Every year, a plethora of new shows premiere across cable TV and streaming. Whether they premiered in January or September, the Screen Speck team is here to honor our favorites.
The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin (Apple TV+)
The first thing you should know about me is that I am always on the hunt for a perfect silly little show. And The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, which premiered last spring on Apple TV+, is indeed a silly little show. Because of its anachronistic, whimsical approach to reimagining a semi-legendary historical figure, Dick Turpin earned comparisons to Our Flag Means Death almost instantly. But here’s the thing. Dick Turpin is actually funny if your sense of humor skews toward the stupid, surreal, and British. (If you like The Mighty Boosh, in short.)
Noel Fielding, let loose from the Bake Off tent, anchors Dick Turpin as the titular eighteenth-century highwayman. This version of Turpin, while he robs people’s coaches, isn’t exactly dastardly. He simply wants to escape the shadow of his father’s butcher shop and be famous for… anything. He falls into highway robbery, becoming the leader of the Essex Gang and embarking on a series of increasingly ridiculous (and sometimes supernatural) shenanigans.
Fielding is delightful, but Turpin himself isn’t the draw of the series. The show rides on its sprawling constellation of supporting characters and guest stars. Hugh Bonneville gives one of the best deadpan performances I’ve seen in recent memory. As Nell, the lone female member of the Essex Gang, Ellie White brings just the right amount of sincerity and heart to the proceedings without sacrificing any comedic potential. And Kiri Flaherty, despite being an actual kid, might be the funniest of all as the conspicuously underage bartender Little Karen.
There’s a simmering season-long arc about a conspiracy to take down Dick Turpin, but the real joy of this show comes from its off-the-wall episodic hijinks: a cursed coach, a musically-inclined rival, a child kidnapping that turns unexpectedly wholesome. A low-stakes caper-of-the-week series that consists mostly of weirdos getting up to extremely unserious criminal activity? Sign me up for season two.
Season one of The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin is available on AppleTV+ now.
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How To Die Alone (Hulu)
Created by writer/actor/director/producer/all-around talent-haver Natasha Rothwell, Hulu’s How to Die Alone has, in only eight episodes, established itself as one of the most delightful shows of 2024. Rothwell’s Mel is a cheerful airport worker still waiting for her life to start. Until she dies for three minutes on her 35th birthday, that is. As she recovers from her accident, she’s hit by the realization that she could have truly died without having ever really lived to begin with, which, along with some wisdom from her hospital roommate, makes her decide to regain control over her life.
Mel has a solid support system at work, notably in Terrance (KeiLyn Durrel Jones), one of her baggage-handler co-workers, though she struggles to let her co-workers in at first. When Mel’s ex-boyfriend and manager Alex (Jocko Sims) invites her and her best (and in the beginning only, though flaky) friend, a wonderful Conrad Ricamora’s Rory, to his destination wedding in Hawaii, the pair decide to My Best Friend’s Wedding the whole thing. None of it goes according to plan, though.
As the episodes go on, the audience follows the chaotic, nonlinear, and, therefore, realistic journey that Mel embarks on. In attempting to reimagine her life, she finds she deserves more than what she’s always settled for; in looking for love in others, she discovers more love and compassion for herself. The path to self-love and confidence is a complicated one when you’re fluent in negative self-talk and getting in your own way, but Mel shows us just how rewarding it can be to fight those instincts.
The show doesn’t shy away from exploring important conversations and is—much like life—at times funny and heartbreaking, but always thoughtful. It doesn’t mock its characters but rather, holds their hand as they stumble through life. This benevolence, this kind-hearted nature in dealing with human flaws, give it an even more comforting energy that, paired with witty one-liners and more emotional scenes, allows it to go through your defenses to poke you with a stick and ask if you are living the life you want.
Rothwell’s raw performance stands out from the rest of an already powerful cast and will have you rooting for Mel despite some of her (questionable) choices. Mel is a beautiful, complex character who, not unlike the rest of us, is full of contradictions and doubts, and that makes her all the more relatable.
