THE adaptation of Amor Towles’ best-selling novel A Gentleman In Moscow (and the Eat Play Drink editor’s pick for the month because she loved the book so much and doesn’t really care that not all the reviews have been raves) follows Count Alexander Rostov, played by Emmy and Critics Choice Award-winner Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars franchise, Fargo, Trainspotting), who, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, finds that his gilded past has placed him on the wrong side of history. Stream at 8.30pm on Mondays from 9 September.
Spared immediate execution, he is banished by a Soviet tribunal to an attic room in a grand Moscow hotel and threatened with death if he ever sets foot outside again. As the years pass and some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history unfold outside the hotel’s doors, Rostov’s reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery. As he builds a new life within the walls of the hotel, he discovers the true value of friendship, family and love.
Daniel Fienberg at The Hollywood Reporter wrote: “I’m here to praise Showtime’s A Gentleman in Moscow for its general restraint. The limited series take on Amor Towles’s 2016 novel tiptoes along an allegorical line, without toppling over into either outright whimsy or voyeuristic gawking at the flawed idealism and generational traumas of the Bolshevik Revolution. It’s a dark story that still has some levity, some heart and, despite a padded eight-hour running time, very little intellectual depth. So you probably want to enjoy it as you’re watching — and Ewan McGregor, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and a fine supporting cast make that very easy — and then not think too deeply about it from there.”
A Gentleman In Moscow is at #23 among the Best TV Shows of 2024 (so far) on Rotten Tomatoes, where it has a 92% critics’ rating. The cast includes Critics Choice nominee Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Ahsoka, Scott Pilgrim’s Ramona Flowers – she and McGregor met while filming Fargo in 2017, are now married and have reunited onscreen here) and BAFTA nominees Johnny Harris (Without Sin), Leah Harvey (Foundation) and Lucian Msamati (Gangs of London, His Dark Materials).
Also on Showmax in September:
- Girls On The Bus S1 | Stream from 8.30pm every Wednesday from 4 September
The Girls On The Bus puts us on the campaign trail with four female journalists, who follow every move of a parade of flawed presidential candidates. Along the way, they find friendship, love, and a scandal that could take down not just the presidency but the entire US democracy.
The HBO series stars Critics Choice Super Award nominees Melissa Benoist (The CW’s Supergirl) and Carla Gugino (The Fall of the House of Usher, The Haunting of Hill House) alongside Christina Elmore (Insecure) and Natasha Behnam (American Pie Presents: Girls’ Rules).
The Girls On The Bus is created by Julie Plec (The Vampire Diaries) and New York Times political reporter Amy Chozick, whose memoir Chasing Hillary inspired the series.
- Fantasmas S1 | First On Showmax | Binge from Friday 6 September
In Fantasmas, writer, director, and comedian Julio Torres spins a fantastical six-part tale of when he lost a gold oyster earring. In his search to find the precious object, he meets a series of offbeat characters in introspective, often eerie, and always comedic vignettes set against the backdrop of a dreamy, alternate version of New York City. A kaleidoscope of colour and surrealism, Fantasmas weaves together stories of people looking for meaning, purpose, and connection in an increasingly isolating world.
Fantasmas is at #4 on Metacritic’s list of the Best TV Shows This Year and #9 on Rotten Tomatoes list of the Best TV Shows of 2024 (so far), with a 93% critics’ rating. In a rare 5/5-star review, The Guardian called Fantasmas, “a fantastically creative and theatrical little diamond”, and an “outstandingly whimsical new series [that] threatens to tear up television’s rules”, saying, “this wildly creative comedy is a beacon of hope for TV’s future.”
The cast is led by Torres (already a multiple-Emmy nominee for his work on Saturday Night Live, and creator of Problemista and the Peabody Award-winning Los Espookys), along with his Los Espookys collaborators Martine Gutierrez and Ana Fabrega, Emmy nominee Ikechukwu Ufomadu (Judas and the Black Messiah, Inspector Ike, Ziwe), and Jaboukie Young-White (Rap Sh!t, Only Murders in the Building). Fantasmas boasts a jaw-dropping line-up of guest stars, including Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Paul Dano, Rosie Perez, Steve Buscemi, Tilda Swinton, and Oscar winner Emma Stone, who also exec produced.
You can also binge both seasons of Los Espookys on Showmax from Monday 16 September.
- Random Acts Of Flyness S2 | Binge from Friday 6 September
The Peabody Award-winning Random Acts of Flyness returns for its second season, subtitled The Parable of the Pirate and the King.
