10 of the best TV shows to watch this November

From an all-star legal drama starring Kim Kardashian, to Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan’s new sci-fi series, and the fifth and final season of Netflix’s Stranger Things.

1. I Love LA

Rachel Sennott, who gained a following as the star of the comic films Shiva Baby and Bottoms (which she co-wrote) is the creator and star of this series about a group of friends who reunite in Los Angeles, whether some of them like it or not. HBO Max’s official description is “An ambitious friend group navigates life and love in LA,” which is about as helpful as saying “Some people got up and ate breakfast”, but we do know that Sennott plays Maia and that Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games) is her boyfriend, Dylan. And as the trailer reveals, Maia is not happy when her old friend Tallulah (Odessa A’zion, who is in the forthcoming Timothée Chalamet film Marty Supreme) turns up. Based on Sennott’s previous work, we can expect that to lead to some sharp and sometimes silly humour. Leighton Meester and Elijah Wood are among the guest stars.

I Love LA premieres 2 November on HBO Max

2. All’s Fair

Kim Kardashian stars in producer Ryan Murphy’s latest series as a divorce lawyer who leaves a male-dominated firm to start her own all-female company. In reality, Kardashian recently completed a law-school alternative course of study. So far so meta. This wouldn’t be a Murphy series without a lot more glamour and melodrama than real life, though, and All’s Fair seems a lot like his Feud franchise, full of backbiting and delicious snark. Murphy has called on an all-star cast, many along with Kardashian (American Horror Story) familiar from his other shows, including Naomi Watts (Feud: Capote vs the Swans) and Sarah Paulson (another American Horror Story). Glenn Close and Niecy Nash-Betts play members of the new firm, and Brooke Shields and Jennifer Jason-Leigh guest star as clients. The characters have soap-opera-ready names like Allura, Liberty, Emerald and Carrington, and the most striking wardrobes and longest nails in the legal profession. Murphy really knows how to work his formula: the show’s trailer has had more than 44 million hits on YouTube in just a few weeks.

All’s Fair premieres 4 November on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK

3. All Her Fault

Sarah Snook, far from her role as the conniving Shiv in Succession, plays Marissa Irvine, the successful owner of a finance company and mother of a five-year-old. She arrives to pick him up from a play date, but she seems to have been given a wrong address, and little Milo is nowhere to be seen. That is the start of this mysterious series, which has enough fault, guilt and suspicion to cover its many characters. Jake Lacy plays Marissa’s husband, Peter, and Abby Elliott (The Bear) and Daniel Monks are his siblings. Dakota Fanning plays the mother who supposedly set up the play date but says she never did, and Jay Ellis is Marissa’s business partner. This is not the kind of show that questions Marissa’s sanity. Instead, episode by episode, a different member of this close-knit circle stands out as suspicious. Michael Peña plays a detective on the case, who in an enticing early flash-forward looks at photographs of the whole group and says, “I honestly didn’t see this coming. These nice people killing each other.”

All Her Fault premieres 6 November on Peacock in the US, and on 7 November on Sky and NOW in the UK

4. Death By Lightning

It’s fair to say that James Garfield is among the least-known US presidents, (I’m American and I couldn’t tell you a thing about him). He is remembered almost entirely for being one of the four to have been assassinated – shot in July 1881, just six months into his term. This historical drama brings Garfield, his assassin and his era back to life, with Michael Shannon as the luckless president and Matthew Macfadyen as his killer, Charles Guiteau, a one-time admirer who felt unappreciated by the candidate he supported. Betty Gilpin plays the first lady and Nick Offerman is Vice President Chester Arthur, who inherited Garfield’s job, and soon joined what might be called The Obscure Presidents Club. The series’ creator, Mike Makowsky, based it on Candice Millard’s 2011 book, Destiny of the Republic. He has said that reading that history “reminded me so much of Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy”, which may be the only time anyone has connected Guiteau and Garfield to Robert De Niro’s obsessed fan who kidnaps Jerry Lewis in that film. The show’s executive producers are David Benioff and DB Weiss, creators of a different series about political vengeance, Game of Thrones.

Death By Lightning premieres 6 November on Netflix internationally

5. Pluribus

Vince Gilligan’s track record alone, as the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, would make his new show one of the season’s most anticipated. But the premise of Pluribus is intriguing in itself, and an added benefit is that Rhea Seehorn, familiar as Kim on Better Call Saul, is the star. Her role and the show are very different from those earlier series. Here a virus takes over the world and makes everyone placid and happy, except, it seems, for Carol (Seehorn), an author of best-selling romance novels who was already acerbic enough without being surrounded by annoyingly cheerful faces. There is much more to the story. Plot twists and revelations come fast, as Gilligan masterfully blends sci-fi and social commentary. If you’re looking for clues, the title is Latin, commonly used in the phrase E Pluribus Unum, Out of Many One. Gilligan has hinted that he may not have left his previous shows behind entirely, though. Like them, Pluribus is set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and fans “might come upon an Easter egg or two,” he has said.

