What’s coming soon to Sky and NOW in May 2021?
David Farnor | On 27, Apr 2021
As lockdown restrictions ease further in May, Sky is doing its best to keeping people thinking about staying indoors.
New comedy Bloods, starring Samson Kayo, and the return of comedy Breeders, starring Martin Freeman, lead the month, which also introduces new historical epic Domina and period supernatural thriller The Nevers.
Don’t have Sky? You can stream all of the above live and on-demand through NOW, Sky’s contract-free VOD service, which costs £9.99 a month for an Entertainment Membership.
Sky Cinema, meanwhile, follows Promising Young Woman with another high-profile release: Christopher Nolan’s Tenet.
Again, if you don’t have Sky, you can stream all of Sky Cinema live and on-demand through NOW, for £11.99 a month.
Here’s what’s coming soon to Sky and NOW in May 2021. (Bookmark this page as we continue to confirm release dates with Sky.)
Entertainment
Exterminate All the Brutes (9pm, Sky Documentaries) – 1st May
Exterminate All the Brutes, from Oscar-nominated director Raoul Peck, revisits and reframes the profound impact of the Native American genocide and American slavery and the way it fundamentally informs the present.
Hitler’s Secret Sex Life (9pm, Sky History) – 2nd May
In the first of four parts, we begin to unravel the myriad rumours, theories and disputed historical accounts surrounding Adolf Hitler’s sexual psychology. There’s no shortage of experts on Hitler’s sex life who consider the Fuhrer’s predictions to be a barometer of the dictator’s twisted psyche. From incest, to stalking women as a youth, and from masochism to murder as he tried to hide his sexual past, Hitler’s Secret Sex Life delves deeper than ever before into the primal mindset of history’s most destructive man.
Bloods: Season 1 (10pm, Sky One) – 5th May
BAF TA-nominated Samson Kayo (Famalam, Timewasters) and Golden Globe-nominated Jane Horrocks (Absolutely Fabulous, Little Voice) star in this six-part comedy series as paramedic partners in the South London ambulance service. When tough-acting loner Maleek is paired with over- friendly divorcee Wendy, their partnership looks dead on arrival. But before long they’re acting as each other’s life support.
Age of the Big Cats (8pm, Sky Nature) – 8th May
Join us as we unpack the extraordinary trajectory of big cats and witness their ascent to predator status. Over three parts, we use new night vision systems, super slow-motion cameras and 3D computer- generated imagery to reveal a secret world of incredible and unexpected stories from the lives of the world’s most charismatic predators. We think we know big cats pretty well, but this tantalising global journey through cats of the present reveals that there’s much to learn on the cats of the past.
Salvage Kings: Season 2 (10pm, Sky History) – 10th May
Salvage Kings is back – returning with fast-paced, adrenaline-pumping demolition from the team at Priestly Demolition Inc. In a race against the clock, the salvage teams retrieve anything valuable left behind as some of the world’s biggest and most challenging structures are smashed, trashed, and royally crashed. In the new season, a wrecking ball’s about to make its first swing and Ryan’s nephew Julien soaks up the tricks of the trade so he can one day run the family business.
Legends of the Deep: Season 1 (10pm, Sky History) – 12th May
In the first of three parts, we join Fabien Cousteau and his fellow-filmmaker wife Céline in Shag Harbour in Nova Scotia, where they’re investigating one of the most documented and prolific UFO sightings in history. They use the latest technology in aquatic exploration to unravel some of the world’s most spell-binding mysteries of the deep.
There’s Something About Movies: Season 3 (9pm, Sky One) – 13th May
Just when you thought it was safe to head back to the sofa… Alan Carr and the gang are back to take a bite out of the movies we know and love in the spectacular madcap comedy panel show. The cinemas may be closed until 17th May but Alan and the series’ usual suspects – Jennifer Saunders, Michael Sheen and Tom Allen – will be bringing all the best scenes of your favourite films back to life with the infamous re-enactments along with more movie trivia to get your teeth into.
Domina: Season 1 (9pm, Sky Atlantic) – 14th May
Created and written by Simon Burke (Fortitude), Domina brings to life the power politics of Ancient Rome, told through the eyes of Livia Drusilla. This epic eight-part, highly topical drama follows the life and extraordinary rise of Livia (Kasia Smutniak, Perfect Strangers). As the story begins we meet a naïve young girl whose world crumbles in the wake of Julius Caesar’s assassination. In the years that follow, she must navigate her way through a brutal society to find revenge, secure her family’s legacy and eventually become Rome’s most powerful and influential Empress. All episodes will be available at once on-demand.
