If your Easter weekend plans are set to be hit by the forecast of showers and grey skies, then fear not, as The Mail's TV experts round up the hottest shows to stream while you tuck into your chocolate. From a slick espionage thriller to raunchy comedy and Tudor court drama, there's something to please everyone this weekend.
After The Party
Accusations fly in a small community in New Zealand
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
This thriller, set in Wellington, New Zealand, has a fantastic and refreshing lead character in Penny Wilding (Robyn Malcolm) - a straight-talking, hard-working and resourceful schoolteacher and grandmother, who gets quite the introduction lecturing teenagers on the perils of internet porn.
The series centres on historic accusations of sexual abuse made by Penny, and how she, her daughter and the community as a whole deal with the situation when the accused (Peter Mullan) returns to town.
Flipping seamlessly between different timelines, the series builds a picture. It's not clear straight away whether Penny is right, and the community certainly doesn't get behind her, but it's this uncertainty, and the care with which the show engages with its central moral dilemma, that makes it such compelling viewing from the off.
It's great to see such a gutsy lead as Penny, an older woman who is as beautifully written as she is brought to life by Malcolm, whom you might recognise from Aussie comedy Upper Middle Bogan, or the first series of Top Of The Lake, also starring Mullan. (Six episodes)
Landman
Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan's star-studded drama about Texas oil
Year: 2024
Certificate: 18
Not content with creating Yellowstone and its various spin-offs, the American uber-producer Taylor Sheridan is also behind this enjoyably big and macho show about the sharp end of the oil business in Texas, both for the roughnecks on the ground and the suits in the boardrooms.
The cast is brimming with charisma and includes Billy Bob Thornton as one of the roughnecks and Jon Hamm as one of the suits - two men who both started at the bottom, but whose choices have taken their lives in very different directions. The story that plays out between them is based on the Boomtown podcast, a serialised drama about the 21st-century Texas oil boom in the Permian Basin.
Demi Moore and Andy Garcia also appear in a series that clearly wasn't short on cash, and feels a little like a cross between Dallas and Succession with its sharply-balanced mix of the personal and the professional. It's more than that, too - there's a commitment here to presenting the oil business how it is, and how it affects the lives of those who work for it and around it, an approach that gives Landman a documentary feel and, also, leads to way more laughs than you might expect.
Lastly, if you're wondering about the title, 'landman' is an American term for an oil and gas worker who handles the extraction licences for the land - like Billy Bob Thorton's character here. A second series has been ordered. (Ten episodes)
Brian And Maggie
Dramatisation of the 1989 interview between journalist Brian Walden and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, starring Steve Coogan and Harriet Walter
Year: 2025
Certificate: 12
From Sherwood creator James Graham, no stranger to chronicling modern Britain (see also Coalition, Brexit: The Uncivil War and his stage play Dear England), comes an engaging and lively two-parter exploring the relationship between Margaret Thatcher (Harriet Walter: subtle, less of a caricature) and journalist Brian Walden (Steve Coogan: perfect mimicry).
The jumping-off point is the 1989 TV interview that took place just days after the explosive resignation of Chancellor Nigel Lawson which arguably sealed Thatcher's fate. Weeks later she faced the first challenge to her leadership.
First, we follow the decade-long lead-up to it, from Walden's first glimpse of Thatcher in the Commons, when he was a sitting Labour MP in 1975, through their first and many more TV interviews on LWT's Weekend World, and the respectful friendship that formed: Walden was a little smitten, Thatcher considered him her favourite.
There is another retread of the events that led to Mrs T's brutal ousting, but this drama is more concerned with Walden's efforts to reach the woman beneath the famously iron exterior. In a present-day era where politicians are prepped to be evasive for little more than five minutes of airtime, it's also a fitting tribute to Walden and the conversations he made happen. (Two episodes)
Vanya
Andrew Scott's brilliant one-man take on Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, currently dazzling Off-Broadway audiences
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on National Theatre At Home
First published in 1897, Chekhov's play is a story of love triangles and frustrated rural ambition, and is delivered by Andrew Scott here as a blistering one-man show for the National Theatre. It's a rollercoaster ride of emotion that feels very modern - Scott, along with adapter Simon Stephens, director Sam Yates and designer Rosanna Vize, have dug into the play and found the timeless humour and humanity at its core and presented that in stripped-back form. You won't spot any dour period garb on stage here.
