April’s slate of new and returning TV, befitting an era of increasing economic and existential anxiety, looks at some of the defining issues of our time. Economic inequality and the dominant role of social media in our lives are front and center in the month’s new releases.
Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”is now a cinematic universe with Hulu’s spinoff of the hit, six-season dystopian thriller. The series follows a new generation of forced surrogates in an American theocracy called Gilead as they are groomed to be shunted off to the autocracy’s all-male “Commanders.”
Fresh off her star-making turn in the Oscar heavyweight “One Battle After Another,” Chase Infiniti plays Agnes, the daughter of Offred (played by Elisabeth Moss in the original series), who along with other young women is being trained by Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd), one of the few holdovers from the original series. The show will “arrive amid a continued assault on the rights of women, with bodily autonomy in particular remaining a hot topic of conversation,” said The Hollywood Reporter. (April 8 on Hulu)
The critically acclaimed — and frequently disturbing — HBO Max drama returns after more than a four-year hiatus. Several members of the cast became even bigger stars in the interim, including Zendaya (who plays Rue), Jacob Elordi (Nate) and Sydney Sweeney (Cassie).
Showrunner Sam Levinson’s third season will feature a five-year time jump into adulthood for the characters. Rue, hiding out in Mexico, is tracked down by drug dealer Laurie (Martha Kelly) and forced to figure out how to pay off her debts, while Cassie and Nate have gotten married. Based on the trailer, the show “trades in dramatic ambiguity for a sharper, more dangerous vision that leans into old-Hollywood grandeur and dusty American Western iconography,” said Alison Foreman at IndieWire. (April 12 on HBO Max)
‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’
Margo's Got Money Troubles — Official Trailer | Apple TV - YouTube
Based on the bestselling, feel-good 2024 novel by Rufi Thorpe, “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” stars Elle Fanning as the titular Margo, who gets pregnant after an affair with her community college English professor and decides to raise the baby, Bodhi, on her own, much to the chagrin of her mother, Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer). Struggling to pay her bills and hosting her fresh-out-of-rehab ex-wrestler father, Jinx (Nick Offerman), Margo starts an OnlyFans account hoping to pull herself and her family out of poverty. “Its characters are memorable, sure, and their family relationships a bit unconventional,” said Angie Han at The Hollywood Reporter. But the story is “firmly grounded in the real world and all the more interesting for it.” (April 15 on Hulu)
‘Beef’ season 2
BEEF: Season 2 | Official Teaser | Netflix - YouTube
Showrunner Lee Sung Jin’s “Beef” was an enormous critical and commercial hit when it was released on Netflix in 2023. It was originally conceptualized as a limited series, making this star-studded, anthology-style second entry an unexpected gift.
Austin (Charles Melton) and Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) are a young, engaged couple who work at an upscale country club and accidentally interrupt an emotionally bruising fight between Joshua (Oscar Isaac) and his wife, Lindsay (Carey Mulligan), two members of the genteel establishment. “Through favors and coercion, both couples vie for the approval of the elitist club’s Korean billionaire owner, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung),” said Glenn Garner at Deadline. (April 16 on Netflix)
‘Widow’s Bay’
Widow's Bay — Official Sneak Peek | Apple TV - YouTube
If you can suss out exactly what this highly anticipated Apple TV+ series is going to be about, more power to you. All we have to go on so far are media notes and some deliberately vague and creepy trailers. In one trailer, Matthew Rhys (“The Beast in Me”) is a glum-looking single dad who is the mayor of a haunted, struggling New England tourist town and who scrambles out of his house while an air-raid siren blares.
It’s an interesting approach to marketing what is billed as a horror-comedy series created by “Parks and Recreation” writer-producer Katie Dippold. The show “sounds like what you might get if Stephen King wrote an episode of ‘Atlanta,’” said Jake Kleinman at Polygon. That sounds pretty great to us. (April 29 on Apple TV+)
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David Faris is a professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of "It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics." He's a frequent contributor to Newsweek and Slate, and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New Republic and The Nation, among others.
