Shows to help beat the chill

Thomasin McKenzie returns to the small screen, Neil Patrick Harris deals with heartbreak and Taron Egerton finds himself with an awful dilemma,

As the cold weather settles in, it’s good to know there are plenty of viewing options to warm up the country’s long winter nights.

This month’s free-to-air options include the return of previous contestants for Three’s The Block: Redemption (TBC), the Pax Assadi-hosted comedy panel show Rabble Rousers (Three, July 14) and a new series of Taskmaster NZ (TVNZ 2, tomorrow).

Netflix’s lineup includes new instalments of the Martin Henderson-starring Virgin River (July 20) and reality competition Blown Away (July 22), a small-screen version of Resident Evil, Jack Black coming back for Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight (both July 14) and the provocatively titled home renovation show How to Build a Sex Room (Friday).

Elsewhere, Neon hosts the fourth season of the United States spinoff of Kiwi mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows (July 14) and yet another expansion of the Pretty Little Liars universe – Original Sin (July 29), TVNZ+ boasts British sitcom Hullraisers (July 13) and the latest season of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under (July 30) and Disney+ has the third round of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (July 27).

However, after looking at the schedules, Stuff to Watch has come up with 12 shows we’re most excited to see debut over the next four weeks.

Black Bird (Friday, Apple TV+)

Taron Egerton, Paul Walter Hauser, Greg Kinnear and the late, great Ray Liotta team up for this six-part drama about a man, initially sentenced to 10 years in a minimum security prison, who is given ‘‘the choice of the lifetime’’. Either serve his full sentence with no possibility of parole, or enter a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane and befriend a suspected serial killer. It is based on the 2010 true crime memoir In With The Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, and A Dangerous Bargain for Redemption.

Hidden Assets (July 11, Acorn TV)

Detective Emer Berry (Angeline Ball) must get to the bottom of why a small-time drug dealer is receiving huge sums of money in the form of rough-cut diamonds in this sixpart Irish police procedural. Begrudgingly working with the police commissioner, they unravel a political conspiracy fuelling domestic unrest for financial gain.

Hitmen

Former Great British Bake Off hosts Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins reunite for this sixpart comedy about two best friends – Fran and Jamie – who accidentally stumbled into a career in contract killing. ‘‘It’s the unfakeable comedic understanding between Perkins and Giedroyc that really makes it work – they fit each other like old comedy shoes, and the one shoe instinctively knows what the other is doing,’’ wrote the Sydney Morning Herald’s Brad Newsome.

(July 27, Vibe) James May: Our Man in Italy

(July 15, Prime Video) While we await the second series of Stanley Tucci noodling around Italia, here’s a former Top Gear host exploring the country’s history, landscapes and traditions in a six-part series.

As he travels from the Sicilian capital of Palermo to the peaks of the Dolomites, can a bumbling, middle-aged British bloke discover the secrets of ‘‘la dolce vita’’?

Life After Life (Friday, TVNZ+)

New Zealand’s Thomasin McKenzie headlines this fourpart BBC adaptation of Kate Atkinson’s critically acclaimed and best-selling 2013 novel. She plays Ursula Todd, an unusual young woman who navigates the first half of the 20th century while experiencing a seemingly endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

The Midwich Cuckoos

(streaming on Neon/Sky Go) John Wyndham’s 1957 seminal sci-fi novel finally gets a sevenpart television adaptation. Keeley Hawes and Max Beesley headline this take on the small English commuter town that is panic-stricken when people suddenly start passing out. Everything then seemingly returns to normal, except that every woman of childbearing age has suddenly – and inexplicably – fallen pregnant.

The Old Man

(July 13, Disney+)

Based on the 2017 novel of the same name by Thomas Perry, this seven-part thriller’s impressive ensemble includes Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, Alia Shawkat and Amy Brenneman. It’s the story of former CIA operative Dan Chase (Bridges), whose longstanding off-grid life is shattered when he kills an assassin who breaks into his Upstate New York home.

Paper Girls

(July 29, Prime Video)

Based on the best-selling graphic novels written by Brian K Vaughan, this follows the fortunes of four girls who, while out delivering papers on the morning after Halloween in 1988, find themselves unwittingly caught in a conflict between warring factions of time-travellers. Transported into the future, the quartet must figure out a way to get back to the past, a journey that will bring them face-to-face with the grown-up versions of themselves.

Sherwood (July 12, TVNZ+) David Morrissey, Lesley Manville, Joanne Froggatt and Robert Glenister lead a deep bench of British acting talent in this six-part crime drama about two shocking and unexpected murders that shatter an already fractured community. It leads to one of the largest manhunts in United Kingdom history.

Surface (July 29, Apple TV+) In this eight-part San Francisco-set psychological thriller Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays a woman who has suffered a traumatic head injury that has left her with extreme memory loss. As she attempts to put the pieces of her life back together with the help of her husband and friends, she begins to question whether or not the truth she has been told is the one she has actually lived.

Too Close (July 14, Eden) Emily Watson and Denise Gough team up for this threepart British crime-drama about a forensic psychiatrist who is charged with assessing a woman accused of a heinous crime, who claims she can’t remember a thing. Based on Natalie Daniels’ popular 2018 novel.

Uncoupled (July 29, Netflix) From Darren Star, the creator of Beverly Hills, 90210, Melrose Place, Sex and the City and, umm, Emily in Paris, comes this new eight-part romanticcomedy about Michael (Neil Patrick Harris), who is forced to start over when he is blindsided by his husband suddenly bringing their 17-year marriage to a close. Overnight, he’ll have to confront two nightmares – losing who he thought was his soulmate and navigating life as a single gay man in his mid-40s in New York City.

Listen to the Stuff To Watch podcast on podcast apps such as Apple or Spotify. Black Bird Hidden Assets Hitmen Our Man in Italy Life After Life Midwich Cuckoos The Old Man Paper Girls Uncoupled