Poldark
Carriages to Cornwall for round three of the great scything contest. Rumours abound that there’s a new topless torso for fans to swoon over — and that Demelza’s love for Ross may not survive the arrival of a sexy lieutenant in town. Hold on to your tricorn hats.
Fearless
Cold-case investigations (Unforgotten) and conspiracy dramas (Line of Duty) are two of the most popular genres in TV and this six-parter by Patrick Harbinson — a writer on Homeland — offers both. Helen McCrory is a crusading solicitor trying to prove that an East Anglian man was wrongly convicted of murder, who finds that the establishment wants him behind bars — and her out of the way. Michael Gambon and Jemima Rooper are among the supporting cast.
Riviera
Starry actors (Julia Stiles, Adrian Lester, Anthony LaPaglia) and a summery setting (the Cote d’Azur) give a promising gloss to this 10-part thriller. Stiles is an American art curator who emigrates to smart seaside France with her tycoon husband. But a bomb on a yacht opens up mysteries among the super-rich.
Vlogglebox
First there was Gogglebox, then there were the Gogglesprogs. Now, everyone’s favourite watch-people-watching-things franchise goes beyond TV to reveal what young people are really looking at online. Let’s hope the new crew of 16 to 24-year-old reviewers passing judgment on the latest viral videos will be spiky and funny.
The Crystal Maze
Richard O’Brien won’t be running riot in the Medieval zone any more, but Richard Ayoade takes the helm (hopefully wearing just as much leopard print) to bring ‘90s kids the nostalgia fest they’ve been clamouring for. Expect a roster of new games, a dome that looks a little less like a greenhouse and the brilliant Adam Buxton as a talking head in a flask.
GLOW
Showrunner Jenji Kohan turns from Orange is the New Black to the big-haired, leotarded world of ‘80s women’s wrestling. TV darling Alison Brie (best known as Trudy in Mad Men) is almost unrecognisable as Ruth Wilder, an out-of-work actor who gets embroiled in the emergent Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling league. Soon she becomes Zoya the Destroyer, a Soviet battleaxe bodyslamming the all-American Liberty Bell for wrestling ring domination.
Gypsy
Therapists are supposed to maintain emotional and physical distance from their patients. But Jean Holloway, protagonist of this show, becomes dangerously involved in the lives of those she treats. Another example of Netflix’s ability to attract stellar actors (Naomi Watts, Billy Crudup) and directors (Sam Taylor-Johnson.)
Hospital
The return of the staggering documentary series that shows the severe pressure the NHS is under. This time the cameras gain extraordinary access to Imperial during the Westminster terror attack.
The Leftovers
This compelling post-apocalyptic drama — set after a supernatural event has removed 2 per cent of the world’s population from Earth — mixes thrills, comedy and horror as it delves into the deep religious and frontier-spirit instincts of the American psyche. This third and final season includes flashbacks (to an 1844 prophecy) and a new plotline about a US president intent on nuclear war.
Friends from College
The creator of Bad Neighbours and long-time Judd Apatow collaborator teams up with Fred Savage (yes, he of The Wonder Years) and Billy Eichner for a gross-out comedy about a gang of former Harvard buddies whose 40s are fast approaching. There will be copious drugs, competitive pizza-throwing and coke-fuelled tap dancing.
Game of Thrones
The biggest show in the world is back, and winter is finally here (just as it moves to a summertime slot). What will the penultimate season bring for the warriors and wildlings of Westeros? Will Cersei keep a firm grip on the Iron Throne? Will she battle Daenerys and her dragons or Jon Snow first? And where does Ed Sheeran fit into the picture? The great war descends — in just five weeks.
Ozark
Jason Bateman is a Chicagoan financier forced to move suddenly to a Missouri resort community with his wife (Laura Linney) to try to pay off a debt to a Mexican drug baron. Dark, moody and gruesome, this is definitely one for Breaking Bad fans.
