic of freedom—and its discontents—than the campus, where tenure is supposed to protect the intellectual liberty of faculty and students living independently for the first time try on new ideas and identities. [Read an essay on Vladimir, HBO’s Rooster, and the return of the campus sex comedy.]
https://www.youtube.com/embed/a4BaDLZjE2c
March is the month of surprise snowstorms, dayslong downpours, and wild temperature fluctuations, when we all go a little batty waiting for winter to finally end. So maybe it’s taken a juicier-than-usual TV lineup to effectively distract us from the heartbreak of false spring. Whatever the reason, the highlights of March 2026 include randy college professors, louche London socialities, and a trio of crime-adjacent family businesses, both real and fictional.
Dynasty: The Murdochs (Netflix)
Rupert Murdoch has a reputation for cheating at family games of Monopoly. As scandals go, this doesn’t exactly rise to the level of News of the World hacking famous phones. But it’s pretty telling from a psychological standpoint; what kind of person needs to win that badly, even when the stakes are nil and the opponents your kids? Director Liz Garbus (What Happened, Miss Simone?) picks up on the metaphor in the fascinating four-part docuseries Dynasty: The Murdochs, which visualizes the Murdoch children’s very public succession battle as a gilded board game presenting various paths to the ultimate objective: inheriting the patriarch’s throne.
It’s a clever way of structuring a story that has already been told in every imaginable format, from an armload of buzzy books to Succession—a fictionalization of the Murdoch family drama so insightful, it ended up catalyzing actual drama within the Murdoch family. If you’re already an expert, you won’t necessarily learn anything new from Garbus’ doc. Nor will you see fresh interviews with the Murdochs themselves, who, to no one’s surprise, declined to participate. Yet it’s still a propulsive and penetrating account of Rupert’s rise (which differs markedly from his self-made mythos), how his hunger for power reshaped political landscapes on multiple continents, and particularly how, late in his life, the 95-year-old media mega-mogul has torn apart his family in service of the empire he built. Considering the clash of interests involved, it’s probably for the best that it’s told mostly by journalists, both veteran media reporters and those who experienced the inner workings of News Corp. Whether you want to understand the current state of journalism or are just curious about the real-life Logan Roy, Dynasty is worth a look.
Ladies of London: The New Reign (Bravo)
When it comes to being rich, the British simply do it better. Oh, sure, they’re upholding a monarchical class system that dates back some 1200 years—but at least they have taste, not to mention a vicious, dry sense of humor. These are the principal delights of this recast revival of Bravo’s mid-2010s reality soap Ladies of London, which is essentially a Real Housewives for women too titled or glamorous or self-aware to identify as housewives. You needn’t have watched the original (I didn’t) to enjoy The New Reign; you just have to love haute mess.
What makes the show so much better than its many stateside counterparts? First and foremost, it’s the cast. Martha Sitwell is like Marlene Dietrich meets Marianne Faithfull, a brassy blonde whose bumpy ride through life has included teen motherhood, homelessness, modeling for Vivienne Westwood, marriage and divorce from a baronet. Speaking of nobles: Lady Emma Thynn beat out a certain other TV star to become the first woman of color to marry into the British aristocracy. An American expat who has fully embraced British eccentricity and emotional opacity, Kimi Murdoch could be a Toni Collette character. She can often be found trading witticisms with Mark-Francis Vandelli, a self-described professional aesthete, reality-TV veteran, and the rare man to merit main-cast status on this kind of show. While actor Margo Stilley made her name in the notoriously explicit film 9 Songs, Myka Meier is a Pollyannaish etiquette coach. Ladies’ first big blowup concerns a rumor that an old fair-weather friend of Myka’s is a madam. There has also been some remarkable headwear. What more could a Bravo devotee ask for?
Sunny Nights (Hulu)
If you ever wished Breaking Bad were less a descent into the abyss of the human soul and more “Yeah, bitch! Magnets!,” your new favorite show has arrived. I don’t mean that as a slight to Sunny Nights, a lively Australian crime comedy starring and executive produced by Will Forte and D’Arcy Carden. Jesse Pinkman’s exclamation of awe at the wonders of science was no throwaway; it was the payoff of years’ worth of sharp character development that began with a science teacher enlisting his burnout former student to help him cook meth.
