I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be super busy between now and the end of this year. That is, I’m going to be glued to my TV and obsessing over more than half a dozen new shows that are hitting a variety of streamers through the end of December. We’re talking everything from super-addictive new prestige dramas from Apple TV+ and Netflix to promising shows from hitmakers for the likes of Paramount+ and much more.
Below, check out seven of my picks for some of the most exciting and can’t-miss TV shows coming soon, including their release dates and the streaming services you can watch them on.
La Maison (Sept. 20, Apple TV+)
To kick things off, I want to first spotlight the imminent Apple TV+ release La Maison.
You can think of this 10-episode drama as a bit like high fashion-meets-Succession-meets-French elegance and luxury. The story is set in and around an iconic Paris-based high-fashion atelier that gets thrown into scandal by a viral video featuring a star designer. His video ends up leaving the family’s iconic haute couture house in disarray, while that designer’s former muse teams up with a next-generation talent to save and evolve the fashion house.
The show is a TOA — The Originals of America production, in conjunction with multi-award-winning studio TOP — The Originals Productions. That’s the same studio behind The Bureau, which will forever and always be the best spy drama ever made. Seriously, this production company’s name attached to anything is an automatic guarantee of quality.
Black Doves (TBA, Netflix)
We don’t yet have a specific release date for when this next show, an espionage thriller featuring Keira Knightley, will arrive on Netflix, but the expectation is that it will be sometime before the end of this year.
Black Doves, created and written by Joe Barton, stars Knightley as a down-to-earth mother, wife, and professional spy named Helen Webb. Her husband is a politician, and for a decade Helen has been slipping his secrets to the shadowy group she works for called the Black Doves.
When Helen’s secret lover Jason is assassinated, Helen’s spymaster calls in her old friend (Whishaw) to keep her safe. Per Netflix, he’s a “suave, Champagne-drinking assassin. But having been out of the game since a failed job with disastrous consequences, he’s come home to a London that has moved on without him. As his past threatens to catch up with him, his task is to protect Helen as she investigates who killed Jason and why.
“Together, they set off on a mission that will lead them to uncover a vast, interconnected conspiracy. One that links the murky underworld of London to a looming geopolitical crisis — and leads them to question the cost of the moral choices they’ve made.”
Citadel: Diana (Oct. 10, Prime Video)
Prime Video’s first season of Citadel didn’t exactly make anyone’s list of the best TV shows of 2023, but I’d highly encourage everyone to give this Italian spinoff starring Matilda de Angelis the benefit of the doubt.
Prime Video says the show is set in Milan in 2030, years after the independent global spy agency Citadel has been destroyed by the enemy syndicate Manticore.
“Since then, Diana Cavalieri (Matilda De Angelis), an undercover Citadel agent, is alone, trapped behind enemy lines as a mole in Manticore. When she finally sees a way out and the chance to disappear forever, the only way to do so is trusting the most unexpected ally, Edo Zani (Lorenzo Cervasio), the heir of Manticore Italy and son of the head of the Italian organization, Ettore Zani (Maurizio Lombardi), who’s vying for leadership against the other European families.”
Citadel: Diana was produced by Cattleya, the Italian film and TV production company behind not just one of the greatest mafia dramas of all time but one of the greatest TV dramas, period, of all time (Gomorrah). Given that Citadel: Diana is set in Italy, there’s also a futuristic-meets-Old World vibe to the production, which is to say it adds the kind of visuals that I really think will make you feel like you’re watching a completely new TV show. And did I mention that it stars Matilda de Angelis? I did? Good, because she is a seriously great leading lady.
The Agency (TBA, Paramount+ With Showtime)
I alluded above to The Bureau, or Le Bureau des Légendes as it’s known in France. It’s not just me who asserts that it’s one of the best spy shows of all time; several former intelligence professionals told me they think so, too, in an article I wrote a couple of years ago.
To say I’m excited about the American remake of The Bureau that’s coming later this year to Paramount+ With Showtime would be the understatement of the decade. It’s called The Agency, and whereas the original was set inside France’s DGSE (the equivalent of the CIA), the remake is a CIA story.
Michael Fassbender, starring as Martian, is described as a “covert CIA agent ordered to abandon his undercover life and return to London Station. When the love he left behind reappears, romance reignites. His career, his real identity and his mission are pitted against his heart; hurling them both into a deadly game of international intrigue and espionage.” This is essentially a tweaked version of the character Malotru from the original series.
Fans of top-tier spy dramas, you absolutely cannot miss this one.
The Diplomat: Season 2 (Oct. 31, Netflix)
I know I wasn’t the only one who yelled at the screen when the credits started rolling at the end of the first season of The Diplomat, one of Netflix’s best new TV shows in years. That was a heck of a cliffhanger to leave us on, but the uncertainty that it also left us with about the fates of a few characters guarantees that we’re all coming back on Oct. 31 for the new batch of episodes.
In Season 2 of The Diplomat, we’ll pick right back up with the immediate aftermath of the bomb that went off during the Season 1 finale, when we saw that Kate’s almost-ex-husband Hal Wyler had finally pieced some important things together but unfortunately got (literally) too close to the conspiracy he uncovered.
Something else that’s exciting about Season 2: We’ll also get our first look at the show’s Vice President Grace Penn, played by Allison Janney. A veep, by the way, who thinks that Keri Russell’s Kate Wyler is after her job (and who’s not entirely wrong in thinking that).
Landman (Nov. 17, Paramount+)
Taylor Sheridan is as prolific a TV hitmaker as they come these days. Paramount+, in fact, is so heavily reliant on Sheridan’s shows like Yellowstone, Yellowstone spinoffs 1883 and 1923, Tulsa King, Mayor of Kingstown, and Lioness, that the streamer ought to just go ahead and call itself Sheridan+ at this point.
In all seriousness, the Sheridan shows keep coming, with his latest for Paramount+, titled Landman and starring Billy Bob Thornton, arriving in November.
Described as an upstairs/downstairs drama about the Texas oil boom with characters that include roughnecks and wildcat billionaires, Landman is based on the podcast Boomtown from Imperative Entertainment and Texas Monthly. The show goes deep on the modern-day gold rush that’s reshaping almost every aspect of life in the state, from executives cutting billion-dollar deals to startups scrambling for a piece of the pie. In this story, pipeline workers also risk their safety on a daily basis, exotic dancers follow the money, and Big Oil reshapes our climate, economy, and geopolitics.
Squid Game: Season 2 (Dec. 26, Netflix)
Given that this last show remains the biggest Netflix TV show of all time, there’s probably no chance whatsoever that the much-anticipated second season will manage to live up to everyone’s expectations.
That’s a necessary consequence, I suppose, of the unprecedented worldwide success of Squid Game‘s first season, which hit Netflix back in 2021. Here’s the logline Netflix has given us about the new season of the show: “Three years after winning Squid Game, Player 456 gave up going to the states and comes back with a new resolution in his mind. Gi-hun once again dives into the mysterious survival game, starting another life-or-death game with new participants gathered to win the prize of 456 billion won.”
There’s not much else we know thus far about the storyline, but here’s hoping it will have been worth the three-year wait. For now, as yet another testament to how big the show is, fans in New York City have a chance to enjoy the world of the show in person, with Netflix’s interactive Squid Game: The Experience coming to NYC’s Manhattan Mall in Midtown in October.