Top of the Lake: China Girl
Four years after its first series, Jane Campion’s unsettling crime drama finally returns. This time around it’s left the limpid locale of New Zealand’s South Island for Sydney, where Elisabeth Moss’s tortured detective will investigate the murder of a sex worker, assisted by Game of Thrones’ Gwendoline Christie. If that pairing wasn’t intriguing enough, Nicole Kidman makes another appearance on the small screen, playing a wild-haired second-wave feminist. Sign us up.
Wild Alaska Live
The latest in the BBC’s run of nature outside broadcasts relocates Steve Backshall, Matt Baker and Liz Bonnin to Alaska for a week of live nightly reports, where they promise to investigate wildlife including salmon, walrus and a mind-boggling variety of bears.
Gameface
Roisin Conaty writes and stars in this new sitcom as the hapless Marcella, a failing-actor-cum-postman who is trying to get to grips with life in her 30s, advised by her flatmates, her therapist — and her driving instructor. This summer’s answer to Fleabag?
Against the Law
The centrepiece to the BBC’s Gay Britannia season, marking the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality, stars Daniel Mays as journalist Peter Wildeblood, a key campaigner for the change in the law. The documentary drama focuses on a formative experience for Wildeblood: his imprisonment in the 1950s, after a lover gives evidence against him. Mark Gatiss plays a prison psychiatrist.
Man in An Orange Shirt
Two heart-rending studies in male vulnerability. Michael is a captain on the front lines in the second world war who falls for a war artist. Sam is his grandson, a 34-year-old vet committed to dating app hookups and avoiding intimacy at all costs. Vanessa Redgrave stars in both these two-part dramas — written by novelist Patrick Gale — as the army wife betrayed when her husband follows his heart.
Trust Me
After The Replacement, another copycat thriller. This four-part psychological drama stars Broadchurch’s Jodie Whittaker as Cath, an Edinburgh nurse who, after losing her job, steals the identity of a doctor. Casualties ensue.
The State
This much-anticipated four-part drama about Britons joining up to fight with Daesh in Syria sees award-winning director Peter Kosminsky returning to the deeply researched contemporary milieu of his earlier work (The Government Inspector, Warriors) after an acclaimed diversion into historical drama with Wolf Hall. The phenomenon of extremists from the UK is among the most pressing modern questions, and Kosminsky seems well-placed to address it.
Strike: The Cuckoo’s Calling
Hollywood has the lock on JK Rowling’s Harry Potter franchise, but the BBC has claimed her non-Potter novels: first The Casual Vacancy, and now three of the crime novels Rowling writes under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Tom Burke is the title character: Cormoran Strike, a physically and psychologically damaged war veteran, who sets up as a private detective in London.
70 Years On: The Partition Story
Programmes across the BBC mark seven decades since the departing British Raj divided the territory into India and Pakistan. Highlights include Anita Rani’s two-part documentary My Family, Partition and Me, telling the stories of four Indian families including her own, and the three-part World’s Most Dangerous Border, in which Adnan Sarwar and Babita Sharma explore the lasting fallout from the drawing of the post-colonial map.
The Tick
The revival of the cult comic-book show from Ben Edlund about a giant blue-eared superhero who teams up with Arthur Everest, an accountant in a moth outfit, to save their city from evildoers like the Caped Chameleon. Peter Serafinowicz swaps sassy Trump for spandex in the title role. Silly, summery fun.
Diana and I
The 20th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a Paris car crash is marked by a 90-minute documentary drawing together the recollections of those involved — as relatives, reporters or mourners — in a week that changed the British relationship with the monarchy. Other networks went earlier with their Diana chronicles, but this promises interviews with the two people most affected: Princes William and Harry.
The Big Family Cooking Showdown
Has the BBC found its Bake Off replacement after losing its most beloved show to Channel 4’s pots of cash? Nadiya Hussain and Zoe Ball take up the Mel & Sue mantle, meeting foodie families around the UK — and Giorgio Locatelli and Rosemary Shrager are the new Paul and Mary.
Insecure
Issa Rae returns for the second outing of her excellent sitcom (based on her web series The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl) about the trials and disastrous Tinder dates of life in LA today. With a storming soundtrack overseen by Solange.