Forte and Carden might both be best known for their roles in surreal network sitcoms. He created and starred in Fox’s even-weirder-than-it-sounds postapocalyptic comedy The Last Man on Earth; she broke out as a sort of supernatural AI guide in NBC’s afterlife-set The Good Place. But they’re excellent, individually and especially as a team, in this grittier, more grounded tale of American siblings trying to launch an innovative spray-tan product in the beachy environs of Sydney. To pursue this venture, Forte’s mousy Martin Marvin has left behind a stable job as a risk analyst, though it seems doubtful he would’ve made the trip if it didn’t also give him a chance to reunite with his estranged wife, Joyce (Ra Chapman), who recently returned to her native Australia. A bold, blunt ne’er-do-well who says things like “Remember how I used to run dope for Uncle Rick down in Mexico?,” Carden’s Vicki Marvin is simply short on other options. [Read the full review.]
This City Is Ours: A Crime Family Saga (AMC+)
The Sopranos gave us a gangster in therapy for panic attacks. Now, here’s This City Is Ours, whose protagonist is a gangster (James Nelson-Joyce from A Thousand Blows) whose low sperm count and eager-to-conceive girlfriend (Hannah Onslow of This Is Going to Hurt) have him making repeat visits to a fertility clinic. Don’t worry—that isn’t what the show is actually about. But creator Stephen Butchard’s choice to frontload it sets up a crime drama that, like a lesser (yet still quite good) Sopranos, distinguishes itself more through the care it takes in developing characters and relationships than for its empire building and bloodbaths.
The actual premise is nothing special. Smart, capable, and loyal, Nelson-Joyce’s Michael has spent years as the invaluable deputy to Ronnie (Sean Bean, great as ever), a Liverpool crime boss. He has a long-term plan to get out of the game and escape into a quiet life with Onslow’s Diana, with whom he’s trying to have an extremely un-Sopranos-like partnership grounded in honesty. Then things get complicated. A shocking betrayal pits Michael against Ronnie’s brash son Jamie (Jack McMullen) to become the aging patriarch’s successor. This might not sound too compelling if you’re not already a fan of the gangster genre. But if you are predisposed to enjoy this kind of thing, strong writing paired with excellent performances by Nelson-Joyce and Bean in particular sets This City Is Ours apart. As a bonus, for the Derry Girls hive, that show’s hilarious star Saoirse-Monica Jackson has a small but memorable role as a big-haired mob wife.
Vladimir (Netflix)
In the series premiere of Netflix’s Vladimir, Rachel Weisz awakens from troubled sleep to a cascade of texts, sighs deeply, and addresses the camera with pleading eyes. “All I want is a life free of complications,” says her unnamed lead. “If I can’t have power, can I at least be free from other people’s drama? Free from their behavior? Free from their needs and desires?”
It feels appropriate that free appears four times in this monologue, one of the character’s many fourth-wall-shattering asides. She is a blocked novelist who teaches English at a liberal arts college. And there is no setting more emblematic of freedom—and its discontents—than the campus, where tenure is supposed to protect the intellectual liberty of faculty and students living independently for the first time try on new ideas and identities. [Read an essay on Vladimir, HBO’s Rooster, and the return of the campus sex comedy.]
https://www.youtube.com/embed/kIo34k_U9Nk
March is the month of surprise snowstorms, dayslong downpours, and wild temperature fluctuations, when we all go a little batty waiting for winter to finally end. So maybe it’s taken a juicier-than-usual TV lineup to effectively distract us from the heartbreak of false spring. Whatever the reason, the highlights of March 2026 include randy college professors, louche London socialities, and a trio of crime-adjacent family businesses, both real and fictional.
Dynasty: The Murdochs (Netflix)
Rupert Murdoch has a reputation for cheating at family games of Monopoly. As scandals go, this doesn’t exactly rise to the level of News of the World hacking famous phones. But it’s pretty telling from a psychological standpoint; what kind of person needs to win that badly, even when the stakes are nil and the opponents your kids? Director Liz Garbus (What Happened, Miss Simone?) picks up on the metaphor in the fascinating four-part docuseries Dynasty: The Murdochs, which visualizes the Murdoch children’s very public succession battle as a gilded board game presenting various paths to the ultimate objective: inheriting the patriarch’s throne.
It’s a clever way of structuring a story that has already been told in every imaginable format, from an armload of buzzy books to Succession—a fictionalization of the Murdoch family drama so insightful, it ended up catalyzing actual drama within the Murdoch family. If you’re already an expert, you won’t necessarily learn anything new from Garbus’ doc. Nor will you see fresh interviews with the Murdochs themselves, who, to no one’s surprise, declined to participate. Yet it’s still a propulsive and penetrating account of Rupert’s rise (which differs markedly from his self-made mythos), how his hunger for power reshaped political landscapes on multiple continents, and particularly how, late in his life, the 95-year-old media mega-mogul has torn apart his family in service of the empire he built. Considering the clash of interests involved, it’s probably for the best that it’s told mostly by journalists, both veteran media reporters and those who experienced the inner workings of News Corp. Whether you want to understand the current state of journalism or are just curious about the real-life Logan Roy, Dynasty is worth a look.
