Ahhh, Spring. A time of renewal, a time of rejuvenation. A time to get outside and enjoy the warmer weather. To soak up the sun after a long, cold winter stuck indoors … unless that is, you’re a TV fanatic. Then Spring is a time to use your chronic allergies and the onslaught of dormant cicadas as logical excuses for why you’re spending most of your free time staring at a small box.
Look, nature’s overrated but this lineup of upcoming TV shows landing on streaming platforms and cable networks sometime this Spring isn’t. So craft whatever ridiculous excuse you need to in order to binge these comedies, dramas, and steampunk fantasy series dropping in the next few months.
Loki (Disney+ series streaming June 11th)
WandaVision got surreal, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is getting real, and Loki will likely live up to his Trickster reputation and be entirely unpredictable. Presumably, he’s still in possession of the Tesseract, and time travel will be an element of this series, but where he goes from there, one can only guess. What we know for sure is that a prison jumpsuit is involved, Loki’s still got daddy issues galore, and naturally, he’ll always be burdened with glorious purpose. Tom Hiddleston sliding back into mischief-making mode is always a pleasure, so June 11 can’t come soon enough. — Kimberly Ricci
Made For Love (HBO Max series streaming April 1st)
A nightmare relationship scenario is run through a sci-fi filter with Made For Love, kicking up fears of tech overreach, the loss of privacy, and the erosion of what makes us singular beings when we’re paired off. Add in the suddenly relevant scenario of being locked in with one person and one person only for a long-assed time, and Made For Love may feel a little too real. But as terrifying a cerebral sci-fi horror as it seems, there’s also the potential for absurdist comedy in this latest showcase for the talents of Cristin Milioti, who with this and time loop sci-fi comedy Palm Springs, now becomes the unquestioned Queen of unintentionally relevant quarantine entertainment. — Jason Tabrys
Shrill: Season 3 (Hulu series streaming May 7th)
The important thing to know about Shrill is that Aidy Bryant is the best. There are other things to know, sure, like how the first two seasons navigated issues about body positivity and the journalism industry and the difficulties of navigating both of those first two things when you are a woman who is not proportioned like a Barbie doll. The show returns for a third and final season this May and, while all of it is worth mentioning for any number of reasons, the thing you’ll probably end up taking away from it is the same thing that led this blurb: Aidy Bryant is really, really good. It’s great she got a shot at a lead role and it would be great if this leads to another shot soon, too. — Brian Grubb
The Nevers (HBO series streaming April 11th)
If you look past the Joss Whedon of it all — and hopefully, you can — The Nevers is a terrific fantasy drama. Set in Victorian Era England, this steampunk period-piece sports major X-Men-but-with-corsets vibes. Picking up a few years after a mysterious event leaves a select group of Londoners with extra-ordinary abilities, the show centers on two gifted women running an orphanage that provides sanctuary for these “Touched” individuals. There are underground orgies galore, plus a handful of kick-ass action sequences and some intricate world-building, but it’s the show’s leads — Laura Donnelly and Ann Skelly — that really make this thing worth watching. — Jessica Toomer
Invincible (Amazon Prime series streaming now)
This animated romp will please both fans of The Boys and The Walking Dead, and the latter reference has everything to do with the source material penned by Robert Kirkman. Invincible is an ultraviolent and somehow fresh-feeling deconstruction of the superhero, and yes, we’ve seen plenty of dismantling already, but this story has heart, not to mention a stellar voice cast. Stephen Yeun makes a fantastic leading man here, and the rest of the cast (J.K. Simmons, Sandra Oh, Seth Rogen, Walton Goggins, Jason Mantzoukas, Zazie Beetz, Zachary Quinto, Mark Hamill, and several TWD names) is ridiculously good. — Kimberly Ricci
Mythic Quest: Season 2 (Apple TV+ series streaming May 7th)
The first season of Mythic Quest was a blast. The show followed the development of a fictional video game from creation to completion, but it was barely about that, really. Co-creator and star Rob McElhenney turned the whole thing into an occasionally sweet, occasionally touching, always fun look at a kind of found family of weirdos. And that was before the show got to its quarantine episode, which premiered very early in the COVID panic and still somehow hit every aspect of it right on the head. Mythic Quest is good. The cast is great. Charlotte Nicdao puts on an acting showcase. And there’s even a surprise Jake Johnson and Cristin Milioti sighting. What’s not to like? If season two is half as good as the first, it will still be twice as good as most other shows on television. — Brian Grubb
The Handmaid’s Tale: Season 4 (Hulu series streaming April 28th)
It’s been nearly two years since the last season of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale premiered so you’d be forgiven for forgetting that Elisabeth Moss has become one of TV’s most watchable revolutionaries. She ended season three by shipping a bunch of innocent children across the border to Canada and resolving to destroy Gilead from the inside — well, her character June did anyway — and that plan hasn’t changed. Expect more political maneuverings and underground rebel factions and flashbacks for some characters who were sidelined a bit last season. — Jessica Toomer
