Rooster, DTF St. Louis on HBO Max highlight the best new shows coming to stream in March

It’s called the Netflix Megaphone. It occurs when streaming’s most popular platform licenses a show that’s previously debuted elsewhere and successfully introduces it to their audience. The right series can get a huge second wind, especially if Netflix is tapping into a younger generation previously unaware of the title. It’s the digital-age rerun.

It happened with Suits in 2023, and now the Los Angeles crime drama The Rookie has found a whole new audience on Netflix. The 2010s science-fiction crime drama Person of Interest will also likely make converts when it appears on March 1.

In terms of new shows debuting, March is an exciting month. The number of new releases is growing as the northern hemisphere summer fades, and I have big wraps for the likes of HBO Max’s black comedy DTF St Louis and ABC iview’s British crime drama Frauds. Plus Amazon Prime’s Deadloch, a wildly unique Australian crime-comedy, is thankfully back for a second season.

Netflix

My top Netflix recommendation is Vladimir (March 5).

Rachel Weisz is making the most of her opportunities in streaming. The British actress played unhinged twins in Amazon Prime Video’s jaw-dropping Dead Ringers, and now The Favourite star headlines this delicious black comedy about an unnamed 50-something English professor who feels like she’s become invisible to her husband (John Slattery, Mad Men), colleagues, and students. When a young author, Vladimir Vladinski (Leo Woodall, The White Lotus), joins the faculty, she becomes obsessed with him. Author Julia May Jonas has adapted her acclaimed 2022 novel of the same name, with Weisz flitting between reality and fantasy as she directly addresses the audience. This one goes places.

Also on Netflix: Ol’ blue eyes is back. Now an Academy Award winner for Oppenheimer, Irish actor Cillian Murphy reclaims his signature television role. Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (March 20) is the feature film continuation of a show that ran for six bloody seasons. Creator Steven Knight has written the script, which brings the historic crime drama into 1940 and World War II, an event major enough to bring Murphy’s once ruthless Tommy Shelby out of his self-imposed exile. Joining Murphy are Rebecca Ferguson (Dune), Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin), and Stephen Graham (Adolescence).

February highlights: The new season of Regency romance epic Bridgerton delivered, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast was a class Irish comedy, Take That offered a new perspective on the boy band, and the subject had full control in the Being Gordon Ramsay documentary.

HBO Max

My top HBO Max recommendation is Rooster (March 9).

Steve Carell has wisely never tried to duplicate his buffoonish role as Michael Scott in The Office, but that doesn’t mean he can’t nail a great comedy. In this droll farce he plays Greg Russo, a successful crime novelist who comes to the American university campus where his academic daughter, Katy (Charly Clive, Pure), is enduring a very public divorce, and never leaves. There’s a bittersweet emotional current alongside the quips and embarrassment, which makes sense given that the show was created by Bill Lawrence (Ted Lasso) and Matt Tarses (Bad Monkey). Note: Scrubs veteran John C. McGinley, as the university’s president, walks off with every scene he’s in.

Also on HBO Max: DTF St Louis (March 2) has an outrageously good cast for a black comedy – Jason Bateman (Black Rabbit, Ozark), Linda Cardellini (Dead to Me), and David Harbour (Stranger Things). It starts with the suspicious death of Floyd (Harbour), who delivers sign language translation on-air alongside his best friend, television weatherman Clark (Bateman), and becomes complicated with the addition of Floyd’s wife, Carol (Cardellini). Creator Steven Conrad has previously made some series that lean into the unlikely and absurd, such as Amazon Prime Video’s Patriot, but this limited series might be his most accessible, and also saddest, show. It gets to where you might expect, but the route is not conventional.

February highlights: A comedy legend revealed a rich life in Mel Brooks: The 99-Yar-Old-Man!

Amazon Prime Video

My top Amazon Prime recommendation is Scarpetta (March 11).

Let’s tape off the crime scene. Since debuting in 1990, Patricia Cornwell’s novels about dedicated American medical examiner Dr Kay Scarpetta have been one of crime fiction’s most successful franchises. With about 120 million books sold, the character was destined for streaming, and it’s Nicole Kidman (Big Little Lies, The Perfect Couple) who now takes on the role. Creator Elizabeth Sarnoff (Lost) has crafted a then-and-now plot, with a new series of murders connecting Scarpetta to a case from when she was starting out (Rosy McEwen plays the younger Kay). There are cop roles for Simon Baker (The Mentalist) and Bobby Cannavale (Homecoming), but Scarpetta’s ultimate foil is her older sister, Dorothy (Jamie Lee Curtis, The Bear).