Ladies of London: The New Reign (Bravo)
When it comes to being rich, the British simply do it better. Oh, sure, they’re upholding a monarchical class system that dates back some 1200 years—but at least they have taste, not to mention a vicious, dry sense of humor. These are the principal delights of this recast revival of Bravo’s mid-2010s reality soap Ladies of London, which is essentially a Real Housewives for women too titled or glamorous or self-aware to identify as housewives. You needn’t have watched the original (I didn’t) to enjoy The New Reign; you just have to love haute mess.
What makes the show so much better than its many stateside counterparts? First and foremost, it’s the cast. Martha Sitwell is like Marlene Dietrich meets Marianne Faithfull, a brassy blonde whose bumpy ride through life has included teen motherhood, homelessness, modeling for Vivienne Westwood, marriage and divorce from a baronet. Speaking of nobles: Lady Emma Thynn beat out a certain other TV star to become the first woman of color to marry into the British aristocracy. An American expat who has fully embraced British eccentricity and emotional opacity, Kimi Murdoch could be a Toni Collette character. She can often be found trading witticisms with Mark-Francis Vandelli, a self-described professional aesthete, reality-TV veteran, and the rare man to merit main-cast status on this kind of show. While actor Margo Stilley made her name in the notoriously explicit film 9 Songs, Myka Meier is a Pollyannaish etiquette coach. Ladies’ first big blowup concerns a rumor that an old fair-weather friend of Myka’s is a madam. There has also been some remarkable headwear. What more could a Bravo devotee ask for?
Sunny Nights (Hulu)
If you ever wished Breaking Bad were less a descent into the abyss of the human soul and more “Yeah, bitch! Magnets!,” your new favorite show has arrived. I don’t mean that as a slight to Sunny Nights, a lively Australian crime comedy starring and executive produced by Will Forte and D’Arcy Carden. Jesse Pinkman’s exclamation of awe at the wonders of science was no throwaway; it was the payoff of years’ worth of sharp character development that began with a science teacher enlisting his burnout former student to help him cook meth.
Forte and Carden might both be best known for their roles in surreal network sitcoms. He created and starred in Fox’s even-weirder-than-it-sounds postapocalyptic comedy The Last Man on Earth; she broke out as a sort of supernatural AI guide in NBC’s afterlife-set The Good Place. But they’re excellent, individually and especially as a team, in this grittier, more grounded tale of American siblings trying to launch an innovative spray-tan product in the beachy environs of Sydney. To pursue this venture, Forte’s mousy Martin Marvin has left behind a stable job as a risk analyst, though it seems doubtful he would’ve made the trip if it didn’t also give him a chance to reunite with his estranged wife, Joyce (Ra Chapman), who recently returned to her native Australia. A bold, blunt ne’er-do-well who says things like “Remember how I used to run dope for Uncle Rick down in Mexico?,” Carden’s Vicki Marvin is simply short on other options. [Read the full review.]
This City Is Ours: A Crime Family Saga (AMC+)
The Sopranos gave us a gangster in therapy for panic attacks. Now, here’s This City Is Ours, whose protagonist is a gangster (James Nelson-Joyce from A Thousand Blows) whose low sperm count and eager-to-conceive girlfriend (Hannah Onslow of This Is Going to Hurt) have him making repeat visits to a fertility clinic. Don’t worry—that isn’t what the show is actually about. But creator Stephen Butchard’s choice to frontload it sets up a crime drama that, like a lesser (yet still quite good) Sopranos, distinguishes itself more through the care it takes in developing characters and relationships than for its empire building and bloodbaths.
The actual premise is nothing special. Smart, capable, and loyal, Nelson-Joyce’s Michael has spent years as the invaluable deputy to Ronnie (Sean Bean, great as ever), a Liverpool crime boss. He has a long-term plan to get out of the game and escape into a quiet life with Onslow’s Diana, with whom he’s trying to have an extremely un-Sopranos-like partnership grounded in honesty. Then things get complicated. A shocking betrayal pits Michael against Ronnie’s brash son Jamie (Jack McMullen) to become the aging patriarch’s successor. This might not sound too compelling if you’re not already a fan of the gangster genre. But if you are predisposed to enjoy this kind of thing, strong writing paired with excellent performances by Nelson-Joyce and Bean in particular sets This City Is Ours apart. As a bonus, for the Derry Girls hive, that show’s hilarious star Saoirse-Monica Jackson has a small but memorable role as a big-haired mob wife.