The amount of care and hard work that has gone into this season is palpable, and the much-needed representation for plus-sized Black women—a demographic too often overlooked, if not used as the butt of the jokes or as one-dimensional best friends in comedy—is not lost on me.
Overall, How to Die Alone is an uplifting, refreshing series that shows that growth is messy but possible. And it might just change your life, too.
Season 1 of How to Die Alone is available on Hulu.
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St. Denis Medical (NBC)
Mockumentaries are back, baby! NBC’s newest sitcom, St. Denis Medical, may only have a few episodes out, yet it’s proving to be one of the most solid comedies of the year.
The show takes place in the St. Denis Medical Center in Oregon, where we follow the adventures of an ensemble of underfunded and understaffed but dedicated doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals, led by Allison Tolman’s Alex, a workaholic, recently promoted supervising nurse who runs the center’s small ER, and her boss, executive director and former oncologist Joyce (a delightful, over-the-top Wendi McLendon-Covey) whose main goal is to turn the place into an international medical destination.
Co-created by Eric Ledgin and Justin Spitzer, St. Denis Medical is guaranteed to scratch the Superstore itch in your brain. In fact, you’ll even recognize Kaliko Kauahi and Josh Lawson from the 2015 show as part of the ensemble, respectively, as Val, a dead-pan nurse administrator, and Bruce, a self-centered trauma surgeon. It also stars David Alan Brier as Ron, an emergency doctor who, despite his grumpy facade, is friendlier and lonelier than he leads others to believe. The team wouldn’t be complete without Kahyun Kim’s Serena, a jaded travel nurse, and Mekki Leeper’s Matt, a young nurse from a deeply religious background. Together, they try to navigate a dysfunctional medical system that makes it more complicated for them to care for their patients while also caring for each other.
Some moments may feel more chaotic than others, but the season so far remains truly enjoyable. Wendi McLendon-Covey is as always a stand-out. If she established herself as sitcom royalty in The Goldbergs, she would shine even more as the ever-optimistic Joyce, and her comedic timing would be as impeccable as it’s always been. St. Denis Medical has the potential to become a hit, such as Abbott Elementary—it certainly checks all the boxes to possibly grow into a powerhouse of a show. Here’s to hoping NBC doesn’t cancel it too soon.
St. Denis Medical airs on Tuesdays at 8/7c on NBC, with episodes available the next day on Peacock.
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Agatha All Along (Disney+)
Everyone knows Marvel Studios. Superheroes, villains, and box office numbers usually bookend anything related to Marvel. Regurgitated storylines about a hero whose parent passed tragically or a villain whose love was taken from them aren’t new to the studio. Still, occasionally, something comes out that makes you say, “I can’t believe this is Marvel.”
This time, it’s Agatha All Along.
While, yes, Agatha All Along is a show about superpowered people and witches, it pulls so far away from the Marvel formula that it doesn’t feel like you’re watching something about superheroes/villains.
The show, created by Jac Schaeffer, follows Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn). She attempts to travel down “The Witches Road” to regain her powers after Wanda Maximoff stripped her of them in the 2021 series Wanda Vision.
With her are fellow witches Jen Kale (Sasheer Zamata), Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), and Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), “Teen” played by Joe Locke, and Mrs. Hart (Debra Jo Rupp) who caught the short end of the stick and is forced to travel the Road with the others.
The witches’ powers are so different from what we’ve seen in Marvel before that they bring a new sense to the franchise while weaving familiarity between the characters, whether we know it or not.
While the show is science fiction, which borders on fantasy, it also has horror elements—and, no, not Terrifier horror, but Scream horror. There are jumpscares and scary faces, but there’s still laughter while those are happening.
Along with the genre-bending, the show also features several (!) queer relationships. While I’m not about to say they’re the best representation we’ve ever seen (probably don’t date Death, you know?), they’re still indicative of how far we’ve come from same-sex kisses only being in the background of specific scenes at specific times.
Agatha All Along begins as a story of an evil witch and evolves into a show about found family, love, and grief. Each character in this star-studded cast must overcome themselves in both physically and mentally challenging ways. Overall, the show has a heart, which is more than can be said about most Marvel features recently.
All episodes of Agatha All Along are now available to stream on Disney+.
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