Comprehensive coverage of the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games (CBC, March 6-15) continues as the big new spring shows and returning favourites are making an appearance. We’re excited for the second season of the global hit dark crime comedy Deadloch (March 20, Prime) – for this show about mismatched investigators think: if Broadchurch were funny, and in Tasmania. And nearly 20 years after its debut, HBO’s cult-favourite meta-satire The Comeback comes back for a third and final season (March 22, Crave) with gifted Friends comedienne Lisa Kudrow as B-list sitcom actress Valerie Cherish. Good! We need to laugh these days more than ever.
 

Vladimir

At first glance, this shapeshifting series appears to be a #MeToo story about the unnamed wife (Rachel Weisz) in an established academic couple navigating the fallout from her husband’s (Mad Men’s John Slattery) latest inappropriate affair. Narrating her version of events, she speaks directly to the camera (paging Fleabag!) but as she develops an obsession with new colleague Vladimir (Leo Woodall), it soon takes on the tinge of an erotic thriller – while dangling ideas about desire, aging, sexual politics and reputation. Filmed in Toronto last summer, produced by Bad Sisters’ Sharon Horgan, and showrun/co-written by Julia May Jonas based on her provocative 2022 novel, the audience is left to our heroine’s literary devices – being an unreliable narrator may be one of them.

Where to Watch: Streaming on Netflix starting March 5 (8 episodes)

Rooster

This new half-hour ensemble (from Bill Lawrence of Ted Lasso and Shrinking fame) stars Steve Carell as Greg Russo, a bestselling writer of humorous crime thrillers. Greg becomes a guest lecturer at the small liberal arts college where his adult daughter Katie (Charly Clive) teaches and is reeling from her husband’s affair – and this complex father-daughter bond powers the show. Greg’s new gig spurs an examination of his post-divorce doldrums (with the wonderful Connie Britton as his ex) and leads to behaviour worthy of the heroic and authoritative Rooster, his fictional alter-ego. The show’s sensibility, as well as the character’s career and personality, are all inspired by acerbic satirist Carl Hiaasen (who the producers got to know while adapting his Bad Monkey). It’s a witty warm hug.

Where to Watch: Streaming on Crave starting March 8 (10 episodes)

RJ Decker

Carl Hiaasen – specifically, his Double Whammy novel — is also the source material for this comedic crime caper starring Canadian Scott Speedman (Grey’s Anatomy), the latest quirky detective drama from ABC (the network of High Potential). The former Felicity heartthrob is now a disgraced news photographer and ex-con-turned-private-investigator, working with his former wife and investigative journalist Catherine (Adelaide Clemens) and shrewd politician’s daughter Emi Ochoa (Jaina Lee Ortiz). Between scruffy Decker’s misadventures, the palm trees, and the bizarre, colourful characters that populate his South Florida trailer park, it’s giving original Magnum, P.I. vibes.

Where to Watch: Premiering on CTV, March 3; streaming on Disney+ and Crave starting March 4 (9 episodes)

Scarpetta

Since their debut in 1990, Patricia Cornwell’s celebrated Dr. Kay Scarpetta crime novels have won the American police-reporter-turned-writer many accolades and sold more than 120 million copies globally. Nicole Kidman steps into the role of medical examiner and forensic pathologist, returning to her hometown (after a hiatus) to work on a homicide investigation that has uncanny parallels to her career-making first case. She and fellow Oscar-winner Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays earthy older sister Dorothy, have great rapport (often gabbing in the kitchen together while cooking the dishes of their Italian immigrant parents). Emmy-winner Bobby Cannavale (Boardwalk Empire) and The Mentalist’s Simon Baker form part of Scarpetta’s team in a case that unfolds across two timelines, with rising U.K. star Rosy McEwen as the young ME in the 1990s (where Cannavale’s son Jake plays the past version of his detective character).