Vladimir (Netflix)
In the series premiere of Netflix’s Vladimir, Rachel Weisz awakens from troubled sleep to a cascade of texts, sighs deeply, and addresses the camera with pleading eyes. “All I want is a life free of complications,” says her unnamed lead. “If I can’t have power, can I at least be free from other people’s drama? Free from their behavior? Free from their needs and desires?”
It feels appropriate that free appears four times in this monologue, one of the character’s many fourth-wall-shattering asides. She is a blocked novelist who teaches English at a liberal arts college. And there is no setting more emblematic of freedom—and its discontents—than the campus, where tenure is supposed to protect the intellectual liberty of faculty and students living independently for the first time try on new ideas and identities. [Read an essay on Vladimir, HBO’s Rooster, and the return of the campus sex comedy.]
https://www.youtube.com/embed/gQnKTSFHVjQ
March is the month of surprise snowstorms, dayslong downpours, and wild temperature fluctuations, when we all go a little batty waiting for winter to finally end. So maybe it’s taken a juicier-than-usual TV lineup to effectively distract us from the heartbreak of false spring. Whatever the reason, the highlights of March 2026 include randy college professors, louche London socialities, and a trio of crime-adjacent family businesses, both real and fictional.
Dynasty: The Murdochs (Netflix)
Rupert Murdoch has a reputation for cheating at family games of Monopoly. As scandals go, this doesn’t exactly rise to the level of News of the World hacking famous phones. But it’s pretty telling from a psychological standpoint; what kind of person needs to win that badly, even when the stakes are nil and the opponents your kids? Director Liz Garbus (What Happened, Miss Simone?) picks up on the metaphor in the fascinating four-part docuseries Dynasty: The Murdochs, which visualizes the Murdoch children’s very public succession battle as a gilded board game presenting various paths to the ultimate objective: inheriting the patriarch’s throne.
It’s a clever way of structuring a story that has already been told in every imaginable format, from an armload of buzzy books to Succession—a fictionalization of the Murdoch family drama so insightful, it ended up catalyzing actual drama within the Murdoch family. If you’re already an expert, you won’t necessarily learn anything new from Garbus’ doc. Nor will you see fresh interviews with the Murdochs themselves, who, to no one’s surprise, declined to participate. Yet it’s still a propulsive and penetrating account of Rupert’s rise (which differs markedly from his self-made mythos), how his hunger for power reshaped political landscapes on multiple continents, and particularly how, late in his life, the 95-year-old media mega-mogul has torn apart his family in service of the empire he built. Considering the clash of interests involved, it’s probably for the best that it’s told mostly by journalists, both veteran media reporters and those who experienced the inner workings of News Corp. Whether you want to understand the current state of journalism or are just curious about the real-life Logan Roy, Dynasty is worth a look.
Ladies of London: The New Reign (Bravo)
When it comes to being rich, the British simply do it better. Oh, sure, they’re upholding a monarchical class system that dates back some 1200 years—but at least they have taste, not to mention a vicious, dry sense of humor. These are the principal delights of this recast revival of Bravo’s mid-2010s reality soap Ladies of London, which is essentially a Real Housewives for women too titled or glamorous or self-aware to identify as housewives. You needn’t have watched the original (I didn’t) to enjoy The New Reign; you just have to love haute mess.
What makes the show so much better than its many stateside counterparts? First and foremost, it’s the cast. Martha Sitwell is like Marlene Dietrich meets Marianne Faithfull, a brassy blonde whose bumpy ride through life has included teen motherhood, homelessness, modeling for Vivienne Westwood, marriage and divorce from a baronet. Speaking of nobles: Lady Emma Thynn beat out a certain other TV star to become the first woman of color to marry into the British aristocracy. An American expat who has fully embraced British eccentricity and emotional opacity, Kimi Murdoch could be a Toni Collette character. She can often be found trading witticisms with Mark-Francis Vandelli, a self-described professional aesthete, reality-TV veteran, and the rare man to merit main-cast status on this kind of show. While actor Margo Stilley made her name in the notoriously explicit film 9 Songs, Myka Meier is a Pollyannaish etiquette coach. Ladies’ first big blowup concerns a rumor that an old fair-weather friend of Myka’s is a madam. There has also been some remarkable headwear. What more could a Bravo devotee ask for?
