From stories about an elderly man finding a new purpose in life to the machinations of oil barons as well as a spinoff of the 2021 blockbuster Dune, next week is jam-packed with a slew of compelling new TV shows across several major streaming services.
Below, we’ve got a snapshot of some of the biggest and best shows worth checking out next week (Nov. 17-23), from streamers ranging from HBO and Hulu to Netflix and Paramount+. Long story short, if you’re looking for a new title to add to your watchlist over the next seven days, there’s no shortage of excellent candidates.
Dune: Prophecy (Nov. 17, HBO)
First up is a series that will probably be catnip for at least some sci-fi fans out there.
While director Denis Villeneuve’s blockbuster films Dune and Dune: Part Two were based on Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, this new TV show from HBO is actually inspired by Sisterhood of Dune, a 2012 spinoff novel written by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert’s son.
The six-episode series unfolds 10,000 years before the ascension of Paul Atreides. Per HBO, Dune: Prophecy “follows two Harkonnen sisters as they combat forces that threaten the future of humankind and establish the fabled sect that will become known as the Bene Gesserit.” I’m especially excited for this one, because showrunner Alison Schapker was also a producer on two of my favorite TV shows of the 2000s — Lost and Alias.
Landman (Nov. 17, Paramount+)
This next show from Paramount+ hitmaker Taylor Sheridan is an upstairs/downstairs drama about the Texas oil boom, with characters that include roughnecks and wildcat billionaires.
Landman unfolds in the boomtowns of West Texas, offering a modern-day story of fortune-seeking among oil rigs and the ruthless businessmen who oversee them. They’re leading an oil-based economy so massive that it’s reshaping our climate, economy, and geopolitics. In other words, get ready for another testosterone-heavy drama co-created by Sheridan, whose other Paramount shows are built around mobsters, ranch owners, the prison industrial complex, and the global war on terror.
Executives cutting billion-dollar deals, startups scrambling for a piece of the pie, pipeline workers risking their safety on a daily basis, and exotic dancers who follow the money — all of it forms the hinge on which Landman swings.
Interior Chinatown (Nov. 19, Hulu)
Hulu’s Interior Chinatown is a drama starring Jimmy O. Yang, Ronny Chieng, and Chloe Bennet, and it tells the story of a guy named Willis Wu. He’s a background character in a police procedural called Black & White, and we see him go through the motions of his job as he’s relegated to the background (a metaphor, of course). He waits tables and dreams of a world beyond Chinatown, of a life less ordinary.
Eventually, he becomes an inadvertent witness to a crime, which leads to him uncovering some buried family history as well as learning what it means to be in the spotlight. The series is based on Charles Yu’s 2020 novel of the same, which is written in a screenplay-like format and explores themes of identity, race, and representation in America.
A Man on the Inside (Nov. 21, Netflix)
Ted Danson brings a cool, sophisticated charm to every project he takes on, including this next standout among next week’s crop of new TV shows.
Making Netflix’s A Man on the Inside even more of a slam dunk is the fact that it comes from Mike Schur, the creator of The Good Place. In this new feel-good comedy, Danson plays a retired professor named Charles who feels that he’s stuck in a rut — until he answers an ad from a private detective looking to solve a mysterious theft. It requires Charles to go undercover as a new resident at a senior living community, where he builds heartwarming new and bonds with his daughter along the way.
The series is actually an adaptation of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Mole Agent. “I knew almost nothing about [The Mole Agent], and I just fell for it so hard,” Schur told Netflix’s Tudum. “The hero, Sergio, is so wonderfully wrought, so real, just a lovely human being. It’s a beautiful meditation on aging, a subject we are uniquely terrible at confronting, dealing with, or discussing in this country. It showed the reality of aging for people along a very broad spectrum — some folks who were doing great and some folks who were not — and that really grabbed me.”
Arcane: Season 2, Act III (Nov. 23, Netflix)
Finally, next week will also see us say goodbye to one of the best Netflix series available to stream at the moment, one that’s still hanging on to a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes ever since its Season 1 release in 2021.
Arcane, set in the world of League of Legends, offers a stunning blend of action, fantasy, and character-driven drama that’s received widespread acclaim for its world-building and breathtaking animation. The story unfolds in the utopian city of Piltover and in its oppressed, industrial counterpart of Zaun. At the end of Arcane Season 1, Netflix explains, “Jinx (Ella Purnell) isn’t dead, per se, but Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) is mourning her sister nonetheless.
“That’s because any hope that the old Powder (Mia Sinclair Jenness) still exists blew up with Jinx’s brutal attack on the council at the end of Arcane‘s first season. After killing her father figure Silco (Jason Spisak), Jinx fires a massive rocket at Piltover’s governing body just as they finalize a vote for peace with sister city Zaun.”
Season 2, the summary continues, “finds Vi coming to terms with Jinx’s destructive act, which sends both cities hurtling toward war.”
