5 Biggest New TV Shows Of March 2022

Pirates are fun!

The Last Days Of Ptolemy Grey
The Last Days Of Ptolemy Grey

At the risk of repetition, aren’t current events dreadful? And the worst part is, thanks to lazy hack screenwriters, it’s even a job to escape them in the realm of fiction. Here’s a show about a global pandemic – how original. Here’s a show about a certain Eastern European country being invaded by a certain neighbouring Russian country – ooh, where’d they get that idea? Anyway, fortunately, there are still TV shows which aren’t drawing shamelessly upon grimy old reality, and March will be throwing at least these five in the mix. Here are the biggest new shows of March 2022.

 

What’s New On TV In March 2022

1. Our Flag Means Death | March 3rd

If I were to describe this as ‘What We Do In The Shadows, but with pirates’, that would probably be an accurate summation, and enough teeing-up for most of you. It’d be a bit strong to call Taika Waititi a man who can do no wrong, but when he’s actually behind the wheel he has a track record of making things funnier than they have any right to be.

Based very, very, very loosely on the true story of Stede Bonnet a landowner who sacked it all off to become a pirate, it has Rhys Darby – previously of Flight Of The Conchords – as Bonnet, and Waititi himself as Blackbeard.

Come to that, it seems like a lot of Waititi’s actual acting credits are simply reveling in the impish joy of playing all-time bad guys, be that a literal vampire, Adolf Hitler, or now Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach, the pirate’s pirate. Hard to tell where he can possibly go next, isn’t it? Stalin? Chairman Mao? The devil himself?

 

2. The Tourist | March 3rd

The big joke about Australia has always been – why even go there? Every bit of wildlife is either unbelievably poisonous or capable of ripping your head off, and the interior is all one big game of ‘how many shades can we add to the temperature spectrum?’ So to go there and have someone else try to kill you just seems unnecessarily cruel.

Here, we have exactly that happening to Jamie Dornan, out there on what already sounds like the worst holiday possible. He’s lost his memory and is out in the middle of nowhere, a situation which wouldn’t exactly be nice even if everyone around you was being as friendly and understanding as they possibly could.

 

3. The Boys Presents: Diabolical | March 4th

Of the various self-aware superhero deconstructions all desperately trying not to actually say the word ‘Watchmen’, The Boys is by far the most obvious choice for a cartoon adaptation, and I’m not just saying that because of Karl Urban’s accent. It’s violent even by the high standards of superhero fiction, but despite – because of? – the sheer amount of gore and splatteriness it can’t help but all feel a bit Tom-and-Jerry.

Attached as writers are a whole menagerie of well-known names – Ilana Glazer, Justin Roiland, Awkwafina, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Garth Ennis, Andy Samberg, and Aisha Tyler, several of whom have voice roles as well. None of you should be at all surprised to see Roiland and Rogen in here, as this sort of thing is basically catnip to them.

This is the now-relatively common sort of animated adaptation that takes the concept of the anthology and runs with it. Each episode’s drawn in a different style, and the only canon present will likely be aimed towards a crowd of innocent civilians.

 

4. The Last Days Of Ptolemy Grey | March 11th

Aging’s a hell of a thing, and it’ll come to us all – if we’re lucky – but it doesn’t seem to quite gel with the picture of Samuel L. Jackson I have in my mind. Even after playing white-haired Uncle Tom in Django Unchained it somehow seems implausible, and my mind keeps going back to him bellowing out verses from Ezekiel before shooting some poor sucker repeatedly in the face.

Still, there’s playing one’s age, and then there’s playing someone who’s slowly succumbing to dementia and has been abandoned by their family. Jackson’s geriatric ends up being taken care of by a teenager (played in grand old Hollywood tradition by Dominique Fishback, a woman of 30), and starts to recover some of his memories – but they won’t necessarily like what they find.

And here we’ve come full circle. For the average cinema-goer, it is impossible to think that Jackson won’t be looking back on all the times he told a future victim that they would know that his name is the Lord when he laid his vengeance on them. Even his role as an IT technician in Jurassic Park would be quite something to remember.

 

5. Halo | March 24th

No, really? Surely this is just a bit of misreportage? A studio somewhere has bought an option for the franchise, and the press corps have all got a bit overexcited and run off to loudly tell anyone who’ll listen that there’s going to be a Halo TV show…but no, it’s all true, after a decade of development hell it’s really happening.

But like Duke Nukem Forever before it, you wonder whether the Halo TV show hasn’t been percolating so long that nobody’s really that interested any more. And adaptations don’t have the best track record these days, with Game Of Thrones having decidedly poisoned the well. Still, a first-person-shooter – where the story is increasingly elaborate excuses for shooting yet more people – is perhaps better material for an adaptation, with so much less plot to ruin.

Jen Taylor reprises her game role as scantily clad AI Cortana, while Pablo Schreiber fills the armoured boots of beloved super soldier Master Chief. And filling the relatively daintier shoes of the showrunner is (after several other people have already been and gone through this office) Steven Kane – although he won’t be returning for the already-commissioned second run, which is a mixed signal if ever I heard one. The network are confident it’ll do well, the man who actually made it isn’t so sure.

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