The second season follows Terence (creator Terence Nance) and Najja (Alicia Pilgrim), a couple working towards healing generational wounds and reintroducing themselves to the ways of their ancestors.
Produced by A24 and Anonymous Content, season two was up for three Black Reel Awards this year, for its Cinematography, Editing and Production Design. Random Acts of Flyness boasts a 100% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Slate describing season one as “an experimental trip into blackness fly enough to post up in a modern-art museum.”
Nance heads a directorial team that includes Grammy-winning Nigerian-British artist Jenn Nkiru and Berlin- and Sundance-winning Ghanaian filmmaker Nuotama Bodomo, with Tribeca-winning Ghanaian-American Nana Mensah (Queen of Glory) and Sundance winner Mariama Diallo (Hair Wolf) among the series’ writers.
- It’s A Sin Limited Series | First On Showmax | Binge from 11 September
It’s a Sin charts the joy and heartbreak of a group of friends in 1980s London. With their lives tested as they come of age in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic and a society that is largely intolerant of their sexual orientation, they’re determined to live and love more fiercely than ever.
The five-part mini-series was Channel 4’s biggest drama launch and became the most-binged new series on the channel, racking up 18.9 million viewers. It also prompted a record-breaking three-fold rise in HIV tests ordered in the UK following its broadcast during National HIV Testing Week.
Named the #1 Show of the year by the likes of The Guardian, Empire Magazine, and Radio Times, It’s a Sin holds a 97% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, an 8.6/10 score on IMDb, and 91% on Metacritic, where it was the fourth best-reviewed show of the year overall.
BAFTA-winning, Emmy-nominated series creator and writer Russell T Davies (Queer as Folk, A Very English Scandal, Years and Years, Nolly) was named TV’s most influential person of the year by The Radio Times, with the show’s star, Years & Years lead singer Olly Alexander, taking second place on the TV Top 100 and co-star Lydia West at #7. Also look out for appearances from the likes of Stephen Fry, Keeley Hawes, and Neil Patrick Harris.
It’s a Sin was up for Best Limited Series and Best Actor in a Limited Series (for Alexander) at the Critics Choice Awards, and won Outstanding Limited Series at the GLAAD Media Awards and a Dorian Award for Best LGBTQ TV Show. It was also the most nominated show at the 68th BAFTA awards, winning Best Director for Emmy nominee Peter Hoar (The Last of Us).
Empire Magazine called It’s a Sin “a full-on cultural phenomenon”; Time Magazine described it as “deeply humane, richly observed, frequently funny and fully devastating”; and Slant Magazine praised the series for “reorienting shame and blame from those who died to those who couldn’t be bothered”. The Daily Beast declared it “the year’s best show” with “some of the best acting on TV”, saying, “Yes, it is the most devastating piece of television I watched this year… But [also] perhaps the most joyous”.
- COBRA: Cyberwar S2 | Binge from Monday 16 September
When a suspected Kremlin operation on British soil causes collateral casualties, Prime Minister Robert Sutherland (Emmy nominee Robert Carlyle from The Full Monty and Trainspotting) must once again convene the team of experts, crisis contingency planners and senior politicians known as COBRA.
As COBRA grapples with simultaneous disasters, they begin to fear they may be witnessing the opening moves of a wider game for which none of them are prepared.
Look out for the likes of Richard Dormer (Game of Thrones, Blue Lights), Victoria Hamilton (The Crown), and David Haig (Florence Foster Jenkins).
COBRA has been renewed for a third season.
- The Penguin S1 | Stream from 8.30pm on Thursdays from 19 September
Continuing the epic crime saga that began with 2022’s Oscar-nominated blockbuster The Batman, The Penguin stars Oscar nominee Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb (aka The Penguin, yes that’s really him in the pic below), who makes a play for the reins of Gotham’s crime world.
The eight-episode HBO series also stars Critics Choice Super Award winner Cristin Milioti (Palm Springs, Made for Love, Fargo), Rhenzy Feliz (Runaways), Oscar nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo (The Expanse, The Flight Attendant), Emmy nominee Michael Kelly (House of Cards, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan), Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption, John Wick 4), Black Reel winner Carmen Ejogo (Your Honor, Selma), and BAFTA nominee Mark Strong (Shazam!, 1917, Kingsman: The Secret Service).
The Penguin is created and showrun by Lauren LeFranc (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), directed by Emmy nominee Craig Zobel (The Hunt, Mare of Easttown), and exec produced by Matt Reeves, who directed The Batman.