Where to Watch: Streaming on Prime Video starting March 11 (8 episodes)

The Lady

In 2001, the former Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson’s one-time personal dresser Jane Andrews went to prison for the murder of her boyfriend. In this must-see true-crime miniseries, the production company behind The Crown dramatizes the years leading up to the tragedy, charting the poisonous upward mobility of a troubled young woman (Mia McKenna-Bruce) among the feckless royals. The series goes behind palace doors over the decade as Ferguson (Natalie Dormer) and then-Prince Andrew separate and divorce, offering something akin to empathy for the doomed young woman dazzled and brought low by proximity to their destructive bubble. Last fall, after the Epstein files revealed Fergie’s “inexcusable” continued ties to the sex trafficker, Dormer donated her salary from the series to victims of childhood abuse.

Where to Watch: Streaming on BritBox starting March 18 (4 episodes)

The Forsytes

The Gilded Age, but make it British. Succession, but with bustles. With Francesca Annis as their matriarch, Jack Davenport, Tuppence Middleton and Stephen Moyer star in this sumptuous adaptation of Nobel laureate John Galsworthy’s monumental 1922 trilogy about a new-money Victorian family. Obsessed with their elevated position in society and further social advancement, the Forsytes are the dynastic feuders who made the BBC’s 1967 adaptation a landmark in modern television (and some may remember the 2002 version with Damian Lewis and Gina McKee). Rife with scheming, entitlement and marital strategy, the saga explores the British class system from the late-Victorian era through the socially-liberated 1920s, and anticipation is high because it’s by screenwriter Debbie Horsfield and the team behind Poldark.

Where to Watch: Streaming on PBS Masterpiece starting March 22 (6 episodes)

Bait

Hollywood loves to play – if not mock – itself. Hacks, The Franchise and The Studio all attest to the ongoing fascination with showbiz behind-the-scenes. Enter Emmy- and Oscar-winner Riz Ahmed, who finally gets to highlight his deadpan comedy chops in a series he writes and showruns. Ahmed plays the struggling (and somewhat bewildered) British-Pakistani actor Shah Latif, who gets the opportunity to audition for the iconic role of James Bond. Following him over the course of a few chaotic fateful days that could make or break his career sets up a fly-on-the-wall satire of politics within the business.

Where to Watch: Streaming on Prime starting March 25 (6 episodes)

Miscellany, of Note

Fifteen years after his blockbuster detective film adaptations, Guy Ritchie brings us the arch and stylish origin story of Young Sherlock (Mar. 4, Prime), tracking the years before 221b Baker Street. The brainy sleuth is studying at Oxford alongside nemesis Moriarty and trying (unsuccessfully, natch) to keep out of trouble; Colin Firth is their moustachioed academic mentor. In DTF St. Louis (Mar. 1, Crave), Jason Bateman, David Harbour and Linda Cardellini demonstrate that dating apps for desperate middle-agers and bizarre love triangles can be a fatal mix.

U.K. comedy-drama import Frauds (Mar. 20, CBC Gem) is an engaging portrait of the hilarious friendship between con-women Suranne Jones (Scott & Bailey) and Jodie Whittaker (Doctor Who), who reunite to attempt a major art heist. Jennifer Jason Leigh as formidable mother-in-law Victoria is the reason to watch Something Very Bad is Going to Happen (Mar. 26, Netflix), the horror series from Stranger Things creators that’s set in the week leading up to an ill-fated wedding. CBC Gem has the exclusive on BBC series Prisoner 951 (Mar. 27), with Joseph Fiennes and Narges Rashidi dramatizing Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s 2016 abduction and imprisonment by the Iranian regime on charges of espionage – as the Guardian put it: “While this drama is powered by anger, it’s probably best understood as a defiant love story.” Emmy Award-winners Kerry Washington and Elisabeth Moss (in her first post-Handmaid’s Tale project) star and executive produce the domestic thriller Imperfect Women (Mar. 18, AppleTV+), a psychological suspense that examines the secrets hidden in long friendships, and the lengths individuals go to convince themselves they’re good people. Lastly, Norwegian crime fiction superstar Jo Nesbø’s iconic anti-hero Harry Hole is on the trail of a serial killer while battling his own personal demons in Netflix’s whodunit Detective Hole (Mar. 26).