Why do it as a one-man show in the first place, though? The simple answer is why not, as Scott is immensely watchable throughout the 100-minute running time. It's about raw emotion, and Scott simply has the nerve to do such things as stage a one-man sex scene without it looking ridiculous.
Uncle Vanya - or simply Vanya, as it his here - is fundamentally a simple story about the frustrated loves and desires of a group of characters, and having them all played by one man feels, by the end, like a smart comment about what unites us rather than what divides us. The production has since gone stateside, and found rave reviews off Broadway. (100 minutes)
Paradise (2025 TV series)
Gripping US thriller about the US President's protection officer
Year: 2025
Certificate: 15
The first 'must-see' drama of 2025 is a thriller, and it's also one of those shows you should know as little as possible about before watching, so we'll only give you the basics. Sterling K Brown (This Is Us) stars as Xavier Collins, a Secret Service agent who protects the US President, a smooth-talking son-of-a-gun played by James Marsden - an actor so good-looking he barely needs to be digitally de-aged in the flashbacks.
And that's one other thing we'll tell you about this show - it's full of flashbacks but they're absolutely of the best kind, with each fleshing out both the characters and the story in ways that continually shift your understanding of what's going on. Julianne Nicholson (Mare Of Easttown) and Sarah Shahi (Sex/Life) also get to play great characters in an eight-parter that has everything from scale to detail, humour to tragedy, all driven by a murder mystery and a gripping, twisting plot right up until that episode eight finale.
A second series has been ordered but, while we're waiting for that, this is the kind of show you can re-watch and pick up details you could so easily have missed the first time around. That first episode, in particular, looks very different with hindsight and, if you're a Gilmore Girls fan, here's a small trivia treat to end on: the backlot where Paradise was filmed was also used for Stars Hollow.
Expect to see Paradise on a lot of 'best of' lists at the end of 2025. (Eight episodes)
The Agency
Michael Fassbender and Richard Gere star in a US take on French spy drama The Bureau
Year: 2024
Certificate: 18
French espionage drama The Bureau came out in 2015, and has been a low-key hit for years. Now the Americans have delivered a big-budget version called The Agency that comes with big stars in front of the camera - Michael Fassbender and Richard Gere - plus George Clooney as an executive producer and BAFTA-winning movie director Joe Wright behind the camera, telling the gritty story of a shadowy department that handles longtime undercover agents.
Fassbender plays one of those agents, an operative called Martian who is facing a choice between love and country. 'As soon as I made the decision that he was a sociopath it brought a lot more clarity to the character and his actions,' says Fassbender of a slippery fish who's fascinating to watch.
Gere plays the head of the CIA in London with a mix of toughness and compassion, while, elsewhere in the cast, look out for Hugh Bonneville, Westworld's Jeffrey Wright, Jodie Turner-Smith and the always excellent Harriet Sansom Harris.
As a whole, The Agency feels like it's reflecting a world that's moved on from The Bureau, and it does so with a neat mix of high budget and relative realism and, if you like it, there's good news - it's coming back for series two. (Ten episodes)
Wolf Hall: The Mirror And The Light
The much-anticipated return of the drama set in the darkest corners of King Henry VIII's court
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
A Tudor historical drama with an air of The Godfather, the first series of Wolf Hall blew critics and audiences away. This stupendous adaptation of Hilary Mantel's trilogy concludes with six sombre, brutal and tragic episodes based on The Mirror And The Light, the concluding novel that Mantel hadn't yet published when the first series aired in 2015.
Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith, has risen in the court of King Henry VIII and even if you don't know his fate, the signs are clear, brought home by the ghost of Cromwell's mentor Cardinal Wolsey (Jonathan Pryce), and the many more bodies that have piled up at the feet of the king.
