Palm Royale
What does it take to be accepted into the most exclusive social circles? 

Set in 1969, Palm Royale stars Kristen Wiig as Maxine Simmons, an ambitious outsider in Palm Beach, Florida, who is determined to climb the ranks of high society. With little more than boundless optimism, Maxine schemes her way into a world of old money, one full of lavish galas and carefully guarded secrets. But it’s not a walk in the park: she must deal with a cast of eccentric socialites who would rather see her fail than succeed. Inspired by Juliet McDaniel’s novel Mr. & Mrs. American Pie, the series is a colourful satire of wealth and exclusivity, and it asks an enduring question: How much of yourself are you willing to sacrifice to get what someone else has?

The Studio
Seth Rogen stars as Matt Remick, the newly appointed head of Continental Studios. Matt is a lifelong cinephile turned studio executive caught between his love of filmmaking and the relentless pressure to deliver box office hits. As movies fight to stay relevant in an ever-changing industry, Matt and his team wrestle with their own insecurities while trying to create films that are genuinely great. But can they resist Hollywood’s obsession with safe, formulaic blockbusters?

Packed with celebrity cameos — including appearances by Martin Scorsese, Charlize Theron, and Olivia Wilde — The Studio earned 23 Emmy nominations, winning 13, and was hailed by critics as Hollywood’s sharpest self-portrait in ages. Simultaneously a love letter to cinema and a sharp satire of showbiz, the series delivers plenty of hearty laughs and wild shenanigans, all while exploring the eternal question: Is it possible for art to co-exist with commerce?

Shrinking
Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel) is a therapist who’s had enough of playing by the rules. Still reeling from the loss of his wife, he finds himself irritable and exhausted from listening to clients without telling them what they really need to hear. So, he throws professional boundaries out the window and starts giving brutally honest advice. Questionable? Absolutely. Surprisingly effective? More often than you’d expect.

Also starring Harrison Ford as Jimmy’s cantankerous mentor, Paul, who’s dealing with struggles of his own, Shrinking was created by Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein, and Jason Segel. The series strikes a rare balance between heartfelt drama and laugh-out-loud comedy, tackling grief and mental health with warmth, honesty, and plenty of humour.

Pluribus
What if the worst thing to happen to humanity was universal happiness? 

In Pluribus, a strange extraterrestrial virus sweeps across Earth and transforms nearly everyone into a serene, hyper-connected hive mind. One of the few holdouts is Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), a bitter, creatively frustrated novelist. She is miraculously immune to the virus, though not for long: the hive mind is working to create a strain that can work for her DNA.

It insists it only wants peace and togetherness, and that trying to assimilate Carol into the collective consciousness is for her own good. Carol, however, believes that individuality, grief, desire — even humanity itself — are being erased, and makes it her mission to save mankind (or at least herself).

Pluribus is creator Vince Gilligan’s follow-up act to his beloved series Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. But it’s completely different in tone to those two shows, trading crime-thriller tension for existential terror (and comedy). Gilligan reportedly conceived the show after growing tired of writing antiheroes, and Pluribus feels like a direct response to modern anxieties about AI, conformity, and the seduction of frictionless living.

At the centre of the show is Better Call Saul alum Seehorn, delivering a career-best performance as Carol: prickly, hilarious, deeply wounded, and impossible to look away from. Her work earned her Best Actress wins at both the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice Awards, giving her the recognition she deserves.

Chief of War
Before Hawaii became a postcard paradise, it was a battleground. 

Co-created and executive produced by Jason Momoa, who also leads a predominantly Polynesian cast, the sweeping historical epic Chief of War brings Hawaii’s late 18th-century history vividly to life.  

As Western ships loom on the horizon and rival kingdoms fracture the islands from within, warrior Kaʻiana (Momoa) returns home after being secretly stowed away on a foreign vessel. What awaits him is nothing short of a monumental task: unite the warring kingdoms of Hawai‘i.

While the threat of colonisation intensifies with every episode, the greatest danger may lie closer to home. Old rivalries simmer, alliances splinter, and the dream of unity feels almost impossible. 

Told largely in the native language and from an Indigenous perspective rarely seen on screen, Chief of War is bold, thrilling, and emotionally charged. It’s history with heart and stakes as vast as the Hawaiian Islands.

Ted Lasso
The Emmy-winning comedy series, Ted Lasso, is the TV embodiment of a big, warm hug. It became a pop culture sensation when it premiered in 2020, winning hearts with its relentless optimism.

Jason Sudeikis plays Ted Lasso, a small-time college American football coach from Kansas hired to coach UK professional soccer team AFC Richmond, despite having no experience coaching soccer. With unwavering positivity, he takes on that challenge, but mentoring a motley crew of clashing personalities, including egotistical up-and-comer Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) and the hot-headed veteran footballer Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein), proves to be tricky.

And, unknown to him, there is a powerful force within the club that doesn’t want him to succeed: AFC Richmond’s new owner, Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham).

Still, there are no pure villains in the show. And it’s precisely Ted Lasso’s militant belief in the goodness of people — even ones who do nasty things — that feels like a balm for the weary soul. If you’re ever feeling down, Ted Lasso is just that ray of sunshine you need in your life.

Pachinko
Based on the New York Times bestselling novel of the same name, this epic drama chronicles the hopes and dreams of a Korean immigrant family across four generations as they leave their homeland in an indomitable quest to survive and thrive.

Epic in scope and intimate in tone, the story begins with a forbidden love and crescendos into a sweeping saga that journeys between Korea, Japan, and America to tell an unforgettable story of war and peace, love and loss, triumph, and reckoning.