Mosquito Coast (Apple TV+ series streaming April 30th)
Leftovers star Justin Theroux returns to series television as the head of a family on the run that’s trying to work through the kind of problem that seemingly can’t be easily solved. Adapted from a novel written by Theroux’s uncle, Paul, and adapted previously by Peter Weir with Harrison Ford in the lead, Mosquito Coast’s first trailer promises a whole lot of tension and globe-trotting adventure. — Jason Tabrys
Law And Order: Organized Crime (NBC series premiering April 1st)
Chris Meloni’s departure (and the way that Elliot Stabler was written out of SVU) always left an unsatisfying taste in the mouths of this long-running series’ fans. The good news, though, is that it’s all water under the Brooklyn bridge because Stabler is coming back to his old stomping grounds. The crossover episode with Mariska Hargitay and Ice-T will launch the show, and from there, it is all Stabler, all the time. Meloni’s movie and TV career outside this universe were worth the time blip, yet there’s no place like home for this ill-tempered detective, who will surely have to adjust his behavior in a TV-cop landscape that’s quite unlike the atmosphere of yesteryear. — Kimberly Ricci
Mare of Easttown (HBO series premiering April 18th)
We’re solidly in the age of Peak TV which means seeing god-like movie stars grace our puny small screens isn’t as shocking these days. But, come on! It’s Kate Winslet people! The premise for this crime drama centering on a small-town detective with her own dark hang-ups was good enough to get Winslet to do a TV show and that’s a good enough excuse for us to watch. — Jessica Toomer
Solar Opposites: Season 2 (Hulu series streaming now)
Season one of Solar Opposites featured one of last year’s single funniest (and best) episodes in “Terry And Korvo Steal A Bear,” the so-called wall episode where producers injected an epic life and death fight into a show about crash-landed aliens at once struggling to blast out of here and also fit in. And now the show is back, stocked with the same kind of big imagination that affords producers Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan an opportunity to grow a pandemic era surprise hit into the kind of cultural behemoth that they’re already familiar with, in their work on Rick And Morty. — Jason Tabrys
Chad (TBS series premiering April 6th)
Let’s explain the idea of Chad first. That will help. The show stars Nasim Pedrad — the female former SNL star — as a teenage boy named Chad. The show was originally ordered by Fox way back in 2016 and now is set for a first season at TBS five years later. It’s cool that the show has survived over this tumultuous half-decade of development, if only because it’s so ambitiously strange and sweet. It’s a grown woman playing a teenage boy who is trying to navigate high school and blend in while also understanding his Persian identity. Pedrad has a history of pulling off this kind of trick, though, at least in sketch form, so the show should be an interesting experiment at worst and a potentially eye-opening sweet little slice of life at best. — Brian Grubb
Rutherford Falls (Peacock series streaming April 22nd)
The absence of Parks & Rec and Schitt’s Creek leaves the quirky community comedy with a heart hole that Rutherford Falls is eager to try and fill. Whether people are ready to laugh at anything even vaguely connected to tense real-world conversations about heritage, relocated statues, and local politics is an open question. But with a talented cast (Ed Helms, Schitt’s Creek alum Dustin Milligan, and Jana Schmieding), Parks co-creator Michael Schur involved as a producer, and a clever first trailer, there are compelling reasons to see if Rutherford Falls can build on its potential and stick its landing. — Jason Tabrys
Ziwe (Showtime series premiering May 9th)
If we’re looking for bright-spots gifted to us by the last year or so in lockdown, multihyphenate comedian Ziwe has to be high on the list of things that got us through. A writer for Showtime’s Desus & Mero, the funny-woman gained an eye-popping following with her entertaining Instagram Live sit-downs last year before dropping an album early in 2021. So yes, she can really do it all and she’s out to prove that with her own variety series that leans on her improv roots and recruits some famous names — think Jane Krakowski, Jeremy O. Harris, Cristin Milioti, and more — to come play in her inventive comedic sandbox. — Jessica Toomer
The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers (Disney+ series streaming now)
The wheel-O-nostalgia has finally reached The Mighty Ducks and pulled Emilio Estevez back into one of his most significant on-screen roles in years alongside the always fantastic Lauren Graham. But it’s really all about the kids, and this batch has the right amount of quirk and precociousness to connect in the way that the original cast did with their peers in the ‘90s. The show seems hyper-focused on the hazards of overparenting and crushing expectations in youth sports, allowing for a “let kids be kids” rallying cry that should resonate across the board, allowing this to be about more than seeing Gordon Bombay live to quack again. — Jason Tabrys