We pick up in the immediate aftermath of Anne Boleyn's execution, with those scenes from the first series finale spliced into the new. That's helpful when you consider that almost a decade has passed, and the cast has aged. Mark Rylance's Cromwell is more weathered but also more confident, often physically so; while Damian Lewis has grown into his Henry, the bloated and pompous king rather than the excitable man-child beaming with joy at the news that Anne was dead.
Lord Cromwell, to give him his new title, has a reputation for doing Henry's dirty work and much of that work involves the king's 'problem' with women and acquiring a male heir, as well as his problems with Rome. Yet Cromwell is very much the human face of this absolute sovereignty, carrying out the king's bidding with sadness and seriousness, and clinging to honour and decency wherever he can. Simply marvellous. (Six episodes)
Criminal: UK
Police interview drama with a starry cast, including David Tennant
Year: 2019-2020
Certificate: 15
Set almost entirely in a hyper-modern police interview suite, each episode of this gripping crime drama involves a different suspect being interrogated by the same police team, led by DCI Hobbs, played by Katherine Kelly (Liar, Happy Valley).
It's not so much a whodunnit as a howdunnit, as the police strive to get suspects to slip up so that they can get enough evidence to charge and convict them. For the first series, three episodes were shot in the UK, plus three more each in Spain, France and Germany. Series two, comprising four episodes, is only based in the UK. It's a great watch if you like the knotty moral dilemmas and interrogation scenes in crime dramas such as Line Of Duty, and seeing familiar faces playing against type.
Series one opens with former Doctor Who David Tennant as a doctor accused of sexually assaulting and murdering his teenage stepdaughter while, in series two, Kit Harington - so heroic as Jon Snow in Game Of Thrones - is vile and pompous as a suspected rapist in the most controversial episode of the run. (Two series)
Hijack
Edge-of-your-seat plane hijack thriller series starring Idris Elba
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
A thriller about a plane hijack suggests big action, explosions and Hollywood-style special effects and, while this seven-parter from George Kay, the British writer of Lupin and Criminal, does have moments like that, it's really all about the characters on board and that's what keeps you gripped throughout.
What do the hijackers want? Are the crew harbouring secrets? Will the hulking passenger played by Idris Elba prove to be the hero we all want him to be? These are the questions that keep you guessing as the story unfolds, flipping between the tense situation on the plane and the steady realisation of it by the authorities on the ground.
It feels like a very British show in general, with a supporting cast that includes familiar faces like Ben Miles, Archie Panjabi, Max Beesley and Eve Myles, and a way of delivering action in short, sharp and satisfying bursts when you least expect it. The end of each episode is also precision engineered to make you want to watch the next one, so be prepared for that if you start watching it late at night. The story resolves neatly by the end, but there will be more - Hijack has been picked up for a second series. (Seven episodes)
Until I Kill You
Shocking and compelling drama, based on a true story
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
In London in the early 1990s, Delia Balmer survived an abusive relationship with John Sweeney - but the true story does not end there. It only gets more intense, bizarre and, for Balmer, infuriating. This four-part drama stars Anna Maxwell Martin (in another knockout performance) as Balmer, with Shaun Evans as the charismatic yet sadistic Sweeney.
If you're expecting another woman cowed and grateful to have survived a close encounter with a killer, you're in for a surprise. Writer Nick Stevens (The Pembrokeshire Murders) has gone to pains to show us the real Balmer, and how surviving was just the start of her ordeal.
The drama itself puts you deep inside Balmer's experience, as a victim of a crime and a witness on the stand, an instrument in bringing Sweeney to justice - not just for his crimes against her, but for his other victims, too. She is defiant in her refusal to be swept up passively inside a justice system which seems intent on making her suffering continue. As Delia herself reflects, in the companion documentary Until I Kill You: The Real Story, 'I'm a perfectionist, but my life is the opposite of perfect'. (Four episodes)
The Gold
Follow the trail of the Brink's-Mat fools gold in a thrilling star-studded mini-series
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
This thrilling look at the fallout from the 1983 Brink's-Mat robbery is truly epic in scope, shot through with humour, horror and the odd detour into social commentary. Unlike so many heist dramas that focus on the robbers, this takes in a huge range of characters and digs into the nitty-gritty of the ramifications of this spectacular theft.