Pachinko is told in three languages — Korean, Japanese, and English — to maintain a ring of authenticity. 

It uses something very specific — the migrant experience — to illuminate universal truths about being human: the need for a sense of belonging, the power of familial bonds, and the dreaming of a better future.

Featuring Academy Award-winning actress Youn Yuh-jung (Minari) and hotshot actor Lee Min-ho in its huge cast, Pachinko is a sprawling, moving drama that proves that when it comes to relating to art, language is indeed no barrier.

Foundation
Based on the award-winning novel series of the same name by Isaac Asimov, Foundation chronicles the lives of humans across the galaxy who are living under the rule of the Galactic Empire.

When the revolutionary Dr Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) predicts the impending fall of the Empire, he and a band of loyal followers venture to the far reaches of the galaxy to establish the Foundation in an attempt to rebuild and preserve the future of civilisation. Enraged by Hari’s claims, the ruling Cleons (Lee Pace, Terrence Mann, and Cassian Bilton) — a long line of emperor clones — fear their grasp on the galaxy may be weakening as they’re forced to reckon with the potential reality of losing their legacy forever.

This first-ever adaptation of Asimov’s groundbreaking series took over 50 years to materialise, and there’s a good reason why it took so long: the novels are famously massive in scope, and many consider them to be nigh unadaptable. The first instalment alone spans 200 years, while the series writ large transpires across 600 years. The book series is also more concerned with ideas than people; philosophical inquiry takes primacy over character development and emotions, making adaptation even more daunting.

That hasn’t stopped screenwriter David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, Man of Steel) from creating this adaptation. He has, however, taken creative license to make major changes to the books, such as gender-swapping and reimagining some characters. Salvor Hardin, portrayed as male and the mayor of Terminus (the capital planet of the Foundation), has been changed to be female and the warden — not mayor — of Terminus.

The series successfully captures the scale of the novels while injecting action and emotion into the show. Sci-fi with heart? Now that’s a winning combination.

Severance
When work-at-home arrangements became the norm, conversations about work-life balance naturally dominated social media. When your office space is also your living space, where does work end and life begin? Is it even possible to separate those two things?

In the award-winning high-concept thriller Severance, work-life balance is taken to the extreme — with frightening results. The biotechnology corporation Lumon Industries has developed a medical procedure called ‘severance’, which allows its employees to compartmentalise their memories based on whether they are at work or not.

When a ‘severed’ worker is at work, they are dubbed ‘innies’ and cannot remember anything of their lives or the world outside. When outside work, they are dubbed ‘outies’ and cannot remember their time at work. Due to this, innie and outie experience two different lives, with distinct personalities and agendas.

Sounds like a useful procedure? Not quite. This excessive separation of professional and personal hurts innies, who experience a lack of agency and a constant sense of despair.

Severance paints a bleak portrait of the excesses of corporatism, one that explores how the need to suppress personal baggage in pursuit of productivity can ultimately hurt people.

The Morning Show
There’s little wonder why The Morning Show has turned out to be one of Apple TV’s biggest hits. It explores the cutthroat world of morning news and the lives of the people who help America wake up in the morning, and it is packed with terrific performances, especially by headlining stars Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. 

Told through the lens of Alex Levy (Aniston) and Bradley Jackson (Witherspoon), two complicated women navigating the minefield that is the high-octane world of morning news. The show is full of chaos — scheming! backstabbing! office politics! — and, well, drama. Multiple plotlines move in tandem at any one time, and they progress so briskly that you’re always engrossed. 

In Season 1, Alex, the co-anchor of a morning talk show, is left feeling abandoned and lost when her co-presenter, Mitch (Steve Carell, who proves he has dramatic chops in addition to comedic talent), is accused of sexual misconduct and fired. It was their chemistry that kept their show’s ratings high; with him gone, she’s in a vulnerable position.

But when she finds a new partner in Bradley, who comes from a serious journalistic background, the show starts taking flight in the ratings again. Along the way, Alex and Bradley discover that the network CEO’s negligence and deliberate inaction fostered a culture of sexual abuse in the company. 

Fearless and fun, the unapologetically candid series looks at the power dynamics between women and men, and women and women, in the workplace without being preachy or heavy-handed. Sophisticated and engrossing — now that’s smart entertainment for you.

Slow Horses
Who says you need labyrinthine plots or gun-slinging to make an espionage thriller work? Forget about pyrotechnics or outrageous plot twists — Slow Horses proves that great acting and even greater writing are all you need to make an exciting spy drama.

Based on Mick Herron’s Slough House novel series, Slow Horses follows a dysfunctional team of British intelligence agents who serve in Slough House, a dumping-ground department of MI5, due to their career-ending mistakes. 

After River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), an up-and-coming MI5 agent, makes a life-altering mistake in a public training exercise, he is relegated to performing dead-end work at Slough House. He resents his new ramshackle workplace, which is populated by intelligence officers who have, like him, committed serious blunders. Making his life even tougher is his boss, the curmudgeonly Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), who’s the brilliant but irascible leader of Slough House.

Haunted by his past mistake and itching to redeem himself, he sticks his nose into an investigation of a far-right terrorist group despite not being assigned to it.

Despite its name, Slow Horses never feels sedate. While it eschews frenetic plotting, the show smuggles in plenty of twists and cliffhangers. The espionage dealings, while suspenseful at every turn, are grounded in a sense of authenticity. Tense but believable at all times, serious but also wickedly funny, the show is one of the best under-the-radar gems on TV right now.