These series will return before those pushed back by actors’ strike
The SAG-AFTRA strike is over, and production is resuming or beginning on all those series that have been on pause. That’s great news, although we won’t see the results of the return to work for a while. But there are a few series returning between now and the end of the year, their seasons having been finished before the strike.
The sixth and final season of “The Crown” is coming to Netflix in two parts. The first four episodes will stream on Nov. 16, and the final six will stream on Dec. 14. The returning cast from season five includes Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth Debicki as Diana, and Dominic West as Prince Charles. Past queen portrayers Olivia Colman and Claire Foy will also make appearances, presumably in flashbacks.
“Julia,” the comedy about Julia Child and her rise to fame at WGBH, is returning to Max for season two on Nov. 16. Sarah Lancashire is a buoyant Julia once again, as she works on the second volume of her best-selling “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in France with her husband, Paul (David Hyde Pierce). Along with the returns of Isabella Rossellini, Bebe Neuwirth, Fiona Glascott, and Brittany Bradford, Rachel Bloom joins the cast as Julia’s new producer.
I have high hopes for the fifth season of the anthology series “Fargo,” which returns to FX on Nov. 21 and Hulu the next day. This season, set in 2019, features Jon Hamm, Juno Temple, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Dave Foley. Hamm plays an amoral sheriff-preacher who does whatever he wants, and he wants to find the wife who deserted him years before at any cost.
Apple TV+’s “Slow Horses” will be back for its third season on Nov. 29, this one adapted from Mick Herron’s novel “Real Tigers.” There will be a lot of plotting and action, no doubt, as usual; but the reason to watch is simply Gary Oldman, who is perfection as the head of the MI5 agents who are being punished. He’s a hard-drinking slob, but he’s always steps ahead of everyone else. How the Emmys have failed to acknowledge his work with a nomination is beyond me.