It opens with the balaclava-hooded gang bursting into the depot. Expecting easily laundered cash, they've instead got three tons of gold bullion, which calls for creative thinking to turn it from useless paperweights to spendable dosh. While the villains tackle the problem, the police have their own difficulties, hampered by widespread corruption and a lack of co-operation between forces.
The cast is huge and peppered with familiar faces, not least Hugh Bonneville as the man leading the police task force and Jack Lowden as ringleader Kenneth 'Kenny' Noye - but special mention also goes to Tom Cullen as John Palmer, smelting the gold in a shed at the bottom of his garden, and Charlotte Spencer as the fictional 'Flying Squad' detective who has intimate knowledge of the kind of villains she's chasing. A second series is on the way. (Six episodes)
The Penguin
Colin Farrell is unrecognisable in this Scarface-style Batman spin-off
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Ever since the Christopher Nolan movies, the Batman franchise has been a particularly dark and violent one on screen, reminiscent of gritty detective stories. This HBO spin-off series, set one week after the events of 2022 movie The Batman, pushes it more into gangster territory, with a main character and story reminiscent of Scarface or The Sopranos. Colin Farrell is virtually unrecognisable as Oz Cobb, a literally scar-faced, middle-ranking gangster who is nicknamed 'Penguin' for his wobbly gait and constantly underestimated by all those around him.
The other big character here is Sofia Falcone (Palm Springs' Cristin Milioti), the daughter of a gangster boss just returned from a long and harrowing stint in Arkham Asylum. The relative fortunes of Oz and Sofia are central to a gripping, twisting unfolding story of gang war that seems unlikely to involve Batman himself anytime soon. Still, these two are such layered and magnetic characters that it's hard to mind.
Will there be a second series? It's unclear at the moment but, if there is, the way this ends (and it ends well) is a fair indicator of what that might involve. (Eight episodes)
Andor (Series 1)
Strong Star Wars spin-off centred on a rebel in hiding, now partly free on YouTube
Year: 2022-
Certificate: 12
This is a Star Wars show for people who don't like Star Wars shows. Created by Bourne writer Tony Gilroy, Andor is a dramatically credible account of life at the sharp end of rebellion and is, essentially, a prequel to the brilliant movie Rogue One - which Gilroy also co-wrote, and was in itself essentially a sci-fi take on The Magnificent Seven.
Diego Luna (Narcos: Mexico) stars as Cassian Andor, a rebel in hiding, in a series that starts slowly but builds up and out in ways you don't expect. In some places it becomes a workplace comedy drama set at Imperial intelligence, where the bureaucrats fight among themselves. It's also a spy action thriller, with a particularly thrilling sideline in jail breaks, and it's also a dark political drama about the consequences of fighting the system, hinged around a terrific performance from The Honourable Woman's Genevieve O'Reilly as Mon Mothma.
That last element has the feel of the US House Of Cards, which is no coincidence - Beau Willimon, who created that show, wrote several episodes of Andor. A second and final series is due to arrive from 23 April and, in preparation for this, the first three episodes from series one are now available on YouTube. (12 episodes)
Rivals
David Tennant and Aidan Turner head up the cast of a steamy, flat-out fun adaptation of Jilly Cooper's novel
Year: 2024
Certificate: 18
Lots of TV shows are interesting and plenty of them are even compelling or riveting, but few are flat-out FUN. But that's just what you should expect from Rivals, an adaptation of Jilly Cooper's Rutshire novel of the same name from Dominic Treadwell-Collins (A Very English Scandal) which has such fun with everything - especially the sex, which is boundary-pushing in its way because of the sheer, unabashed, full-frontal guiltless glee of it all. The show starts with sex at Mach 1 on Concorde for heaven's sake, and also gives us naked tennis early on and plenty more besides.
