Wanderlust
Buzz is growing for this boldly unconventional family drama, the first arrival from the BBC’s impressive autumn slate. The terrific Toni Collette – star of the film Muriel’s Wedding and now a potential Oscar dark horse for her performance in Hereditary – and Steven Mackintosh star as a long-married couple from Manchester trying to reignite their relationship by, ahem, revolutionary means. Created by award-winning playwright Nick Payne, loosely based on his 2010 stage production of the same name, it has an infectious soundtrack and is warmly funny and surprisingly sexy. Altogether now: you’re terrible, Muriel.
Expected: late August, BBC One
Bodyguard
With his corrupt cop thriller Line of Duty getting more fiendishly gripping with each passing series, writer Jed Mercurio’s stock is sky-high. He reunites with LofD star Keeley Hawes for this political thriller, in which Game of Thrones’s Richard Madden is a volatile war veteran assigned to protect Hawes’s ambitious home secretary. He fundamentally disagrees with her views, but does that make him a threat or an asset? “I don’t need you to vote for me,” she says. “Only to protect me.” Banish traumatic memories of Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston in the 90s bonkbuster of similar title. This will have more knuckle-gnawing tension and far fewer power ballads.
Expected: late August on BBC One
Killing Eve
While Fleabag fans await series two (be patient, it’s due next year), they might be surprised by the stylistic gear-change of creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s interim project: a high-stakes, cat-and-mouse spy thriller that’s a million miles away from grungy sex in NW5. Grey’s Anatomy and Sideways star Sandra Oh is the MI5 officer who becomes obsessed with tracking Jodie Comer’s psychopathic assassin. It’s as subversive and wittily scripted as you’d expect from Waller-Bridge, with a feminist tone that perfectly fits the #MeToo era. Based on Observer dance critic Luke Jennings’s Villanelle novels, it’s already been an Emmy-nominated hit on BBC America, which has only served to stoke anticipation here.
Expected: September on BBC One (weekly episodes) and BBC Three (instant box set)
Vanity Fair
With the likes of Downton Abbey, The Durrells, Endeavour and Victoria, recent years have seen ITV sneak up on the rails to give the BBC a run for its ye olde money in period drama. The channel’s flagship autumn offering is a fresh, funny take on William Makepeace Thackeray’s Victorian romp, co-produced with Amazon. Rising Hollywood star Olivia Cooke plays social-climbing anti-heroine Becky Sharp, while the strong supporting cast includes Martin Clunes, Frances de la Tour, Simon Russell Beale, Suranne Jones - and, deliciously, Michael Palin as Thackeray himself.
Expected: September on ITV
Maniac
Eleven years ago, long before Oscars came calling, Emma Stone and Jonah Hill co-starred in potty-mouthed, teen-sex farce Superbad. Now they’ve reunited for Netflix’s mind-bending new black comedy. Based on a 2014 Norwegian series of the same name and stylishly directed by True Detective’s Cary Fukunaga, this trippy 10-parter sees the Hollywood pair play strangers who meet in a mental-health facility, where a psychotropic pharmaceutical trial goes awry. Think Legion meets Black Mirror. The cast also boasts Sally Field, Jemima Kirke (Jessa from Girls) and Justin Theroux – mop-topped, bespectacled and looking unnervingly like his documentary-making cousin, Louis.
Expected: 21 September on Netflix
Gentleman Jack
Sally Wainwright is one of our finest TV writers, her CV crammed with critical and ratings hits like Happy Valley, Scott & Bailey and Last Tango in Halifax, but her latest creation is her most intriguing yet. Period drama Gentleman Jack tells the extraordinary story of 19th-century landowner, adventurer, industrialist and intellectual Anne Lister, hailed as “the first modern lesbian”. Wainwright grew up near Lister’s ancestral Yorkshire home of Shibden Hall, has devoured her extensive diaries, and calls her “one of the most exuberant, thrilling and brilliant women in British history”. With Suranne Jones in the title role and Wainwright on directorial as well as script duties, this eight‑part drama has Bafta winner written across it in big bold letters.
Expected: early 2019 on BBC One
Black Earth Rising
Writer-director Hugo Blick is one of the most distinctive TV dramatists around, creating ambitious series including the The Honourable Woman and The Shadow Line. Now he turns to the west’s relationship with contemporary Africa and the prosecution of international war crimes. Chewing Gum’s magnificent Michaela Coel stars as a woman rescued in childhood from the Rwandan genocide and raised in Britain by a globetrotting lawyer (Harriet Walter). When her adoptive mother tries to bring an African militia leader to justice, she’s pulled into a journey that upends her life. Hollywood veteran John Goodman, fresh from the ill‑fated Roseanne revival, also stars in this epic quest thriller.
Expected: October on BBC Two
The War of the Worlds
Eighty years after the infamous radio broadcast reportedly sparked mass panic that the Martian invasion was real, a major retelling of HG Wells’s sci-fi classic lands. This will be a faithful rendering, set in Edwardian-era London. Rafe Spall and Poldark’s Eleanor Tomlinson are the unconventional couple fighting to survive a genuinely scary alien invasion, supported by Rupert Graves and Robert Carlyle. Adapted by Doctor Who writer Peter Harness, it’s more period horror than Tom Cruise cheese-fest.
Expected: October on BBC One
The Romanoffs
Three years since Don Draper hung up his slim-cut grey suit, Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner returns to television with this new anthology series, rumoured to have a $50m mega-budget. A world away from Madison Avenue during the 60s, it tells eight standalone contemporary stories about people around the world who believe themselves to be descendants of the Russian royal family. A starry cast includes some Mad Men alumni, as you might expect – notably Christina “Joan” Hendricks and John “Roger” Slattery – alongside heavyweights like Isabelle Huppert, Aaron Eckhart and Diane Lane. We’ll raise an Old-Fashioned to that.
Expected: 12 October on Amazon Prime
Les Misérables
Relax, musical theatre-phobes. The BBC’s lavish new version of Victor Hugo’s classic weepie, adapted by corset king Andrew Davies, isn’t a musical but an epic, emotional dramatic retelling that takes the story back to its roots. The starry cast is led by Dominic West as Valjean, David Oyelowo as Javert and Lily Collins as Fantine, while Adeel Akhtar and Olivia Colman reprise their Night Manager double act as Monsieur and Madame Thénardier. “I thought the musical was a travesty, personally,” says Davies. All right, mate, don’t make a song and dance about it.
Expected: November on BBC One
