The Leopard to The Studio: 10 of the best TV shows to watch this March

From a lavish historical epic set in Sicily to a satire of Hollywood studios starring Seth Rogan, and the acclaimed final instalment of British Tudor drama Wolf Hall.

It's right there in the title – you can't keep a Marvel hero down. Or off the screen. After three seasons originally made for Netflix (running from 2015 to 2018), the new Disney+ series brings back the familiar cast of heroes, villains and everything in between. Charlie Cox is Matt Murdoch, aka Daredevil, the blind attorney with superhuman senses that he had once used to fight crime at night, before giving it up at the end of season three. Vincent D'Onofrio is Wilson Fisk, the former mob boss known as Kingpin, now the mayor. "Why did you stop being a vigilante?" Fisk asks Murdoch over a friendly cup of coffee at a diner. No matter. That hiatus won't last much longer, as the punching, kicking and mask-wearing action begins. Jon Bernthal is Frank Castle, or Punisher, a brutal vigilante who, unlike Daredevil, never gave it a second thought.

Daredevil: Born Again premieres 4 March in the US and 5 March in the UK on Disney+.

Luchino Visconti's 1963 classic film, The Leopard, is still one of the most opulent, romantic, political-historical epics of all time, with Burt Lancaster as the Prince of Salina, head of a fading aristocratic family, and Alain Delon as his revolutionary nephew, Tancredi. Both are caught between the past and the future in 1860s Sicily during the upheaval that unified Italy into one country. Netflix has adapted Giuseppe di Lampedusa's novel, the basis for the film, into this lavish six-part series, cast largely with Italian actors and shot in locations throughout Sicily. Kim Rossi Stuart plays the Prince, the leopard of the title, clinging to his old ways. Saul Nanni is Tancredi, whose love affair with Angelica (Deva Cassel) forms the romantic centre of the story, even while revolutionaries storm the streets and Tancredi has to choose his own path, with his uncle or with a new order.

The Leopard premieres 5 March on Netflix internationally

In his consistently droll voice, John Mulaney has leap-frogged through genres, from a series of priceless stand-up specials to appearing in – and writing – instant-classic Saturday Night Live sketches like Lobster Diner, and last year's John Mulaney Presents: Everybody's in LA, a series of six live talk-show episodes presented over consecutive nights. At once sending up and using the tropes of an old-time talk show, Everybody's in LA was such a critical and popular hit that Mulaney returns with this 12-episode series, each show live once a week. Everybody's Live promises a similar meta/retro mix as the last run, which had some amazing, funny guests – David Letterman and Bill Hader on the same episode, a surprise appearance by Will Ferrell – viewer call-ins, and offbeat topics like coyotes in Los Angeles. Richard Kind returns in the role of announcer/sidekick, along with Saymo the delivery robot, in a show that is both goofy and satirical. 

Everybody's Live with John Mulaney premieres 12 March on Netflix internationally

Stephen Graham is everything everywhere all at once these days (no bad thing). He plays a Victorian-era boxer in A Thousand Blows, which just premiered, and is both star and co-creator with Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) of this psychological drama which has an unsettling theme. Graham plays Ed Miller, whose 13-year-old son, Jamie, is accused of murdering a girl who went to his school. Ashley Waters (Top Boy) plays a detective investigating the murder, and Erin Doherty (the crime boss in A Thousand Blows) is the psychologist assigned to treat Jamie. Each of the four episodes is shot in one continuous take, playing out in real time, which might add to the tension. The real test will be how effective that strategy is. Adolescence is directed by Philip Barantini, who made the one-shot approach so effective in the 2021 film Boiling Point (which, need we add, stars Stephen Graham).

Adolescence premieres 13 March on Netflix internationally

In this drama that mixes elements of the police procedural with a family story of addiction, Amanda Seyfried plays Mickey Fitzgerald, a beat cop in Philadelphia assigned to the neighbourhood where she grew up, a place ravaged by the opioid crisis. When several women are serially murdered, she suspects the case might lead her to her sister, Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings), an addict and sex worker who has disappeared. The show weaves between past and present, with flashbacks to the sisters' fraught relationship and divergent paths, as Mickey deals with life as a single mother and with her increasing obsession with finding Kacey. The show has a lot to live up to. It is based on a bestselling novel by Liz Moore, who cowrote the series with its showrunner, Nikki Toscano. NPR called the book one of the Best of 2020, and if that's not enough, Barack Obama put it on his list of favourite books of the year.

