Ten new and bingeworthy TV shows to watch

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While the television schedule never stops these days, fall’s still the most jam-packed time of year for new and returning shows.

Notable freshman dramas and comedies such as Sterlin Harjo’s Reservation Dogs follow-up The Lowdown (Disney+) and The Office spin-off The Paper (StackTV) have already made their debuts, while favourites pulpy political thriller The Diplomat (Netflix, Oct. 16) and postapocalyptic romp Fallout (Prime Video, Dec. 17) will return soon.

Here’s 10 more promising comedies, dramas and docu-series hitting the figurative air this fall.

Oct. 9: Boots, Netflix

This comedic coming-of-age drama is the final television project produced by the legendary and long-lived Norman Lear (All in the Family), who died in 2023 at 101.

Inspired by the memoir The Pink Marine, the eight-episode series follows a closeted Miles Heizer (13 Reasons Why) as his enlists in the U.S. Marine Corps in the 1990s, when it was still illegal to serve while gay.

Oct. 22: Lazarus, Prime Video

Harlan Coben, the bestselling mystery writer, is behind this new six-part thriller – his first television project based on an original idea rather than one of his books.

Sam Claflin (Daisy Jones & the Six) stars as a forensic psychologist who returns home after his father’s suicide – and ends up investigating a series of cold cases, including the murder of his sister a quarter-century earlier. The great Bill Nighy shares top billing as the dead dad suggesting a suitably pre-Halloween ghost element.

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Oct. 29: Down Cemetery Road, Apple TV+

Slow Horses Season 5 is already rolling out on Apple TV and in cracking form – but the streaming service has further fun for fans of adaptations of Mick Herron novels. Morwenna Banks, who writes on Slow Horses (and voices Peppa Pig’s mummy), is at the helm of this new series based on the first of Herron’s Zoë Boehm thrillers; Emma Thompson stars.

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Nov 2: I Love LA, Crave

TV comedies set and shot in Los Angeles are all the rage these days – from The Studio to the most recent season of Hacks. Rachel Sennott, who first rose to fame through the film Shiva Baby and co-wrote immediate cult comedy classic Bottoms, is the creator, star and writer of this new one; there’s little known about the show yet except that it’s about a group of friends and Sennott’s co-stars include Odessa A’zion, Jordan Firstman, True Whitaker and Josh Hutcherson.

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Nov. 6: The Assembly, CBC

The Mother Corp’s new additions to its lineup this fall are mainly reality and docu-series. Based on an international format that started in France, this talk show sees celebrities and public figures grilled by a group of 30 interviewers on the autism spectrum. At it best, previous iterations of the show have not just been showcases for neurodiversity but led to vulnerability and surprising revelations from guests.

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Nov. 6: All Her Fault, Showcase/StackTV

Australian actor Sarah Snook comes back to television after four seasons of scheming as Shiv on Succession with this thriller based on a gripping Irish novel. A starry cast that also includes Dakota Fanning leads to hope it may be more than just the serialized Lifetime movie that its logline suggests: When a mom shows up to pick up her son from a playdate, he can’t be found.

Nov. 7: Nepobaby, CBC Gem

The national public broadcaster’s streaming service has been snapping up intriguing Scandinavian shows lately beyond the in-demand genre of Nordic noir. Created by Henriette Steenstrup, this Norwegian comedy about a woman who discovers she’s an heiress has been described as Succession meets Veep – and won awards at the Canneseries festival for its screenplay and ensemble.

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Nov. 13: The Beast in Me, Netflix

Television superpowers Claire Danes (Homeland, Fleishman Is In Trouble) and Matthew Rhys (The Americans, Perry Mason) have somehow never formed an alliance on screen before now. In this cat-and-mouse miniseries, Danes plays a mourning author who breaks out of her long-time writer’s block when a real estate mogul, whose wife disappeared mysteriously and who is played by Rhys, moves in next door.

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Nov. 7: Pluribus, Apple TV+

Screenwriter Vince Gilligan’s much-anticipated follow-up to the interconnected, critically lauded double whammy of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul may also be set in Albuquerque but marks a return to the sci-fi roots of the writer who first rose to prominence penning some of the best episodes of The X-Files. A strange virus has made all of humanity content – and, per the tagline, “the most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness.”

Nov. 16: The American Revolution, PBS

The second TV team-up of Danes and Rhys? The actors are among those who have signed up to read first-person accounts of historical figures in this new documentary series from Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt about a war that’s nearly as important to Canadian as American history. With Congress voting to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, this may be your last chance to learn about the past from Burns while cameras slowly pan and zoom across still images.