Sunny Nights (Hulu)
If you ever wished Breaking Bad were less a descent into the abyss of the human soul and more “Yeah, bitch! Magnets!,” your new favorite show has arrived. I don’t mean that as a slight to Sunny Nights, a lively Australian crime comedy starring and executive produced by Will Forte and D’Arcy Carden. Jesse Pinkman’s exclamation of awe at the wonders of science was no throwaway; it was the payoff of years’ worth of sharp character development that began with a science teacher enlisting his burnout former student to help him cook meth.
Forte and Carden might both be best known for their roles in surreal network sitcoms. He created and starred in Fox’s even-weirder-than-it-sounds postapocalyptic comedy The Last Man on Earth; she broke out as a sort of supernatural AI guide in NBC’s afterlife-set The Good Place. But they’re excellent, individually and especially as a team, in this grittier, more grounded tale of American siblings trying to launch an innovative spray-tan product in the beachy environs of Sydney. To pursue this venture, Forte’s mousy Martin Marvin has left behind a stable job as a risk analyst, though it seems doubtful he would’ve made the trip if it didn’t also give him a chance to reunite with his estranged wife, Joyce (Ra Chapman), who recently returned to her native Australia. A bold, blunt ne’er-do-well who says things like “Remember how I used to run dope for Uncle Rick down in Mexico?,” Carden’s Vicki Marvin is simply short on other options. [Read the full review.]
This City Is Ours: A Crime Family Saga (AMC+)
The Sopranos gave us a gangster in therapy for panic attacks. Now, here’s This City Is Ours, whose protagonist is a gangster (James Nelson-Joyce from A Thousand Blows) whose low sperm count and eager-to-conceive girlfriend (Hannah Onslow of This Is Going to Hurt) have him making repeat visits to a fertility clinic. Don’t worry—that isn’t what the show is actually about. But creator Stephen Butchard’s choice to frontload it sets up a crime drama that, like a lesser (yet still quite good) Sopranos, distinguishes itself more through the care it takes in developing characters and relationships than for its empire building and bloodbaths.
The actual premise is nothing special. Smart, capable, and loyal, Nelson-Joyce’s Michael has spent years as the invaluable deputy to Ronnie (Sean Bean, great as ever), a Liverpool crime boss. He has a long-term plan to get out of the game and escape into a quiet life with Onslow’s Diana, with whom he’s trying to have an extremely un-Sopranos-like partnership grounded in honesty. Then things get complicated. A shocking betrayal pits Michael against Ronnie’s brash son Jamie (Jack McMullen) to become the aging patriarch’s successor. This might not sound too compelling if you’re not already a fan of the gangster genre. But if you are predisposed to enjoy this kind of thing, strong writing paired with excellent performances by Nelson-Joyce and Bean in particular sets This City Is Ours apart. As a bonus, for the Derry Girls hive, that show’s hilarious star Saoirse-Monica Jackson has a small but memorable role as a big-haired mob wife.
Vladimir (Netflix)
In the series premiere of Netflix’s Vladimir, Rachel Weisz awakens from troubled sleep to a cascade of texts, sighs deeply, and addresses the camera with pleading eyes. “All I want is a life free of complications,” says her unnamed lead. “If I can’t have power, can I at least be free from other people’s drama? Free from their behavior? Free from their needs and desires?”
It feels appropriate that free appears four times in this monologue, one of the character’s many fourth-wall-shattering asides. She is a blocked novelist who teaches English at a liberal arts college. And there is no setting more emblematic of freedom—and its discontents—than the campus, where tenure is supposed to protect the intellectual liberty of faculty and students living independently for the first time try on new ideas and identities. [Read an essay on Vladimir, HBO’s Rooster, and the return of the campus sex comedy.]
https://www.youtube.com/embed/5dkOdC5wPwo
March is the month of surprise snowstorms, dayslong downpours, and wild temperature fluctuations, when we all go a little batty waiting for winter to finally end. So maybe it’s taken a juicier-than-usual TV lineup to effectively distract us from the heartbreak of false spring. Whatever the reason, the highlights of March 2026 include randy college professors, louche London socialities, and a trio of crime-adjacent family businesses, both real and fictional.
Dynasty: The Murdochs (Netflix)
Rupert Murdoch has a reputation for cheating at family games of Monopoly. As scandals go, this doesn’t exactly rise to the level of News of the World hacking famous phones. But it’s pretty telling from a psychological standpoint; what kind of person needs to win that badly, even when the stakes are nil and the opponents your kids? Director Liz Garbus (What Happened, Miss Simone?) picks up on the metaphor in the fascinating four-part docuseries Dynasty: The Murdochs, which visualizes the Murdoch children’s very public succession battle as a gilded board game presenting various paths to the ultimate objective: inheriting the patriarch’s throne.