Long Bright River premieres 13 March on Peacock

Ridley Scott directed the first episode of this crime series, which becomes more than the typical drugs-and-criminals thriller thanks to its lead actors. Brian Tyree Henry (Atlanta, If Beale Street Could Talk) and Wagner Moura (Civil War) play old friends in Philadelphia with a small-time scam. Posing as agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency, they pretend to raid drug houses while really searching for cash to steal. By the end of episode one, they have targeted the wrong meth lab, and are on the run from both real government agents and the dealers whose business they literally blew up in an explosion. Henry and Moura bring unusual sympathy to the characters as the show combines the tension of their life-or-death danger with the stories of the people they care about and try to protect. Henry's character is especially affecting in his love for the stepmother who raised him (Kate Mulgrew). Peter Craig, a co-writer of The Batman and Top Gun: Maverick, created the series, which has a gritty texture that recalls The Wire.

Dope Thief premieres 14 March on Apple TV+ internationally

Ellen Pompeo and Mark Duplass star as Kristine and Michael Barnett in a series  inspired by a tabloid-ready real-life case. The Barnetts adopt a seven-year-old Ukrainian orphan named Natalia Grace (Imogen Faith Reid), who has a rare form of dwarfism, and whose first adopted family has returned her. The trailer hints at a good deal of heightened drama, as Kristine begins to suspect that they do not know the truth about their child's age. "Michael, I don't think she's a little girl," she says, a suspicion that eventually takes the couple all the way to court. Dule Hill plays a detective investigating the tangle of accusations and fears, and it is tangled. The actual events, which began in 2010, are so unusual and the saga so ongoing that it has already inspired three seasons of a documentary series on the Investigation Discovery Channel.

Good American Family premieres 19 March on Hulu in the US and 7 May on Disney+ in the UK

Netflix is calling this murder mystery from Shonda Rhimes's production company a  "screwball whodunit," with Uzo Aduba as Cordelia Cupp, a brilliant detective investigating a murder in the White House during a state dinner. With a comic tone and a cast of 157 suspects, it's Upstairs Downstairs at the White House with a corpse, as Cupp questions everyone from the assistant usher (Susan Kelechi Watson) and the pastry chef (Bronson Pinchot) to the president's mother-in-law (Jane Curtain) and oldest friend (Ken Marino). Randall Park plays an FBI agent who investigates with Cordelia, and as the trailer reveals, Giancarlo Esposito plays the murder victim, who had the important job of chief usher and was not popular with his staff. The show was created by Paul William Davies, a writer on Rhimes's White House-set series Scandal, who has gone for a very different tone here. His goal for the show was to "Keep it FUN," he told Netflix. "I want people to be entertained, I want them to laugh." The Residence arrives in a very different political landscape to the one in which it was created, and it will be interesting to see whether finding laughter in the White House now lands as escapist entertainment or tone-deafness. 

The Residence premieres 20 March on Netflix internationally

Viewers in the US have had to wait four months to see the series the Guardian called "utter TV magic" when it premiered on the BBC last November, but here it is. The second instalment of Wolf Hall, it is based on the last of Hilary Mantel's trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, the savvy but doomed advisor to Henry VIII. Just as Mantel set the standard for historical novels, the first Wolf Hall series, adapted from the first two books, did the same for smart, beautifully made historical TV dramas. Nine years later, the ensemble that put that first part together is back, on screen and off, with Mark Rylance as Cromwell, Damian Lewis as Henry and Jonathan Pryce as Cardinal Wolsey. The series was adapted by Peter Straughn, who was nominated for an Oscar this year for Conclave (he's good at writing men in robes) and directed by Peter Kosminsky. The story picks up in 1536, the blood still fresh from Anne Boleyn's head rolling, and although history tells us how badly it all ends, watching the court intrigue unfold here in such ravishing detail is exhilarating.

Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light premieres 23 March on PBS in the US

Hollywood studios are an irresistible target of satire, from Robert Altman's 1992 gem The Player to Armando Iannucci's recent series The Franchise. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the co-creators of this series, have now made them the subject of a very funny romp, overflowing with cameos from real-life actors and directors. Rogan plays Matt Remick, a production executive who longs to greenlight art films. That's an unlikely goal after he is promoted to head of Continental Studios, with the mandate to make commercial hits. One project his corporate bosses insist on: a film based on Kool-Aid. If a product-inspired movie worked for Barbie, why not a soft drink? The first episode includes cameos from Martin Scorsese and Steve Buscemi. Paul Dano, Olivia Wilde, Charlize Theron, Anthony Mackie and many others play outsized versions of themselves. And the casting of the regular characters is inspired. Ike Barniholtz plays Matt's second-in-command and best friend, Catherine O'Hara is the mentor whose job Matt took, and Kathryn Hahn the studio's brash head of publicity.

The Studio premieres 26 March on Apple TV+ internationally

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