Also on Amazon Prime Video: Moving from a rural Tasmanian arts festival to the croc-infested Northern Territory, Deadloch (March 20) returns for a second season. The blackly comic murder-mystery from Get Krack!n firebrands Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney was one of 2023’s best shows, introducing the full expletive-laden range of the Australian vernacular to a global audience. Mismatched police investigators Dulcie Collins (Kate Box, Wentworth) and Eddie Redcliffe (Madeleine Sami, The Breaker Upperers) now have two new cases to crack, which opens them up to the full spectrum of Top End types. Exhibit A: Luke Hemsworth (Westworld) as an outrageous animal park operator.

February highlights: How does a couple go from meet cute to murder investigation in eight weeks? Erotic thriller 56 Days had the answer.

Stan*

My top Stan recommendation is Gone (March 8).

The prolific British creator George Kay (Lupin, Hijack) returns with a six-part psychological thriller about the tarnished legacy of elite institutions. When a woman suddenly disappears, suspicion turns to her husband, Michael Polly (David Morrissey, Sherwood), who is the respected principal of a prestigious Bristol private school. It’s up to dogged police detective Annie Cassidy (Eve Myles, The Hack) to crack the case, setting up a cat-and-mouse game between the pair. The leads make for prime adversaries, especially in the hands of Kay, who has been known to craft some almighty cliffhangers.

Also on Stan: Arrow star Stephen Amell headlines The Borderline (March 13), a Canadian crime thriller set in a small Ontario town whose proximity to the US border makes it an ideal way-station for illegal shipments south. With shades of Ozark, the show follows the recriminations when a dead body is dumped and a cocaine shipment falls into inexperienced hands. Local police officer Henry Roland (Amell) is soon compromised, as his best friend Hamza Haq (Tommy Hawley, Transplant) is already in too deep. Exerting pressure and looking impeccable while tasking thugs? Minnie Driver (Run Away) as the narcotics despatcher looking to retrieve her product.

February highlights: Now was the right time for a new adaptation of The Lord of the Flies.

Apple TV

My top Apple TV recommendation is Imperfect Women (March 18).

It’s a juicy pitch: when one of a trio of female best friends dies under suspicious circumstances, grief gives way to doubt for the other two, who discover she had a secret life that casts doubt on their own foundations. Making this heated mystery matter is creator Annie Weisman, whose last Apple TV series was the jagged Rose Byrne comedy Physical, plus stars Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men), Kerry Washington (Scandal), and – in the illuminating flashbacks involving her character – Kate Mara (House of Cards). Playing husbands who may have secrets of their own are Corey Stoll (Billions) and Joel Kinnaman (For All Mankind).

February highlights: Stars Anna Sawai and Kurt Russell, plus the city-crushing creatures, return for season two of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

Binge

My top Binge recommendation is The Other Bennet Sister (March 16).

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is one of the most loved books in the English language, a much-adapted novel about the fraught 19th-century romance between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy. But that story’s perspective is very different in this BBC adaptation of Janice Hadlow’s 2020 novel of the same name, where Elizabeth’s sister Mary (Ella Bruccoleri, Call the Midwife) is the one watching the back and forth, before escaping for her own romantic adventure. Speculative fiction is usually the realm of genre works, not Jane Austen, but this Regency-era sidestep hopes to offer a fresh take. A big plus is Richard E. Grant (The Franchise) as the Bennet family patriarch.

Also on Binge: Few current series have had a longer run and generated more dedicated fans than Outlander (March 7). The historical fantasy is about a World War II nurse, Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe), who is sent back in time to the violent Scottish Highlands of 1743 and the arms of dashing warrior Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan). The show debuted in 2014, and it has built, through sometimes torrid adaptations of Diana Gabaldon’s series of novels, to this eighth and final season. The setting has moved from Scotland to France and now Britain’s American colonies, as the Revolutionary War looms. It’s not a spoiler to note Heughan will once again be going shirtless.