It’s a clever way of structuring a story that has already been told in every imaginable format, from an armload of buzzy books to Succession—a fictionalization of the Murdoch family drama so insightful, it ended up catalyzing actual drama within the Murdoch family. If you’re already an expert, you won’t necessarily learn anything new from Garbus’ doc. Nor will you see fresh interviews with the Murdochs themselves, who, to no one’s surprise, declined to participate. Yet it’s still a propulsive and penetrating account of Rupert’s rise (which differs markedly from his self-made mythos), how his hunger for power reshaped political landscapes on multiple continents, and particularly how, late in his life, the 95-year-old media mega-mogul has torn apart his family in service of the empire he built. Considering the clash of interests involved, it’s probably for the best that it’s told mostly by journalists, both veteran media reporters and those who experienced the inner workings of News Corp. Whether you want to understand the current state of journalism or are just curious about the real-life Logan Roy, Dynasty is worth a look.
Ladies of London: The New Reign (Bravo)
When it comes to being rich, the British simply do it better. Oh, sure, they’re upholding a monarchical class system that dates back some 1200 years—but at least they have taste, not to mention a vicious, dry sense of humor. These are the principal delights of this recast revival of Bravo’s mid-2010s reality soap Ladies of London, which is essentially a Real Housewives for women too titled or glamorous or self-aware to identify as housewives. You needn’t have watched the original (I didn’t) to enjoy The New Reign; you just have to love haute mess.
What makes the show so much better than its many stateside counterparts? First and foremost, it’s the cast. Martha Sitwell is like Marlene Dietrich meets Marianne Faithfull, a brassy blonde whose bumpy ride through life has included teen motherhood, homelessness, modeling for Vivienne Westwood, marriage and divorce from a baronet. Speaking of nobles: Lady Emma Thynn beat out a certain other TV star to become the first woman of color to marry into the British aristocracy. An American expat who has fully embraced British eccentricity and emotional opacity, Kimi Murdoch could be a Toni Collette character. She can often be found trading witticisms with Mark-Francis Vandelli, a self-described professional aesthete, reality-TV veteran, and the rare man to merit main-cast status on this kind of show. While actor Margo Stilley made her name in the notoriously explicit film 9 Songs, Myka Meier is a Pollyannaish etiquette coach. Ladies’ first big blowup concerns a rumor that an old fair-weather friend of Myka’s is a madam. There has also been some remarkable headwear. What more could a Bravo devotee ask for?
Sunny Nights (Hulu)
If you ever wished Breaking Bad were less a descent into the abyss of the human soul and more “Yeah, bitch! Magnets!,” your new favorite show has arrived. I don’t mean that as a slight to Sunny Nights, a lively Australian crime comedy starring and executive produced by Will Forte and D’Arcy Carden. Jesse Pinkman’s exclamation of awe at the wonders of science was no throwaway; it was the payoff of years’ worth of sharp character development that began with a science teacher enlisting his burnout former student to help him cook meth.
Forte and Carden might both be best known for their roles in surreal network sitcoms. He created and starred in Fox’s even-weirder-than-it-sounds postapocalyptic comedy The Last Man on Earth; she broke out as a sort of supernatural AI guide in NBC’s afterlife-set The Good Place. But they’re excellent, individually and especially as a team, in this grittier, more grounded tale of American siblings trying to launch an innovative spray-tan product in the beachy environs of Sydney. To pursue this venture, Forte’s mousy Martin Marvin has left behind a stable job as a risk analyst, though it seems doubtful he would’ve made the trip if it didn’t also give him a chance to reunite with his estranged wife, Joyce (Ra Chapman), who recently returned to her native Australia. A bold, blunt ne’er-do-well who says things like “Remember how I used to run dope for Uncle Rick down in Mexico?,” Carden’s Vicki Marvin is simply short on other options. [Read the full review.]
This City Is Ours: A Crime Family Saga (AMC+)
The Sopranos gave us a gangster in therapy for panic attacks. Now, here’s This City Is Ours, whose protagonist is a gangster (James Nelson-Joyce from A Thousand Blows) whose low sperm count and eager-to-conceive girlfriend (Hannah Onslow of This Is Going to Hurt) have him making repeat visits to a fertility clinic. Don’t worry—that isn’t what the show is actually about. But creator Stephen Butchard’s choice to frontload it sets up a crime drama that, like a lesser (yet still quite good) Sopranos, distinguishes itself more through the care it takes in developing characters and relationships than for its empire building and bloodbaths.
