Can we call November’s big five entries majority-cartoon? Not if we’re being, ugh, technically accurate, it’s a ratio of three to two, but one of those three is the television debut of Godzilla and his monstrous CGI friends. The live-action parts of that are, for all intents and purposes, a sideshow.
If you’re trying to fill up your watchlist over the coming month, here are the biggest new TV shows of November 2023.
New TV In November 2023
1. Blue Eye Samurai | November 3rd, 2023
Violent adult-cartoon samurai fun set in everyone’s favourite period of Japan, the Edo period. It’s probably best not to go into too much detail here about what kind of coupling would result in a blue-eyed samurai, and the likely power dynamics involved, but needless to say they are now out for violent revenge.
The inclusion of a Japanese-language cover of Metallica’s ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ in the trailer is, really, the clearest statement of what the show’s going for. And I’m not talking about a devotional meditation on the nature of death, I’m talking about unapologetic blood-pumping action. The cast includes Maya Erskine, Masi Oka, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Kenneth Branagh, Stephanie Hsu, Brenda Song, and George Takei.
2. The Curse | November 12th, 2023
Nathan Fielder plays against type in a scripted show, rather than abusing TV companies’ out-of-control budgets to reshape reality for maximum yuks. You might say it’s like casting Sacha-Baron Cohen in a straight drama, except that that’s literally been done, and turned out to work incredibly well.
This isn’t a surrender to dry, grey reality though. Among the stresses Fielder and Emma Stone’s house-flipping teevee couple have to deal with is a curse, brought on as a result of Fielder’s trademark shaky social graces. They’re also trying to conceive a child, which suggests scenes that would beg the question of whether Fielder had power of veto over his on-screen opposite.
What The Curse will boil down to is its ability to play to its obvious strengths, namely Fielder’s uncanny ability to create absolutely excruciating situations. The more like an actual house-flipping show it is, the worse it’ll be. If, on the other hand, the in-show show is taken off air for libel and some extremely cancellable moments, it’ll be a triumph.
3. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off | November 17th, 2023
The 2010 Scott Pilgrim film came to land on the awkward territory of the exact point that mainstream audiences got sick of Michael Cera (which is why the poster had him awkwardly concealing his face). But it’s been a long time since that ground zero of anti-Ceraism, and to have the man attempting to play a teenager will be no more or less convincing than it was then – particularly as this one’s an anime.
Based on the trailer, this does seem to be retreading the same broad story as the film (and indeed comic), but this presumably doesn’t mean a shot-for-shot remake, especially as they’re no longer lumbered with the limits of live-action. Along with Cera, this also sees Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick, Chris Evans, Jason Schwartzman, Alison Pill, Brie Larson returning from the film to provide their voices.
4. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters | November 17th, 2023
A TV spinoff of what is apparently now called the ‘monsterverse’, Godzilla manages to squeeze his way onto the small screen. With a timeline split between the 1950s and the present, this sees Kurt Russell – voted most likely to appear in something with a title like ‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ and his real-life son Wyatt Russell playing two eras of the same character.
The issue with the genre of big rubbery monsters slugging it out over an urban centre is that, perhaps by definition, the main draw of the rubbery monsters always ends up at something of a disconnect from the actual names on the credits (in this case, the two Russells). Godzilla breathing lasers is fine, of course it is, but blowing Kurt Russell up to a hundred times his size to fistfight the beast? That would just be silly.
5. The Artful Dodger | November 5th, 2023
The eternally youthful Thomas Brodie-Sangster stars as Jack ‘The Artful Dodger’ Dawkins in a sequel to Dickens’s Oliver Twist. After being transported to Australia for crimes he absolutely did commit, the Dodger’s set himself up as a surgeon rather than a thief, but how long can he stay on the straight and narrow? In all likelihood, not very long at all.
The cast also includes Maia Mitchell, Damon Herriman, Tim Minchin, and most excitingly for my money, David Thewlis as a Faginlike figure. Thewlis has a singular gift for playing grimy criminal grotesques, the third season of Fargo was handily carried by his bulimic criminal mastermind – and with Brodie-Sangster simply too elfin to sell himself as a genuinely nasty type it looks as if Thewlis will get some heavy lifting here too.
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