Halloween’s in the rear-view mirror, but for all the relentless advance of the forces of Kris Kringle, the oversaturation of anything Christmassy at least hasn’t infected broadcast media yet, and the Christmas special or Santa movie is still just about self-contained in December. Instead, this month has lively bits of history, tragic bits of history, and one very unexpected appearance from Sylvester ‘Adrian!’ Stallone.
Here are the biggest new TV shows of November 2022.
What’s New On TV In November 2022
1. Blockbuster | November 3rd, 2022
Pretty much the definition of a period piece, this is a workplace sitcom set in the last Blockbuster ever. Just as there was at one time a last dodo, there really was a last Blockbuster, a curious story which has already been turned into a documentary and has now mutated into comedy fodder at the hands of Vanessa Ramos, who’s written for Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Superstore, two of the more robust workplace comedies of modern times.
Being a Netflix production, this does feel a little like twisting the knife, the video rental company-turned-streaming giant exulting in the slow death of a one-time rival. What direct-to-brain media syndicate will one day tell the story of Netflix finally turning the gun on itself, and adapt it into a heartwarming sitcom? Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
2. Dangerous Liaisons | November 6th, 2022
You know House Of The Dragon? You know how there’s an endless appetite for seeing nobles from ren-faire times being amusingly awful and screwing each other, yeah? Dangerous Liaisons is like that, but based a bit less loosely on fact. Knowing its audience, it’s actually gone and got two Game Of Thrones alums in the cast, Carice van Houten and Michael McElhatton.
(And with House Of The Dragon fans looking down a two-year wait for the next season, they’ll be eager for something to fill the void.)
The plot of the original French novel boils down to two people so rich they can no longer tell right from wrong who, in this pre-cocaine era, fill their days with writing each other thinly veiled bragathons about all the decadent and depraved nonsense they’ve gotten up to. In particular, scheming to screw over people who really don’t deserve it.
Dangerous Liaisons has gone down in history as a bit of a satire of the sheer excesses of prerevolutionary France. But while it’s not hard to see it that way, it was first published before the revolution, and by all accounts became very popular among the aristocrats it was supposedly sending up – which suggests, if nothing else, that this hunger for stories of nobles behaving badly is a universal one.
3. The English | November 11th, 2022
Despite the title, this is set in the old West, and not John Wayne’s chummy old West either, but rather the merciless old West of Cormac Mcarthy. Emily Blunt plays a posho who goes over to Wyoming to try and avenge her son’s death, with the help of her native guide Chaske Spencer, only to stumble into a whole string of unsolved murders.
Blunt isn’t an Englishwoman alone on the frontier, either – the cast also features Rafe Spall, Toby Jones, and (while not English, at least from the British Isles) Ciarán Hinds. All of whom you can kind of picture being absolute prize baddies while wearing a stetson and bolo tie.
4. Rogue Heroes | November 13th, 2022
Steven Knight, he of creating Peaky Blinders fame, has ago at another of the more testosterone-laden parts of the 20th century: the formation of the SAS. Oh, sure, the Russians have the Spetznaz and the Americans have SEAL Team Six, and the Green Berets, and Delta Force, and probably some other guys too, but the SAS have a certain cachet that can’t be replicated.
The cast includes Connor Swindells, Jack O’Connell, Sofia Boutella, and Alfie Allen – Knight appears, so far at least, to have resisted the urge to make this a spiritual sequel to Peaky Blinders by reusing any of the tough, tough guys from that show’s cast.
5. Tulsa King | November 13th, 2022
Sylvester Stallone, in a TV role? Stranger things have happened, although to be honest right now I’m drawing a blank. It’s not the veiled insult it might once have been, with the cinema’s endless sequels now trying to emulate TV if anything, but it still seems like the crossing of a great big media Rubicon. Still, Stallone’s taking it seriously, with the trailer showing nearly all the words out of his mouth are fully comprehensible.
Stallone plays a New York mafioso who, coming out of a long stretch in prison, gets bundled off to Oklahoma to get into mischief there. The showrunner is Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter, who’s presumably been champing at the bit to get back in action in a similar way.
Sending a living, breathing Italian-American stereotype into wildly unfamiliar territory was the same trick the criminally little-known Lilyhammer pulled with Steven Van Zandt, and that show managed to use this cross-cultural friction with a real finesse. Admittedly Okies and the new west are very different beasts to Scandinavians with their cardigans, but still, here’s hoping Stallone can make it work too.
READ MORE: 15 Underrated Anime You Need To Watch
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