The actual premise is nothing special. Smart, capable, and loyal, Nelson-Joyce’s Michael has spent years as the invaluable deputy to Ronnie (Sean Bean, great as ever), a Liverpool crime boss. He has a long-term plan to get out of the game and escape into a quiet life with Onslow’s Diana, with whom he’s trying to have an extremely un-Sopranos-like partnership grounded in honesty. Then things get complicated. A shocking betrayal pits Michael against Ronnie’s brash son Jamie (Jack McMullen) to become the aging patriarch’s successor. This might not sound too compelling if you’re not already a fan of the gangster genre. But if you are predisposed to enjoy this kind of thing, strong writing paired with excellent performances by Nelson-Joyce and Bean in particular sets This City Is Ours apart. As a bonus, for the Derry Girls hive, that show’s hilarious star Saoirse-Monica Jackson has a small but memorable role as a big-haired mob wife.
Vladimir (Netflix)
In the series premiere of Netflix’s Vladimir, Rachel Weisz awakens from troubled sleep to a cascade of texts, sighs deeply, and addresses the camera with pleading eyes. “All I want is a life free of complications,” says her unnamed lead. “If I can’t have power, can I at least be free from other people’s drama? Free from their behavior? Free from their needs and desires?”
It feels appropriate that free appears four times in this monologue, one of the character’s many fourth-wall-shattering asides. She is a blocked novelist who teaches English at a liberal arts college. And there is no setting more emblematic of freedom—and its discontents—than the campus, where tenure is supposed to protect the intellectual liberty of faculty and students living independently for the first time try on new ideas and identities. [Read an essay on Vladimir, HBO’s Rooster, and the return of the campus sex comedy.]
https://www.youtube.com/embed/pLeJ0CysmN8
March is the month of surprise snowstorms, dayslong downpours, and wild temperature fluctuations, when we all go a little batty waiting for winter to finally end. So maybe it’s taken a juicier-than-usual TV lineup to effectively distract us from the heartbreak of false spring. Whatever the reason, the highlights of March 2026 include randy college professors, louche London socialities, and a trio of crime-adjacent family businesses, both real and fictional.
Dynasty: The Murdochs (Netflix)
Rupert Murdoch has a reputation for cheating at family games of Monopoly. As scandals go, this doesn’t exactly rise to the level of News of the World hacking famous phones. But it’s pretty telling from a psychological standpoint; what kind of person needs to win that badly, even when the stakes are nil and the opponents your kids? Director Liz Garbus (What Happened, Miss Simone?) picks up on the metaphor in the fascinating four-part docuseries Dynasty: The Murdochs, which visualizes the Murdoch children’s very public succession battle as a gilded board game presenting various paths to the ultimate objective: inheriting the patriarch’s throne.
It’s a clever way of structuring a story that has already been told in every imaginable format, from an armload of buzzy books to Succession—a fictionalization of the Murdoch family drama so insightful, it ended up catalyzing actual drama within the Murdoch family. If you’re already an expert, you won’t necessarily learn anything new from Garbus’ doc. Nor will you see fresh interviews with the Murdochs themselves, who, to no one’s surprise, declined to participate. Yet it’s still a propulsive and penetrating account of Rupert’s rise (which differs markedly from his self-made mythos), how his hunger for power reshaped political landscapes on multiple continents, and particularly how, late in his life, the 95-year-old media mega-mogul has torn apart his family in service of the empire he built. Considering the clash of interests involved, it’s probably for the best that it’s told mostly by journalists, both veteran media reporters and those who experienced the inner workings of News Corp. Whether you want to understand the current state of journalism or are just curious about the real-life Logan Roy, Dynasty is worth a look.
Ladies of London: The New Reign (Bravo)
When it comes to being rich, the British simply do it better. Oh, sure, they’re upholding a monarchical class system that dates back some 1200 years—but at least they have taste, not to mention a vicious, dry sense of humor. These are the principal delights of this recast revival of Bravo’s mid-2010s reality soap Ladies of London, which is essentially a Real Housewives for women too titled or glamorous or self-aware to identify as housewives. You needn’t have watched the original (I didn’t) to enjoy The New Reign; you just have to love haute mess.