Back to the story, though, and at the centre of that (and the rivalry) is David Tennant as villainous TV titan Lord Tony Baddingham, a grammar school social climber who married into the aristocracy. His chief rival is the blue-blooded sex machine Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) who, fair warning, we get to see entirely in the altogether, while also in the mix is Aidan Turner as hard-bitten journalist Declan O'Hara, who Lord Tony hires to boost ratings on his TV franchise.
Then there's the women, who range from Bella Maclean as Declan's sweet daughter Taggie (who Rupert has his eye on), and Victoria Smurfit as Taggie's wandering mother Maud, to Nafessa Williams as hard-nosed American TV producer Cameron Cook, and Katherine Parkinson as local author Lizzie Vereker - essentially the Jilly Cooper character.
That opening Mach 1 sex sets the tone for a suitably lavish show that has just enough deeper character moments to keep it bobbing along neatly dramatically, too. And who cares that Rupert Campbell-Black was originally supposed to be blond - Jilly Cooper has given the whole project her blessing, so put such niggles aside - if they were even an issue in the first place. A second series has been ordered, which will be no surprise to anyone who's finished this first one. (Eight episodes)
Fifteen-Love
A drama about sex, lies and tennis starring Aidan Turner
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
Coached by the charismatic Glenn (Poldark's Aidan Turner), teen prodigy Justine (Towards Zero's Ella Lily Hyland) looks to have the tennis world at her feet - until a broken wrist derails her life and her career. Five years later she's working as a physiotherapist when Glenn re-enters her life. Strong emotions bubble up and soon Justine is making disturbing allegations about inappropriate moments between her and Glenn in the past. He denies everything, but just who is telling the truth?
The tense six-part drama serves up ace performances from Turner, Hyland and Anna Chancellor as Justine's slippery boss, but particularly from Hyland, who brings a lot of raw emotion to the role - and, while it starts out looking like a 'he said, she said' story, Fifteen-Love swiftly evolves into something more complex. (Six episodes)
Say Nothing
A true political story set during the Troubles in Ireland
Year: 2024
Certificate: 18
In 1972, a single mother named Jean McConville was abducted from her Belfast home by members of the IRA. She was never seen again. This shocking event forms the springboard for this nine-part based-on-real-life story from the days of the conflict, focusing on various members of the IRA and the effect that obsession, secrecy and violence had on them and their communities.
Based on the book by Patrick Radden Keefe, it shows major events from bombing campaigns to hunger strikes, from years of paranoia and violence to the slow moving peace process - but always with a very human focus on people rather than monolithic events. Anthony Boyle stars as IRA strategist Brendan Hughes and Josh Finan as politician Gerry Adams. Watch out too for Maxine Peake as the older version of Dolours Price, an IRA recruit who was pivotal to the story as a young woman. (Nine episodes)
Asura
Sublime Japanese drama about four very different sisters
Year: 2025
Certificate: 12
There's a certain kind of drama you can tell is great from the outset - one that moves from sad to happy in the space of a facial expression, which feels enough like real life to be plausible but is also never boring with it, and in which moments of apparent mundanity can suddenly turn out to mean an awful lot.
Such is the case with Asura, a Japanese drama about women's lives and secrets that will pull you in from the start and constantly challenge your preconceptions about its characters. Those characters are four very different sisters - one a civil servant, one a waitress, another a widowed flower arranger and the last a housewife with two teenagers.
The women are very close but also fight in that vicious, unrestrained way that only sisters really can, and it's those moments that will often trigger scenes of outright hilarity (just listen for the near-Benny Hill level comic soundtrack that comes with them).
In episode one, a big family secret is revealed in a meeting between the four that showcases just such a scrap, and it all starts to snowball from there. Released largely without fanfare just as Christmas was fading from view in early 2025, this is easily one of Netflix's best dramas - and do watch it with the subtitles, because the dubbed performances simply aren't a match for the originals. (Seven episodes)
