Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+: 10 of the best new shows to watch in May

Shardlake

Disney+ from Wednesday, May 1st

Fans of the hugely popular historical murder-mystery novels by CJ Sansom will be relishing this four-part drama based on the first novel in Sansom’s Shardlake series. Arthur Hughes plays the brilliant 16th-century lawyer Matthew Shardlake, who has to not only navigate tricky legal terrain in Tudor England but also deal with the perilous politics of the reign of Henry VIII. Sean Bean plays the king’s right-hand man, Thomas Cromwell, who sends Shardlake to a remote monastery to investigate a killing – although Cromwell’s less concerned with whodunit than with claiming the monastery’s wealth for his boss. It’s not long before Shardlake uncovers more murders, and has to keep his wits about him to avoid becoming the next victim.

A Man in Full

Netflix from Thursday, May 2nd

Jeff Daniels, Diane Lane and Lucy Liu star in a six-part adaptation of the Tom Wolfe novel. What could go wrong? For Daniels’s character, the property mogul Charlie Croker, everything can – and does – go awry. He’s a brash, abrasive, thoroughly unlikeable guy, and when bankruptcy looms his numerous enemies smell blood and are ready to rip him to shreds. But they’ve reckoned without this old-fashioned ornery cuss, and instead of bowing to the inevitable Charlie vows to roll up his sleeves and fight back to save his crumbling empire. Lane plays Charlie’s ex-wife Martha, who sees Charlie’s demise as her chance to shine. Liu plays a make-up-business maven Joyce Newman, with William Jackson Harper as Atlanta mayor Wes Jordan, who will do whatever it takes to get re-elected. Will this be another Bonfire of the Vanities – which is to say a great book but so-so adaptation? Let’s hope Daniels and company can crush this one.

Clarkson’s Farm

Prime Video from Friday, May 3rd

If you aren’t already a fully paid-up acolyte of the curmudgeonly petrolhead with a penchant for hitting Irishmen, then this third series about Jeremy Clarkson’s new life as a farmer will clear away any last traces of resistance, as it features lots of cute piglets. Welcome back to Diddley Squat Farm, as the Grand Tour presenter continues his adventures in agriculture – with mixed results. Faced with rising prices, failing crops and the closure of his farm shop, Clarkson is branching out into pig farming and growing mushrooms, but one of the newborn piglets looks unlikely to survive, while his ’shrooms resemble some kind of icky alien lifeform. He has also decided to take a chance and make the young farmer Kaleb Cooper his farm manager, so, to motivate him, sets a challenge to see which of them can turn over the most money. But a new face on the farm puts Kaleb’s nose out of joint – and he wants to know why the hell a member of Groove Armada is ploughing his fields.

Welcome to Wrexham

Disney+ from Friday, May 3rd

In a galaxy far, far away from the Premier League, the small Wrexham AFC soccer team, in north Wales, were struggling to get out of the fifth-tier National League. But then the actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney landed from Hollywood with a wad of cash and a dream of turning these underdogs into contenders. Some thought the pair may have had more money than sense, and would have been better making a film about a fictional club. As series three begins, however, Wrexham have been promoted back to the English Football League, and the intensity levels have gone up Wrexham set out to make their mark in League Two. This season also follows the fortunes of the club’s women’s team as they are promoted to the Adran Premier league. Welcome to Wrexham has already won Emmy awards, so Reynolds and McElhenney must be doing something right. “People expected it to be a documentary about us changing Wrexham,” says Reynolds, “But I think it’s about Wrexham changing everyone else.”

[ Welcome to Wrexham: the love affair between Hollywood and a football-mad Welsh barracks town ]

Dark Matter

Apple TV+ from Wednesday, May 8th

We’ve hardly begun to get our heads around 3 Body Problem when along comes another brain-scrambling sci-fi series to confusticate us. Brilliant! Joel Edgerton is physicist and family man Jason Dessen, who is abducted one night while coming home from his important work and forced into a terrifying Sliding Doors moment. He finds himself trapped in an alternative version of his life, and has to jump through hoops and wormholes to find a way back to his own reality and return to his wife (played by Jennifer Connelly) and family. The key lies in a mysterious black box with endless doors into other realities, but who created the box, and who abducted him? Not a spoiler alert: it could be himself.