The Nevers: Part 1 (9pm, Sky Atlantic) – 17th May
In the last years of Victoria’s reign, London is beset by the “Touched”: people — mostly women — who suddenly manifest abnormal abilities, some charming, some very disturbing. Among them are Amalia True (Laura Donnelly), a mysterious, quick- fisted widow, and Penance Adair (Ann Skelly), a brilliant young inventor. They are the champions of this new underclass, making a home for the Touched, while fighting the forces of… well, pretty much all the forces — to make room for those whom history as we know it has no place. All six episodes of Part 1 will be available at once on-demand.
The United Way (9pm, Sky Documentaries) – 24th May
The story of Manchester United is one of the ultimate sporting stories of our time and Sky Original documentary The United Way, profiles the unstoppable rise of the iconic sporting dynasty. Led by the legendary Eric Cantona and featuring stunning archive and never seen before footage, we celebrate the birth and growth of a global phenomenon – a unifying club for the people, by the people. From the club’s humble beginnings in England’s Industrial North at the turn of the century, Manchester United gifted the city a winning dream of hope, beauty and ambition. The club’s pitches have nurtured global talent from Charlton, Best, Cantona, Beckham and Ronaldo who have battled it out on the so-called ‘Theatre of Dreams’. Now with over 650 million supporters around the world, we celebrate the club’s astonishing journey. Think ‘Rome’ but in the sphere of sport – Old Trafford is the Colosseum, the titanic managers Sir Alex Ferguson and Sir Matt Busby are the Emperors.
City on a Hill: Season 2 (Sky Atlantic) – Date TBC
Corrupt FBI agent Jackie Rohr (Kevin Bacon) is back, looking to exploit Boston’s criminal justice system in a desperate attempt to salvage his own career. Unfortunately fort Jackie, ADA Decourcy Ward (Aldis Hodge) is onto his adversary’s latest misstep.
SWAT: Season 4 (Sky One) – Date TBC
Shemar Moore is back in action as Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson in another explosive series of SWAT. This time around, Hondo, his father Daniel Sr. and his teen charge Darryl confront the history of racial tension in Los Angeles between law enforcement and the Black community. Torn between loyalty to where he was raised and his allegiance to his brothers in blue, Hondo has to step up and be the leader that can bridge the divide between his two worlds.
MacGyver: Season 5 (Sky One) – Date TBC
MacGyver returns for a fifth season, with everybody’s favourite problem solver Angus MacGyver and his friends at the Phoenix Foundation travelling the globe for another series of adventures. Look forward to Mac and the team to attempt to destroy the Codex crime syndicate once and for all, launch a daring rescue effort for a woman holing up in an infamous criminal hideout, and try and track down the killer of a fallen friend.
Breeders: Season 2 (Sky One) – Date TBC
Martin Freeman and Daisy Haggard return as the loving parents and exhausted human beings who are doing their best to hide that they are winging their way through it all. With Ava now ten years old and Luke almost thirteen, Paul and Ally now must confront their burgeoning independence, and question whether their tried and tested parenting style is still going to hold up.
The Crime of the Century (Sky Documentaries) – Date TBC
From Emmy and Academy Award winner Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century is a scathing indictment of Big Pharma and the political and governmental regulations that facilitate a mass abuse of synthetic opiates. With half a million deaths attributed to opioid overdose this century alone, the two-part documentary explores the origins, extent, and fallout of one of the most devastating public health tragedies of our time. with unprecedented access to whistle-blowers, newly leaked documents and the sobering testimonies of victims, Gibney’s exposé reveals that America’s opioid epidemic is not a public health crisis that sprang from nowhere. The drug companies who manufacture the very crisis they profit from reap financial gain at the cost of thousands of lives.
The Way I See It (Sky Documentaries) – Date TBC
For fourteen years of his career, Pete Souza was the official White House photographer for Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan. Capturing millions of some of the most iconic images from their presidencies, Pete Souza acted as a fly on the wall during Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan’s terms in office. When Trump was inaugurated in 2017, Souza used the power of social media to paint of portrait of two wildly contrasting men and presidencies which in turn, meant that he shared his intimate and historic observations of life in the White House with the world. Through the camera lens, Pete Souza was able to play eyewitness to history, twice.
The Clown & The Candyman (Sky Crime) – Date TBC
The 1970s saw a rise in serial killers that was unlike anything the United States had ever seen before. And when Dean Corll was shot dead by one of his teen accomplices, a dark secret world begins to unravel. The gory details of rape and torture that are unearthed after police find the bodies of twenty-eight boys in three mass graves, send shockwaves around America along with the sordid backstory of the Candyman’s two young teenage henchmen who themselves participated in an astonishing orgy of murder.
