The likelihood of this one landing in our laps before the end of the year is slim, but with as stacked a cast as it has, can you blame us for trying to rush it along? Michael Shannon and Matthew Macfadyen will star respectively as early US president James Garfield and Charles Guiteau, who was one of Garfield’s greatest supporters and also ended up being the man who killed him. Nick Offerman and GLOW star Betty Gilpin have also recently joined the cast of the series, which will be executive produced by Game of Thrones creators and 3 Body Problem co-showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.
Firebug
Release date: TBA
The Taron Egerton x Apple TV+ relationship remains strong after his 2022 prison series Black Bird. He’s teaming back up with the streamer for Firebug, a series loosely based on the serial arsonist John Leonard Orr. Orr was an arson investigator and fire captain thought to have set more than 2,000 fires over the decades before being arrested in 1991. Egerton will play the Orr proxy (as well as executive produce the series) while Jurnee Smollett co-stars as his rising-star detective.
Murderbot
Release date: TBA
Alexander Skarsgård has always managed to embody characters that have a rogue, sometimes sinister oddness to them, as if you don’t quite know what they’re thinking (Lukas in Succession, James in Infinity Pool, Eric in True Blood). To that end, his upcoming role as a self-hacking android who simply loves to spend his days watching trash TV feels tailor-made for the actor. The show in question is Murderbot, based on the book series The Murderbot Diaries by best-selling author Martha Wells. Another Apple TV+ big-budget sci-fi punt no less, so you know it’s going to be good.
The Miniature Wife
Release date: TBA
We will have no shortage of Matthew Macfadyen on our screen in months to come, which is a good thing for anyone still trying to fill the hole left by Succession. He’ll be starring alongside Elizabeth Banks in The Miniature Wife, a dramedy about a married couple dealing with strife and power imbalances in their relationship. If that all sounds very Tom and Shiv, just wait for the high-concept twist that the title teases—the wife has literally been shrunk. This show is literally about a miniature wife. In all seriousness, though, the series is based on the critically acclaimed short story by Manuel Gonzalez, which picked up heaps of praise when it was released in 2013.
Down Cemetery Road
Release date: TBA
From the same production company that gave us Slow Horses (probably your dad’s favorite show) and Hijack (probably also your dad’s favorite show) will come Down Cemetary Road, starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson. The series, which will launch on Apple TV+, will star Wilson as a woman obsessed with the disappearance of a young girl in the aftermath of a freak house explosion and Thompson as the private investigator she hires to figure out the truth once and for all. It will be based on a novel by Mick Herron, whose book also inspires Slow Horses (seriously, ask your dad about it).
The Four Seasons
Release date: TBA
If you saw everyone sharing 30 Rock clips a few months back and thought, Man, I wish we had another show like that, well, you might be in luck. The team behind 30 Rock—Tina Fey, Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield—are coming together again to reboot the 1981 film The Four Seasons for TV. If that line-up wasn’t already good enough, Fey and Steve Carrell are also on board to star, alongside Colman Domingo and Fey’s fellow SNL alum Will Forte. The film, which starred Alan Alda and Carol Burnett, follows the relationship travails of three couples who vacation together every season. There aren’t many details about whether the adaptation will stick true to the original or treat the concept as a jumping-off point.
