What's coming up in April: New shows on TV and streaming, the best films, the biggest albums
Colin Farrell in The North Water; Idris Elba in Concrete Cowboy; the Benhaffaf twins; Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown; Taylor Swift.
The former Taoiseach Enda follows in the footsteps (and railway tracks) of Michael Portillo with this picturesque, Irish-language tour of the country’s many abandoned railway routes.
Marking the tenth anniversary of their separation surgery, Cork twins Hassan and Hussein Benhaffaf set themselves the challenge of conquering an indoor climbing wall together. But things go amiss as Hassan falls and breaks his shoulder. Will this derail their big challenge?
Having conquered our childhoods, Disney makes another play for the grown-up market with a ripe “Southern Gothic” melodrama about a wealthy family that runs a successful Christian Evangelical TV network. But when the patriarch dies and is revealed to have had three children outside marriage – all named in his will – their megachurch empire threatens to collapse. Kim Cattrall plays the widow trying to hold it all together. Melia Kreiling is one of the “surprise” children emerging from the woodwork and determined to stake her claim in the family enterprise.
With Jordan Peele’s Get Out and HBO’s Lovecraft Country, horror has emerged as the perfect prism through which to interrogate America’s long history of racial injustice. That is once again the case with this anthology series from actor-turned-showrunner Little Marvin. The first series, titled Them: Covenant, is about a black family that moves to Los Angeles during the Great Migration of the 1930s. There they face horrors, both supernatural and sadly mundane. Deborah Ayorinde and Top Boy’s Ashley Thomas star.
A funny thing about time is that it refuses to stand still. And so, having cast a nostalgic eye over Charles Haughey, Stephen Roche winning the Tour de France, Italia 90 etc etc, now Reeling In the Years revisits the 2010s, that era of Mrs Brown’s Boys, Kodaline, fidget spinners (and, erm, Reeling In the Years).
Dublin actor Aidan Turner has played Kili the elf-fancying dwarf and Poldark, the Cornish heartthrob with the funny hat. Now he takes the inevitable next step by starring as Leonardo da Vinci in a biopic series from Sherlock writer Steve Thompson. It promises to be rather hot and bothered with likely lad Leonardo depicted as having relationships with both men and women. Heavens knows how he found the time for all that painting, let alone sketching steampunk helicopters. All will hopefully be revealed. Expect at least one scene of Leonardo painting shirtless too.
Having just appeared opposite Saoirse Ronan in Jurassic lark Ammonite, Kate Winslet takes a plunge into prestige TV with this gritty HBO thriller. She plays a detective in small town Pennsylvania investigating a local murder while – as per police procedural cliche – trying to shore up her disastrous personal life. Winslet is always riveting so Mare of Easttown should be worth watching for her alone.
Dubliner Danielle Galligan is part of the ensemble cast in a sumptuous adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s fantasy series set in a re-imagined 18th century Europe. Bardugo’s novels are YA but this zippy take will appeal to older fantasy fans too.
Awards season staggers on through the pandemic. Nomadland will vie with Promising Young Woman, Minari and the Trial of the Chicago 7 in a battle for Best Picture dominated by outsiders and underdogs. Wolfwalkers flies the flag for Ireland in the animation category.
Colin Farrell plays a “harpooner and brutish killer” who gets more than he bargained for when setting out on a whaling expedition to the Arctic. Farrell appears opposite Jack O’Connell, Stephen Graham and Tom Courtenay in a 19th-century drama which the BBC has confirmed will air at some point in April.
The ultimate smackdown pits the Lord of the Apes against the King of the Monsters. There can be only one winner – but will Kong’s monkey madness (okay, ape madness) win out over Godzilla’s kaiju cunning? Alongside Kong and Godzilla, the big name cast features Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Kyle Chandler and Alexander Skarsgård. Rest assured, though, the monsters will have prime billing.
Idris Elba stars in this coming-of-age drama about a teenager (Caleb McLaughlin) sent to spend a summer with his estranged father Harp (Elba). Harp is the leader of a community of horse-riders in Philadelphia – a group that really exists.
The original 1990s Mortal Kombat was regarded as one of the first great video game adaptations. Now director Simon McQuoid revisits the franchise, as some of earth’s most imposing fighters come together for a smack-fest of champions. Lewis Tan, Josh Lawson and The Meg’s Jessica McNamee star.
Postponed due to Covid, Anna Kendrick’s mission to Mars drama finally achieves blast-off. Kendrick plays a fugitive sneaking onto the first ever mission to the Red Planet. But with limited resources, how can the crew accommodate her?
Michael B Jordan plays Navy SEAL turned CIA agent John Clark in a whiz-bang espionage caper written by Yellowstone’s Taylor Sheridan and based on the late Tom Clancy’s best-selling techno-thriller series.
Swift has re-recorded her 2008 Grammy-winning second album as part of her ongoing attempt to assert ownership over her early catalogue (which was sold by her record label). And it marks the third part of her lockdown “trilogy”, started last year with Folklore and Evermore.
The new album from the hip hop “boy band” will touch on depression, isolation and the death by suicide of the father of singer Russell Boring.
Hannah Reid delves into misogyny in the music industry and the climate crisis in the long-anticipated third record from the UK electro-soul trio. Layered with feeling, it promises to be one of the year’s most arresting releases.
Beck, St Vincent, Phoebe Bridgers and Damon Albarn are just some of those reworking, in their own style, material from last year’s McCartney III album. Macca fans were chuffed that he had returned to his “McCartney” trilogy during lockdown. But how will purists respond to this indie-flavoured makeover?
The Sixties chanteuse collaborates with Nick Cave violinist Warren Ellis in a collection of poetry set to music. She will reflect on her life and career – and a near fatal encounter with Covid. Cave himself, Brian Eno and violinist Vincent Ségal are among the guests.