Sky Cinema
Cosmic Sin – 1st May
Bruce Willis and Frank Grillo star in this epic sci-fi adventure set in the year 2524, four hundred years after humans started colonising the outer planets. Retired Military General James Ford (Willis) is called back into service after soldiers on a remote planet are attacked by a hostile alien fleet. The threat against the human race escalates into an inevitable interstellar war. General Ford teams up with General Eron Ryle (Grillo) and a team of elite soldiers in a race to stop the imminent attack before it is too late.
Tenet – 7th May
John David Washington stars in director/auteur Christopher Nolan’s challenging sci-fi action thriller that will be sure to bend your mind as well as your concept of time. Armed with only one word—Tenet—and fighting for the survival of the entire world, The Protagonist (Washington) journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time. This is not time travel. This is Inversion.
Buddy Games – 8th May
Josh Duhamel (Transformers) stars and directs this wild, no-holds-barred comedy. After six lifelong friends have a five-year falling out, Bob (Duhamel), aka “The Bobfather”, reunites his pals for the Buddy Games, an insane competition of absurd physical and mental challenges with the chance to win a $150,000 pot. Now all bets are off, as the determined competitors fight, claw, and party for the big bucks in this star-studded bro-fest featuring Dax Shepard (Idiocracy), Olivia Munn (The Newsroom) and Kevin Dillon (Entourage).
The Secrets We Keep – 14th May
A quiet neighbourhood. A Deadly Past. Noomi Rapace stars in a taut suspense drama set in the ashes of World War II. Rapace plays Maja, a Romanian woman attempting to rebuild her life in the American suburbs with her husband while keeping her darkest memories to herself. Those memories resurface when she recognises a former German soldier in her neighbourhood, and kidnaps him in revenge for the horrific trauma she believes he inflicted upon her.
Breaking News in Yuba County – Date TBC
A starry female-led cast including Allison Janney, Mila Kunis, Regina Hall, Awkwafina and Wanda Sykes star in the story of one woman who rises out of her underappreciated existence by spinning a tabloid-friendly lie. Recently widowed Sue Buttons (Janney), not entirely happy with her husband nor the circumstances surrounding his death, decides not to notify anyone that he is deceased, and instead reports him as missing. The ensuing media coverage catapults her to celebrity status, but brings her to the attention of a wannabe-mobster, a relentless cop, and her self- interested half sist – all out to uncover the truth behind the lie.
The Broken Hearts Gallery – 15th May
What if you saved a souvenir from every relationship you’ve ever been in? The Broken Hearts Gallery – produced by Selena Gomez – follows the always unique Lucy (Geraldine Viswanathan), a 20-something art gallery assistant living in New York City, who also happens to be an emotional hoarder. After she gets dumped by her latest boyfriend, Lucy is inspired to create The Broken Heart Gallery, a pop-up space for the items love has left behind. Word of the gallery spreads, encouraging a movement and a fresh start for all the romantics out there, including Lucy herself.
Roads Not Taken – 22nd May
British director Sally Potter (Orlando, The Party) helms this poetic drama inspired by a painful chapter in her own life. The film follows a day in the life of Leo (Javier Bardem) and his daughter Molly (Elle Fanning) as she grapples with the challenges of her father’s chaotic mind. As they weave their way through New York City, Leo’s journey takes on a hallucinatory quality as he floats through alternate lives he could have lived, leaving Molly to wrestle with her own path as she considers her future. Also starring Salma Hayek and Laura Linney.
Echo Boomers – 23rd May
Michael Shannon and son of famous people Patrick Schwarzenegger star in this twisty crime-thriller. Recent graduate Lance ZUtterland (Schwarzenegger) leaves school in debt, realising everything hehad worked towards was built on a lie. When he is pulled into a criminal underground operation, he finds his peers fighting the system by stealing from the rich and giving to… themselves. With nothing to lose, they leave behind a trail of destruction. But with with cops closing in and tensions mounting, Lance soon discovers he’s in over his head with no way out.
Away (2019) – 24th May
This visually stunning wordless animation is a minimal epic that dreams big.
Benny Loves You – 25th May
Karl Holt’s feature debut finds a hilariously playful side to a man-child’s darker impulses.
Other films coming soon to Sky Cinema in May 2021
2nd May
Happily
3rd May
Aliens Stole My Body
4th May
Say Your Prayers
5th May
Deliver Us from Evil
6th May
Son of the South
9th May
Dead Reckoning
10th May
The Fairy Princess and the Unicorn
11th May
Rent-a-Pal
12th May
Silent Night (2021)
13th May
Let It Snow (2020)
16th May
Under the Stadium Lights
17th May
The Wacky Hen
18th May
Tremors: Shrieker Island
19th May
Knuckledust
20th May
The Sinners
21st May
Rambo: Last Blood
26th May
Deep Murder
27th May
Stardust (2020)
28th May
Riverdance
29th May
The Queen’s Corgi
30th May
Spell (2020)
31st May
The Elfkins (2019)