What makes the show so much better than its many stateside counterparts? First and foremost, it’s the cast. Martha Sitwell is like Marlene Dietrich meets Marianne Faithfull, a brassy blonde whose bumpy ride through life has included teen motherhood, homelessness, modeling for Vivienne Westwood, marriage and divorce from a baronet. Speaking of nobles: Lady Emma Thynn beat out a certain other TV star to become the first woman of color to marry into the British aristocracy. An American expat who has fully embraced British eccentricity and emotional opacity, Kimi Murdoch could be a Toni Collette character. She can often be found trading witticisms with Mark-Francis Vandelli, a self-described professional aesthete, reality-TV veteran, and the rare man to merit main-cast status on this kind of show. While actor Margo Stilley made her name in the notoriously explicit film 9 Songs, Myka Meier is a Pollyannaish etiquette coach. Ladies’ first big blowup concerns a rumor that an old fair-weather friend of Myka’s is a madam. There has also been some remarkable headwear. What more could a Bravo devotee ask for?
Sunny Nights (Hulu)
If you ever wished Breaking Bad were less a descent into the abyss of the human soul and more “Yeah, bitch! Magnets!,” your new favorite show has arrived. I don’t mean that as a slight to Sunny Nights, a lively Australian crime comedy starring and executive produced by Will Forte and D’Arcy Carden. Jesse Pinkman’s exclamation of awe at the wonders of science was no throwaway; it was the payoff of years’ worth of sharp character development that began with a science teacher enlisting his burnout former student to help him cook meth.
Forte and Carden might both be best known for their roles in surreal network sitcoms. He created and starred in Fox’s even-weirder-than-it-sounds postapocalyptic comedy The Last Man on Earth; she broke out as a sort of supernatural AI guide in NBC’s afterlife-set The Good Place. But they’re excellent, individually and especially as a team, in this grittier, more grounded tale of American siblings trying to launch an innovative spray-tan product in the beachy environs of Sydney. To pursue this venture, Forte’s mousy Martin Marvin has left behind a stable job as a risk analyst, though it seems doubtful he would’ve made the trip if it didn’t also give him a chance to reunite with his estranged wife, Joyce (Ra Chapman), who recently returned to her native Australia. A bold, blunt ne’er-do-well who says things like “Remember how I used to run dope for Uncle Rick down in Mexico?,” Carden’s Vicki Marvin is simply short on other options. [Read the full review.]
This City Is Ours: A Crime Family Saga (AMC+)
The Sopranos gave us a gangster in therapy for panic attacks. Now, here’s This City Is Ours, whose protagonist is a gangster (James Nelson-Joyce from A Thousand Blows) whose low sperm count and eager-to-conceive girlfriend (Hannah Onslow of This Is Going to Hurt) have him making repeat visits to a fertility clinic. Don’t worry—that isn’t what the show is actually about. But creator Stephen Butchard’s choice to frontload it sets up a crime drama that, like a lesser (yet still quite good) Sopranos, distinguishes itself more through the care it takes in developing characters and relationships than for its empire building and bloodbaths.
The actual premise is nothing special. Smart, capable, and loyal, Nelson-Joyce’s Michael has spent years as the invaluable deputy to Ronnie (Sean Bean, great as ever), a Liverpool crime boss. He has a long-term plan to get out of the game and escape into a quiet life with Onslow’s Diana, with whom he’s trying to have an extremely un-Sopranos-like partnership grounded in honesty. Then things get complicated. A shocking betrayal pits Michael against Ronnie’s brash son Jamie (Jack McMullen) to become the aging patriarch’s successor. This might not sound too compelling if you’re not already a fan of the gangster genre. But if you are predisposed to enjoy this kind of thing, strong writing paired with excellent performances by Nelson-Joyce and Bean in particular sets This City Is Ours apart. As a bonus, for the Derry Girls hive, that show’s hilarious star Saoirse-Monica Jackson has a small but memorable role as a big-haired mob wife.
Vladimir (Netflix)
In the series premiere of Netflix’s Vladimir, Rachel Weisz awakens from troubled sleep to a cascade of texts, sighs deeply, and addresses the camera with pleading eyes. “All I want is a life free of complications,” says her unnamed lead. “If I can’t have power, can I at least be free from other people’s drama? Free from their behavior? Free from their needs and desires?”
It feels appropriate that free appears four times in this monologue, one of the character’s many fourth-wall-shattering asides. She is a blocked novelist who teaches English at a liberal arts college. And there is no setting more emblematic of freedom—and its discontents—than the campus, where tenure is supposed to protect the intellectual liberty of faculty and students living independently for the first time try on new ideas and identities. [Read an essay on Vladimir, HBO’s Rooster, and the return of the campus sex comedy.]
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