The Best TV to Watch This April

Is it just us, or is the question of what to watch on telly more confusing than ever? The proliferation of streamers may have led to an upsurge in quality product being pushed on viewers in recent years, but unless your pockets are deep, you’ll need to be picky about which ones you’re prepared to part with your money for. With that in mind, what’s looking good in April? Here’s our rundown of the options.

Slow Horses (Apple TV, April 1) stars Gary Oldman as the anti-George Smiley, a foul-mouthed, garrulous spook lording it over his team at Slough House, a kind of knackers’ yard for disgraced MI5 agents. If it’s cerebral spycraft you’re after, the ‘action-packed’ opener is more Jed Mercurio than John Le Carré, though parts of the show’s first episode play like a workplace comedy a la The Office, which bodes rather more promisingly. And Oldman has fun berating his juniors with lines as salty as: “Bringing you up to speed is like trying to explain Norway to a dog.”

Iain Glen is best known for his role in Game of Thrones as Khaleesi’s right-hand man, aka Ser Jorah Mormont of House Friendzone. Now he’s back as a serial killer in The Cane Field Killings (Channel 4, April 10), plying his grisly trade in the runup to South Africa’s first post-apartheid elections. Skip to the present day, and one-that-got-away Reyka (Kim Engelbrecht) has become – quelle surprise – a policewoman, who must confront her former abductor and would-be murderer in order to solve … oh, you get the general gist. Think The Silence of the Lambs, but grasping at social relevancy.

Glow may sadly be no more, but writers Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch are back to turn the screws on the patriarchy with Roar (Apple TV, April 15), an anthology series based on Cecelia Ahern’s short story collection, boasting star turns from Nicole Kidman, Issa Rae and Glow’s own Betty Gilpin and Alison Brie. We maybe preferred the more overtly comic shadings of Glow, where Flahive and Mensch’s insights were more lightly worn, but there’s something for everyone in this magic-realist series of fables – think an intersectional feminist Black Mirror, if you must.

Did Russian Doll (Netflix, April 20) really need a second series? Well, yes, when you consider its real subject – forgetting all the Groundhog Day bullshit – is Natasha Lyonne in all her resplendent Natasha Lyonne-ness. She is quite simply a whole mood as hot mess Nadia, a software engineer in her late thirties who shrugs her way through a series of glitches in the space-time continuum with consummate New York-Jewish swagger (“When the universe fucks you, let it”). So, what’s the plot this time round? Well, it’s something to do with a subway that takes Nadia back through time to the early 80s, where she mysteriously morphs into her pregnant mum (Chloë Sevigny). All of which is just a pretext for Lyonne to lay such sweet-talking nuggets of hipster jive upon us as: “Call me when you’re inside your mum, ya fuckin’ sicko!” Sign us up.

Adapted from her own wildly popular web comic by Alice Oseman, Heartstopper (Netflix, April 22) is a sweet coming-of-age show about the budding relationship between two teenage boys: sensitive Charlie (Joe Locke), who is out, and cheery jock kid Nick (Kit Connor), who is not. Expect mild-mannered explorations of some sensitive themes (it’s been billed, predictably, as the “anti-Euphoria”), surprising cameos, and plenty of heart from its two young leads, despite some thunkingly obvious teen-flick tropes.