Bodkin

Netflix from Thursday, May 9th

Fáilte to the fictional Irish town of Bodkin, a cross between Killinaskully and The League of Gentlemen’s Royston Vasey, where people are not quite what they seem and behind every cottage door lies weirdness and a touch of insanity. There’s lots of scope to get bogged down in Paddywhackery, as we meet one mad local after another, including a yoga nun and a farmer with a disco tractor. The US actor Will Forte teams up with the Irish actor Siobhán Cullen for this darkly comic thriller series about a team of podcasters trying to unravel the mystery behind the disappearance of three people in the town 25 years ago. Forte’s character, American podcaster Gilbert, is a charming fellow with a naively romantic vision of the Emerald Isle; Cullen’s character, Dublin investigative journalist Dove, is a bit more worldly, and has no time for any aul’ blarney. But whenever the podcasters ask awkward questions, they get a look that would curdle milk, along with a warning not to meddle in the past. With luck, any attempt at smuggling cod Oirishness into the mix will be met with a similarly sour stare.

Bridgerton

Netflix from Thursday, May 16th

Shonda Rimes’ hit Regency drama has already had two successful series, but this is the big one for Irish audiences, as the spotlight switches to Penelope Featherington, played by the fabulous Nicola Coughlan, star of Derry Girls and Barbie. Fed up with being the perennial wallflower, and despairing of ever being more than friends with the man of her fancy, Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton), Penelope decides that this season she’s going to bag herself a husband, but does she have the confidence to succeed in the marriage market, and can she keep her alter-ego, the gossip writer Lady Whistledown, a secret for much longer? Colin, meanwhile, has returned from his travels, and gets an icy reception from Penelope, so to get back in her good books he offers to help her in her husband-hunting endeavours. We don’t need Lady Whistledown to tell us where all this is going.

[ Nicola Coughlan: ‘My family would have been well within their rights to tell me, this isn’t working out, but they didn’t’ ]

99

Prime Video from Friday, May 17th

You might find this hard to believe, but there was a time when Manchester United straddled the sports world like a colossus, Old Trafford was a soccer fans’ mecca, and every kid wanted United kit for Christmas. This three-part docuseries takes us back to the club’s glory days, 25 years ago, when United won the treble and stars such as David Beckham, Gary Neville, Andy Cole, Paul Scholes, Teddy Sheringham, Dwight Yorke and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer were the Spice Boys of their day. With footie footage from the time, on the pitch and in the dressingroom, and interviews with those who were there, the series will follow manager Alex Ferguson as he leads his side to Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League victory within just 10 red-letter days. With current manager Erik Ten Hag facing an uncertain future, here’s a glimpse into the team’s glorious past.

The Kardashians

Disney+ from Thursday, May 23rd

How have we managed to exist these past few months with Kim, Kourtney, Khloé, Kendall, Kylie and Kris off our screens? The nothingness finally ends as series five of The Kardashians explodes into our otherwise empty lives. The 16-second trailer isn’t giving much away about what’s actually going to happen: all we see are the girls posing in full regalia around a fake-looking campfire, with the words “new horizons await” flashing onscreen. What we do know is that Kim is continuing her forays into the acting world, and Kourtney and her husband, Travis Barker, are blessed with a new baby. Sounds as if the United States’ most well known reality-TV family are not immune to the laws of diminishing returns, and may be running out of ideas to keep viewers engaged in their unreal lives.

Eric

Netflix from Thursday, May 30th

Benedict Cumberbatch stars as a father searching for his missing son in this new limited series by the Bafta- and Emmy-winning screenwriter Abi Morgan. The six-part thriller is set in New York in the 1980s, with Cumberbatch playing puppeteer Vincent, whose life and sanity are turned upside down when his son, Edgar, goes missing on his way to school. Racked with guilt and self-loathing, Vincent goes into a downward spiral and becomes obsessed with Edgar’s drawings of a puppet monster named Eric, convinced that if he can get Eric on TV, Edgar will somehow see it and return home. Everyone around him, including the cops investigating Edgar’s disappearance, thinks Vincent has lost his marbles, but he persists in his quixotic quest to get Eric on air and recover his lost son. Cumberbatch is good at characters who become untethered from reality, so let’s hope he can put some humour and flair into what could be a relentlessly dark storyline.

Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+: 10 of the best new shows to watch in May

Including Bodkin, Bridgerton, Clarkson’s Farm, The Kardashians and A Man in Full