Once Halloween is past and November has come, there’s basically no defences left between you and the ceaseless, unrelenting march of Christmas. On television this manifests in the holiday special, the natural convergence point between Christmas and Thanksgiving. For our American audiences I should explain that on this side of the Atlantic we get terribly snooty about Thanksgiving, until we think about it for five seconds and go ‘wait a tick, they’re basically getting a dry run at Christmas’. Here are the biggest new TV shows of November 2021.
What’s New On TV In November 2021
1. Hellbound | November 19th
Starting on the words ‘you will die in five days’, horror aficionados might just think ‘oh, the girl from The Ring’s raised her game a bit’. And admittedly, everyone in The Ring was quick enough to take that seriously, but when it’s actually coming from God, it ratchets it all up a notch. Though the Almighty giving you this warning by text seems to puncture the grandeur a bit.
At the same time, there’s a new cult on the block actually called the ‘New Truth Church’ – a name for group confession ceremonies and poisoned squash if ever I’ve heard one – which we don’t necessarily know is related to these heaven-sent threats. But from the outside, without having to follow due process, it all seems do obvious, doesn’t it?
The trailer for Hellbound seems genuinely quite tense and atmospheric, until some huge rubbery men show up to break a plate-glass window. Director Yeon Sang-Ho is primarily a horror guy though (he’s best known for the claustrophobic Train To Busan), so freed from the constraint of trailer-style highlight reels and incongruous booming sounds, we can probably expect a better wielding of tone and tension.
2. Cowboy Bebop | November 19th
Cowboy Bebop is a big fish even within the anime medium, self-evidently big enough to now be getting a live-action remake. Yet for all its built-in audience, for all the traits that were bound to be a lot simpler to do in drawn form (kung fu, spaceships), more than anything I get the impression that the eternally bitter Firefly fans will be very happy about this one. After all, spacefaring bounty hunters? Squint a little and it’s basically an unofficial sequel.
Despite having ‘Cowboy’ in the name, Cowboy Bebop has always been more jazz-influenced than the distinctly country and western Firefly – or indeed The Mandalorian, that other A-list show about spacefaring bounty hunters. Still, if you’re doing a show about roguish types coming into town and sorting everything out, it’s nigh-impossible to completely escape certain spaghetti western vibes. The main gang are here played by John Cho, Mustafa Shakir, and Daniella Pineda.
3. The Wheel Of Time | November 19th
It’s been two years since Game Of Thrones ended and TV viewers everywhere got badly burnt. Can they possibly be ready to love again? This is the question Amazon Prime is posing in adapting the 14-book Wheel Of Time series, another brick-thick tale of swords, sorcery, and chosen ones.
Hilariously, Rosamund Pike’s secret mystic order have narrowed down the chosen one to one of the five main characters, suggesting a weird group tryout dynamic. Watch out for them leaving their home, getting advice from some wise old person or thing, facing a series of challenges, and other plot beats you may remember from Joseph Campbell’s outline of the hero’s journey, or ‘monomyth’.
Predictably, Amazon are putting a lot of eggs in this particular basket, with filming on the second season already underway. And this is of course coming out in advance of their ludicrously expensive Lord Of The Rings adaptation, another swipe at the now-poisoned well of the high fantasy genre. Is this simply a matter of Jeff Bezos wanting to see TV adaptations of his favourites and not really caring what anyone else thinks of that?
4. Robin Robin | November 24th
This is perhaps a tenuous entry, since it’s a one-off special rather than a full show, but Aardman coming out with something new is always good news. And they’ve always been dab hands with funny animals, from in-house megastar Gromit to the Creature Comforts shorts, which managed to inject a bit of charm into adverts for an energy company.
Although it’s coming out just before Thanksgiving, it’s clearly a Christmas show, with the tree and everything – basically the sweet spot the phrase ‘holiday special’ was made for. Gentle stuff about family and belonging, musical numbers, some mild kiddy-friendly peril, you know the drill.
The cast includes Amira Macey-Michael, Bronte Carmichael, Richard E. Grant and Gillian Anderson. Because off the back of Wallace and Gromit alone, Aardman have the clout to get basically anyone they want, as it should be. They got in Mel Gibson for Chicken Run, in the days when that really meant something.
5. True Story | November 24th
Despite the name, this isn’t a – well, you know.
They’ve brought in Kevin Hart to play a famous comedian – that is, himself – which might seem a bit indulgent on the face of it, but it’s dealing with the timely theme of a celebrity doing something horrible and it blowing up in their face in a massive and public way. Plenty of shows have done very well out of letting us live vicariously through someone rich and successful, plenty more have gotten us to sympathise with people who do bad things, and True Story looks to have both.
The trailer makes it quite clear that it is something very bad, criminally bad even, with the police coming knocking on Hart’s door – but, only being a trailer, isn’t about to give away just what exactly he’s done. It’s hard to think any show would seriously attempt to gin up sympathy for a #MeTooer, but of course audiences have been embracing unrepentant murderers ever since Tony Soprano, so there’s still a good-sized range of misdeeds they’ve got to work with.
READ MORE: Biggest New Games Of November 2020 – It’s Next-Gen Time
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