Now you've finished watching your final Christmas movie and vowed no more Elf until November next year, it's time to turn your attention to the queue of quality TV shows currently lined up in your list.
From biography to young adult, via strange goings on at an elite ballet school, here are 5 shows guaranteed to have you dissecting them around the water cooler. Socially distanced, of course…
‘Selena: The Series’, Netflix
It might be 25 years since her untimely and tragic death, but the hold Selena Quintanilla retains on her fans and the public consciousness remains as tight as ever. While there have been many retellings of Selena's story, most notably in the 1997 film, Selena, which launched Jennifer Lopez's career, the scope of this two-part series, with an initial offering of nine episodes, allows for more nuance and extended narrative.
Selena is played by Christian Serratos (most famous for playing Rosita Espinosa in The Walking Dead and Angela Weber in Twilight), with the show covering her life from her birth in Texas in 1971 to the release of her second studio album, Ven Conmigo. But this show isn't just about the music, it's about family, and the legacy of how Selena's struggle as a Latina woman in the music industry paved the way for so many others today.
‘No Man’s Land’, OSN
This OSN original stars James Krishna Floyd, Jo Ben Ayed and Julia Faure in a searing look at Syria’s ISIS and Kurdish camps in the chaotic aftermath of the Iraq war during 2014. Told across eight episodes, Parisian Antoine Habert (Felix Moati) flies to Turkey after believing he saw his dead sister in news footage, to try and find out what happened to her. But when he arrives, he is treated as an ISIS prisoner and imprisoned, until the arrival of three British jihadists who attack the Kurdish base, freeing him. From this point on, Habert is effectively trapped in the no man’s land of the title, dragged into violent skirmishes he cannot avoid, all while trying to find out if the woman he saw on the news, really is his sister.
‘The Wilds’, Amazon Prime
Lost, Lord of The Flies, Survivor, Running Wild with Bear Grylls… You could insert the word "meets" between any two of these shows and be pretty confident of coming up with the vague premise of The Wilds. But that's not to say the show is unoriginal. Plus, it carries on the tradition of quality young adult content perfected by the hit, The Hunger Games rather than the miss, Divergent.
A group of teen girls crash land on a remote beach with no sign of civilisation in sight, and in keeping with the latest trend in TV storytelling (see also HBO's Euphoria), each episode focuses on a different girl, alternating between their previous lives before the plane crash to their new existence on the island. For every "I saw them do it on 'Bear Grylls'" moment of genius from the girls there's plenty of true to form teenage behaviour, which makes for a stormy way to survive, with a group as culturally, financially, ethnically and behaviourally diverse as this.
‘Your Honor’, Showtime
First of all, it goes without saying that if Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) is in it, then it's going to be good.
Hot on the heels of Apple TV+'s Defending Jacob in which Chris Evans's William Landay, an assistant DA, gets dragged into a murky cover up when his son is charged with murder, comes Your Honor, whereby Cranston stars as Michael Desiato, a judge who discovers how far a father will go for his child when his son is involved in a hit and run that sees him collide with an organised crime family. The opening 15 minutes set the tone for the entire series, in which teenager, Adam Desiato's (Hunter Doohan) car collides with that of Jimi Stanton's Carlo Baxter, and after calling 911, he makes the decision to leave the scene. From that point on, everyone's lives are intertwined. "This is New Orleans," points out Mob matriarch, Gina Baxter (Hope Davis), "everything connects."
‘Tiny Pretty Things’, Netflix
Based on the book by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton, this is Gossip Girl meets Black Swan as the talented, diverse pupils at the elite Archer School of Ballet in Chicago come under suspicion following a mysterious accident at the academy.
With every variation of dancer represented - Neveah the raw talent, Shane from the wrong side of the tracks, rich boy Oren and Delia the prodigy, among others – it's left up to The Boys star, Jess Salgueiro's inquisitive cop, Isabel, to unravel the comings and goings of this determined troupe and their equally succeed-at-all-costs teachers.
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