Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic ‘Severance’ and other super-sequelsAmong the many cult mystery series returning for another run — The White Lotus (Sky/HBO), Black Mirror (Netflix), Only Murders in the Building (Disney+) — perhaps the most eagerly anticipated is Ben Stiller and Dan Erickson’s startlingly inventive 2022 series which recasts the workplace drama in new, surreal and unexpected ways. Exploring the possibilities of being able to separate one’s work and non-work memories through Adam Scott’s biotech drone Mark, the first series of Severance concluded with Mark and his colleagues breaching the boundaries between the two as revelations tumbled forth. Gwendoline Christie and Merritt Wever join an already stacked cast (John Turturro, Christopher Walken, Patricia Arquette, a herd of baby goats).Pixar on the small screenPixar’s first original TV series arrives with, one imagines, a spring in its step after the globe-conquering success of Inside Out 2 (itself the recipient of a television series in this December’s Dream Productions). First-time directors Carrie Hobson and Michael Yates are graduates of the Toy Story 4 team; eight episodes each focus on a different character in the run-up to a big softball game for middle schoolers the Pickles. There’s a Charlie Brown-esque trier, Will Forte’s good-natured coach and an umpire nursing a broken heart. Grounded, then, but also full of Pixar’s customary flights of fancy.The force is with ‘Andor’There are big franchise returns aplenty in 2025 — sophomore seasons for The Last of Us (Sky/HBO) and Wednesday (Netflix), a last hurrah for Stranger Things (Netflix), a rebooted Daredevil (Disney+) and a second Game of Thrones prequel with A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (Sky/HBO) — but the force is truly with the only Star Wars spin-off to date to have matched critical acclaim and commercial success. Returning for a second and final run of noirish worldbuilding and mature, confident storytelling, this series of Andor will follow Diego Luna’s cynical but redeemable anti-hero Cassian Andor’s continuing journey from petty thief to revolutionary. It will bring the narrative up to Rogue One, the film where his enigmatic presence first made itself felt.Untold stories from the Victorian East EndAfter his divisive interpretation of Great Expectations, Steven Knight gathers a fine cast for an immersive new take on the melting pot of the Victorian East End through the eyes of three outsiders: bare-knuckle boxer Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham), leader of an all-female criminal gang Mary Carr (Erin Doherty) and Jamaican immigrant and aspiring lion-tamer Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby). Most remarkably, these are the untold stories of real people, related with empathy and impact. The presence of David Olusoga as historical adviser should ensure a degree of verisimilitude.‘Dear England’ moves from stage to screenGareth Southgate may be gone, denied his perfect finale at the Euros, but James Graham continues to curate the legacy of the former England manager by turning his hit play, Dear England, into a four-part drama. Star Joseph Fiennes and director Rupert Goold have also made the team. How has a man who was responsible for two major finals, one semi-final, a unified squad and a refreshing take on mental health and national identity been dismissed as a woke failure by so many? Look out, too, for Brian and Margaret, Graham and director Stephen Frears’s reimagining for Channel 4 of Margaret Thatcher’s (Harriet Walter) final, embittered televised interview with her friend Brian Walden (Steve Coogan).Noirish mystery from Booker Prize winner Marlon James Rising star Tamara Lawrance (Time, Mr Loverman) takes the lead in a six-part drama by Marlon James, Booker Prize winner and son of one of Jamaica’s first female detectives. The noirish mystery Get Millie Black is set in both London and Kingston. Lawrance’s eponymous copper investigates a missing-person’s case and makes dangerous enemies on both sides of the law in Jamaica and among Britain’s postcolonial relics, as well as grabbing the attention of Joe Dempsie’s Met Police superintendent and Kingston’s emerging trans community.‘Derry Girls’ creator pens new friendship comic-dramaWhile Lisa McGee worked on her glorious Troubles-era sitcom Derry Girls, she also crafted a neat little crime thriller for Channel 5 called The Deceived. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast brings both genres together as three thirtysomethings — Sinead Keenan’s strung-out mother-of-three, Roisin Gallagher’s chaotic TV writer, Caoilfhionn Dunne’s buttoned-up carer — learn about the death of the fourth member of their childhood gang and begin to suspect all is not as it seems following her wake. Diverging from Erin, Orla, Clare et al in its serio-comic scrutiny of memory and mid-life disappointment, it nevertheless returns to the same, enduringly rewarding theme of friendship in adversity.‘The Leopard’ roars againLuchino Visconti’s sumptuous epic The Leopard was one of the great totems of 1960s cinema. Sensibly, Tom Shankland’s six-part series takes a different, but no less ambitious, tack on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel of power and love, youth and experience, and the march of history. Blending present-day Italy with the lives of the old aristocratic order, its focus is Don Fabrizio Corbera (Kim Rossi Stuart), a Sicilian prince looking to secure his family’s future amid the turmoil of the Risorgimento in 1860. Other subtitled series to look out for include Colombian mystery Medusa and a third series for Squid Game (both Netflix), while Channel 4’s foreign-language offshoot Walter Presents will delve into wrestling through Danish whodunnit Suplex and mental health in German thriller The Shadow.Tom Hiddleston returns in ‘The Night Manager’With Slow Horses (Apple TV+) and Black Doves (Netflix) also back this year, spies are in fashion again — so what better time for the return of the master, even at one remove? David Farr, who adapted John le Carré’s slippery tale of international arms dealing to enormous acclaim in 2016, will be writing two further series inspired by the characters. Tom Hiddleston’s former soldier is at the heart of the new stories concerning, says Farr, “dark corners and shady identities”. Hugh Laurie will be joining le Carré’s sons on exec-producing duties after his seductive, repugnant first-series character, Richard Roper, went missing, presumed dead in grisly fashion.Sally Wainwright’s middle-aged punks rock onBack in the county where she has set her finest work, writer-director Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley, Last Tango in Halifax) has proclaimed herself “more excited about this than anything else I have ever written”. Riot Women casts Joanna Scanlan, Tamsin Greig, Lorraine Ashbourne, Rosalie Craig and Amelia Bullmore as a five-piece punk band thrown together for a talent show in West Yorkshire, only to find the music (in reality written by Brighton punks ARXX) giving them a new voice and sense of purpose in late middle-age lives of unfulfilling jobs, demanding families and romantic disappointment.Lena Dunham’s culture-clash romcomHaving shuttled between the US and UK for the past few years on projects ranging from Industry to Catherine Called Birdy, Lena Dunham’s first series for seven years appropriately pairs an American and a Brit, hot properties both, in a romcom of clashing cultures. In Too Much, Megan Stalter (Hacks) is a New York workaholic who moves to London to escape a shattered relationship and her own increasingly toxic reputation; Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) plays her meet-cute carrying all manner of red flags, yet whose magnetic appeal she cannot deny. Think Girls by way of Love, Actually (with which it shares executive producers).Better Call Vince GilliganHaving overseen such idiosyncratic series as Breaking Bad and Fargo, Vince Gilligan’s next move is always likely to be keenly watched. Details are sparse on the writer-director’s first major project since Better Call Saul — even Wycaro 339 is a working title — although it shares a star (in Rhea Seehorn) and filming location of Albuquerque with the Walter Whiteverse. Early reports suggest a turn into science fiction; after all, Gilligan got his start on The X-Files. Fellow auteur Noah Hawley will also be leaving the world of darkly funny noir behind for SF, overseeing the television debut of another cult franchise with Alien: Earth on Disney+.Find out about our latest stories first — follow FTWeekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life and Art wherever you listen
