We have selected for you the three best serial titles to watch on the platform starting in the first half of September. Here they are:
Slow Horses, season 4 – On Apple TV+ from September 4.
It is one of the finest spy stories to be produced recently, is based on the cycle of novels by British writer Mick Herron (the other seasons have already been made from the first 3, which you absolutely must catch up on), and the good news is that there are no less than 13 books.
It takes place in London and follows the fortunes of a particular unit of MI5 (Military Intelligence Section 5), the U.K.’s security and counterintelligence agency, dubbed “the Bog.” It is the unit to which disgraced agents, the “slow horses” or “nags,” are confined, and it is led by a veteran, Agent Jackson Lamb-played by a resounding Gary Oldman-a legendary and experienced spy who for some mysterious reason (and we will find out in the course of the first season) has ended up on the fringes of intelligence.
The series opens when the team of outcasts is joined by young River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), the nephew of a prominent retired agent (Jonathan Pryce plays him) who ended up there for blatantly botching a drill. However, over the course of the seasons we will come to realize that Cartwright and the other “nags” under Lamb’s leadership, despite a few comic defaults, are not bad at all.
This new season is adapted from Herron’s fourth novel, Spook Street, and will see River investigate his grandfather’s turbulent past as a spy. Why watch it. In the broad landscape of spy stories, from James Bond to Johnny English, Slow Horses has succeeded in the almost impossible task of carving out an original space for itself. Because of the stories it tells, but especially because of the characterization of the characters, foremost among them Jackson Lamb, practically an anti-Bond, scruffy and decidedly obnoxious but endowed with an irresistible humor and skills that challenge 007 himself.
The Perfect Couple. On Netflix on September 5.
A dark comedy directed by Susan Bier and based on the novel by Elin Hildebrand, with an outstanding cast including Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Isabelle Adjani, Dakota Fanning, Sam Nivola, Eve Hewson (rock star Bono’s daughter) and many others.
It is set on the island of Nantucket, a luxurious resort of America’s intellectual and political elite, where a famous and very wealthy thriller writer (Kidman) is planning the wedding of her own son (Billy Howle) to a girl from a more modest family (Hewson) whom she does not approve of after all. The celebrations will be interrupted by the discovery of a dead body, and the police investigation will expose all the hypocrisy of what is on the surface a perfect marriage.
Definitely worth watching if you liked The White Lotus, with which it shares the biting style and social satire, the thriller mixed with humor.
The Perfect Couple. (da sinistra verso destra) Eve Hewson, Sam Nivola, Nicole Kidman, Billy Howle, Liev Schreiber, Dakota Fanning, Jack Reynor. Episodio 103 | via Cr. Seacia Pavao/Netflix © 2024
Three Women. On Starz on September 13.
A series that promises to be special right from its script, because it is not based on a novel, but on an investigation by Italian-born journalist and writer Lisa Taddeo. Published in 2019, it chronicles the sexual and emotional lives of three very different women from different backgrounds and regions of the United States, and debuted at number one in the New York Times bestseller list.
The three women are played by Betty Gilpin, Gabrielle Creevy, and DeWanda Wise: Lina, a young mother from Indiana, has had her life turned upside down by a rape she suffered during her teenage years; Maggie is an underage student from North Dakota who is having an affair with one of her married teachers; Sloane a business woman from the Northeast with a husband who loves to watch her have sex with other men and women.
Shailene Woodley plays the role of Gia, a solta of alter ego of Taddeo, the narrator who urges the three women to tell their stories, and the cast also includes Blair Underwood, Jason Ralph, Lola Kirke.
You will enjoy it if you love series based on true stories in which reality often exceeds fantasy.
The article Three 2024 international series to watch now comes from TheNewyorker.