February highlights: With taut performances from Kelly Reilly and Rafe Spall, Under Salt Marsh was an exceptional British crime drama, plus Keke Palmer delivered the comic edge to lost-in-the-suburbs mystery The Burbs.

Disney+

My top Disney+ recommendation is Daredevil: Born Again (March 25).

After a rough few years with television series that too often felt like feature film homework, Marvel went back to the future in 2025 and revived its 2010s superhero series, Daredevil. Charlie Cox slipped right back into the title role of Matt Murdock, blind Hell’s Kitchen lawyer by day, masked vigilante by night. The fight choreography remained a selling point: extended and kinetic. The second season of Daredevil: Born Again finds Daredevil being hunted by his nemesis, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio, Full Metal Jacket), who is now New York’s mayor and targeting vigilantes. Other Marvel characters getting in on the action include Jon Bernthal’s Punisher and – yes! – Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones.

Also on Disney+: For many years South African naturalist Dr Steve Boyes has been attempting to prove his theory that a hitherto unknown species of African elephant lives in the remote wilds of Angola’s Highlands. It is a difficult, quixotic task, which make Boyes the perfect documentary subject for Werner Herzog. In Ghost Elephants (March 8) the iconic German filmmaker, who has spent 60 years charting the strange, sometimes self-destructive extremes, that obsession can drive people to, is back on familiar ground, complete with his signature narration.

February highlights: A Scrubs revival, the real-life romance anthology Love Story got a 1990s start with John F. Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette, the new season of conspiracy thriller Paradise increased the scope, and Wonder Man had some fun with Marvel’s superhero legacy.

ABC iview

My top ABC iview recommendation is Frauds (March 15).

This British crime thriller has quite the double act, with Suranne Jones (Vigil) and Jodie Whittaker (Doctor Who) starring as former best friends with a shared criminal past. When the former’s Roberta “Bert” Mancini is released after 10 years of stir, she reunites with the latter’s Martha “Sam” Samuels, bringing with her the plans for a new heist she meticulously planned while inside. What the two want, or perhaps need, from each other underpins this six-part story, which begins in Spain, where Sam has relocated and gone clean. Lots of schemes here, not all of them criminal.

February highlights: All canine puns welcome as the delightful comedy Dog Park debuted.

SBS On Demand

My top SBS On Demand recommendation is Homebodies (March 28).

SBS continues to introduce young creators and break new ground with its Digital Originals strand, which delivers a complete contemporary story in half a dozen 10- to 15-minute episodes. The latest offering is a 21st-century ghost narrative, as trans man Darcy (Luke Wiltshire) reluctantly returns to his family home in Toowoomba to care for his estranged mother, Nora (Claudia Karvan, Bump). What he discovers is an unexpected lodger: the spirit of his pre-transition self, which is filled with conflicting emotions and prone to overloading the house’s electrics. Creator AP Pobjoy is sifting questions of identity and family through familiar horror tropes, and then remixing them.

February highlights: A Spy Among Friends was a compelling historic spy drama with a masterful Guy Pearce performance, while Ireland’s fractious history made the secret romance in 1970s drama Trespasses haunting and risky.

Other streamers

My top recommendation for the other streaming services is Paramount+’s The Madison (March 14).

While every episode was written by Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan and the two shows share a setting of rural Montana, this six-part drama starring Michelle Pfeiffer (The First Lady) and Kurt Russell (Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) is a stand-alone series. Instead of fighting to hold sway over interlopers, the focus is emotional renewal. The leads play Stacey and Preston Clyburn, who relocate with their family to Montana from New York City after they all suffer a devastating loss. The gorgeous landscape, fly-fishing, country grit and romantic hope all appear to play a part in their heartfelt recovery. Is Taylor Sheridan trying to make us cry?

In February, we actually lost two giants of American cinema on consecutive days: actor Robert Duvall, aged 95, and documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, aged 96. Eschewing narration for a strictly observational style, Wiseman was a master of the form, often capturing individuals at odds with the systems they operated in. Mubi’s Frederick Wiseman’s America (March 20) is a collection that pays tribute to Wiseman’s landmark body of work, featuring acclaimed documentaries such as 1968’s High School, 1991’s Aspen, and 2015’s In Jackson Heights.

February highlights: Rebecca Gibney took over hosting duty on 10 Play’s Millionaire Hot Seat.

* Stan is owned by Nine, the owner of this masthead.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.