Pluribus premieres 7 November on Apple TV internationally

6. The Beast in Me

This thriller stands out for its two exceptional lead actors. Claire Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, an author grieving the death of her small son, and Matthew Rhys is Nile Jarvis, her new next-door neighbour, who happens to be notorious as a former suspect in the disappearance of his long-gone wife. Aggie becomes obsessed with his story and decides that writing a book about the case will help her get over her writer’s block. Nile agrees to cooperate, seeing it as a way to reclaim his reputation. Not so fast. No one around either of them thinks that book is a great idea, and soon the saga includes blood, screams and the FBI. Brittany Snow plays Nile’s current, still-present wife, Jonathan Banks is his father and Natalie Morales is Aggie’s ex-wife. Nile has a slightly deranged look in his eyes but then so does Aggie, in a series that teases just who is more monstrous here.

The Beast in Me premieres 13 November on Netflix internationally

7. Last Samurai Standing

Netflix is positioning this Japanese action series as part Shōgun, part Squid Game, for understandable reasons. A period piece, it is set in Japan 1878, the end of the samurai era, and has the visual detail and action of Shōgun. The series’ scope is also enormous, with more than 1,000 members of the cast and crew. And like the Korean hit Squid Game, the plot involves a survival contest. It begins when 292 leftover samurai gather in a temple in Kyoto, where each player is given a wooden token. The point is to steal their rivals’ tokens, however lethal the method. Whoever makes it to Tokyo with the most tokens wins a fortune and – no small prize – stays alive. The show’s main character is an undefeated samurai named Shujiro, motivated to play because he needs the money for his sick wife and child. But instead of Squid Games’ Red Light Green Light, this is a contest of horses and swordplay.

Last Samurai Standing premieres 13 November on Netflix internationally

8. Malice

If a charming, mysterious nanny shows up at an opportune moment, and it isn’t Mary Poppins, maybe be a little bit suspicious. That’s one lesson from this suspense drama with Jack Whitehall as Adam, hired to care for the three children of a wealthy couple, Jamie and Nat Tanner, played by David Duchovny and Carice van Houten. Whitehall is known for comedy, in series such as Bad Education and Fresh Meat, and for the travelogue series Travels with My Father. Here he is at the centre of a revenge drama, as Adam wheedles his way into the lives of the Tanner family. It’s no coincidence that he has targeted them, and the show reels viewers in with the mystery of what he wants to avenge. The show was shot in London and in Greece, the better to play up the Tanners’ sunny, luxurious, soon-to-be-disrupted lives.

Malice premieres 14 November on Prime Video

9. The American Revolution

Next year will mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the US Declaration of Independence, and ahead of that landmark Ken Burns takes what promises to be a fresh, bracing look at the US fight for independence and the founding of the country. Beyond the conventional wisdom and familiar images of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers, this history has a broader perspective as it also considers the roles of black and indigenous people, of women, and of the loyalists who resisted splitting from Britain. Resisting any simplistic glorified myths, Burns has said he and his co-directors, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, have created a series they hope will foster “a much more dynamic conversation, one that is not suffused with nostalgia, but something that has a little bit more complexity”. The style is typically Burns’, though, which means there are plenty of comments from historians and voiceovers reading from period letters and documents. Those voices include Paul Giamatti reading the words of John Adams (whom he memorably played in a HBO series). The series, which argues that the American Revolution was world-changing in the way it inspired other democracies, runs for 12 hours. From Burns we would expect nothing shorter.

The American Revolution premieres 16 November on PBS in the US

10. Stranger Things

It has been more than three years since the last episode of the beloved Stranger Things appeared, but the plot has only advanced a year, to 1987, as the fifth and final season begins. Almost all of the usual cast is here, including Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven, along with Finn Wolfhard, Sadie Sink, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, David Harbour and Winona Ryder. (Joseph Quinn, as the totally dead and buried Eddie Munson, is among the missing.) And much of the usual mayhem occurs, including Eleven screaming, things blowing up and the military descending on Hawkins, Indiana. The story heads toward its conclusion with those familiar characters determined to find the villainous Vecna and prevent him from destroying the world. Netflix is taking its time parcelling out these last episodes. Four will appear in November, another three on Christmas Day and the absolute last episode on New Year’s Eve. Don’t worry. The stage show prequel, Stranger Things: First Shadow, goes on, along with endless memes and merch.

Stranger Things season five premieres 26 November on Netflix