David Farnor | On 01, Feb 2020

Netflix. Amazon Prime Video. BBC iPlayer. NOW. Walter Presents. Apple TV+. There’s so much TV to watch these days in so many places that it can be hard to keep up. Every month, we boil down what’s on the box to the essentials you need in your streaming queue.

Whether you’re pleased or not with the way 2020 has begun, there’s one thing we can all agree on: it’s got one heck of a TV line-up, with February bringing the return of Better Call Saul and The Walking Dead, as well as Narcos: Mexico, Inside No. 9 and Outlander. There’s no shortage of new shows to try, though, from Amazon’s Hunters and Netflix’s Locke & Key to Apple TV+’s new comedy from Charlie Day, BBC One’s latest Agatha Christie adaptation and new David Schwimmer comedy from Sky One, Intelligence. All that plus Saturday Night Live on UK TV in full for the first time in years and RuPaul’s Drag Race? Be grateful February has that extra day this leap year: you’re gonna need it.

We’ve sorted through All The TV to bring you your February watchlist – what’s worth watching, why and where you can find it online in the UK:

Snowfall: Season 3

After the betrayals that saw him on a murder charge and on the ropes, Franklin has squared things with his family, and his gang now rule the streets. But the streets are changing.

Saturday Night Live: Season 45

Coming live from New York for more than four decades, Saturday Night Live arrives on Sky Comedy – its first appearance on UK television in fourteen years. Airing 24 hours after its US broadcast, celebrity hosts join an award-winning ensemble cast to perform the show’s world-famous blend of comedic sketches, satirical news and digital shorts, alongside performances from popular musical acts.

Shakespeare & Hathaway: Season 3

Shakespeare & Hathaway return for series three with more comical mysteries and dodgy dealings.

Baghdad Central

October 2003 and Baghdad has been occupied by American forces for six months; but the disbandment of the Iraqi army, the police and civil leadership in the aftermath of the invasion means there is no one in charge and no effective rule of law.

In the midst of this chaos, crime and paranoia, Iraqi ex-policeman Muhsin al-Khafaji (Waleed Zuaiter; Omar, Altered Carbon) has lost everything and is battling daily to keep himself and his sick daughter, Mrouj (July Namir; Homeland, Collateral), safe.

Inside No. 9: Season 5

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton return with another run of half-hour stories, perfectly pitched between horror and comedy.

The Righteous Gemstones: Season 1

Danny McBride (Eastbound & Down, Vice Principals) writes and stars in the story of a world-famous televangelist family with a long tradition of deviance, greed and charitable work – all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesse Gemstone (McBride) is a maverick in the ministry game. He has taken the congregation that his father Eli Gemstone (John Goodman) created and used it to build a megachurch for the modern-day churchgoer. But upon returning from a baptism marathon in China with his father and brother Kelvin (Adam Devive), Jesse receives a video from blackmailers seeking to sully his reputation. Meanwhile, Eli moves forward with plans to expand the Gemstone empire as he continues to mourn his late wife Aimee-Leigh. All episodes arrive on-demand at the same time as the show’s premiere.

Home: Season 2

Rufus Jones’ heartfelt, topical comedy about Sami (Youssef Kerkour) – a Syrian immigrant living with Peter (Rufus Jones), Katy (Rebekah Staton) and her son John after hiding in their car in Calais – returns. From visiting Stonehenge to learning about cryptic crosswords Sami has adapted to British life, preparing for his interview with the Home Office in order to stay permanently. But did Sami pass the interview?

Hypothetical: Season 2

James Acaster and Josh Widdicombe reunite for a second season of their panel show, which shuns topical commentary or trivial knowledge in favour of absurd theory. Hypothetical tests comedians on their ability to deal with a series of ridiculous hypothetical scenarios. You have to live in a motorway services for a year, how do you cope? You have to take a selfie with Nicolas Cage within 48 hours or you die – how do you do it? Each hypothetical is posed by Josh, while James’ job is to enforce the rules and score the guests’ attempts at dealing with them.

Perpetual Grace LTD: Season 1

Perpetual Grace LTD follows James (Jimmi Simpson), a young grifter, as he attempts to prey upon Pastor Byron Brown (Sir Ben Kingsley), who turns out to be far more dangerous than James suspects. The pastor and his wife Lillian (Jacki Weaver), known to their parishioners as Pa and Ma, have used religion to swindle hundreds of innocent people out of their life savings in Half Acre, NM.

Barrymore: The Body in the Pool

In the early hours of 31st March 2001, a phone call was made to Essex Emergency Services to say a body had been found in the swimming pool of television presenter, Michael Barrymore. At the time, Barrymore was one of the most popular entertainers in Britain. When Paramedics arrived, Stuart Lubbock’s lifeless body was found by the side of Barrymore’s swimming pool. Every detail of the story was poured over by the media. Was it a drug-fuelled orgy? Was Stuart gay? Did Stuart drown or was there another cause of death? Why did Barrymore flee from his home? Would Barrymore’s career ever recover from the disturbing event? 19 years on, this landmark 90-minute documentary explores the full story with access to never-before-seen material from inside one of Essex Police’s most controversial unsolved cases. It explores our changing tabloid culture, our relationship to celebrity, and our attitudes to homosexuality, but at its heart is the tragic story of a family still searching for the truth.

Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet: Season 1

Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney team up for this new comedy for Apple TV+, which is set in a studio behind a popular video game.

Locke & Key: Season 1

Based on the best-selling graphic novels, Locke & Key follows 3 siblings who, after the murder of their father, move to their ancestral home only to find the house has magical keys that give them a vast array of powers and abilities.

The Pale Horse

Adapted by Sarah Phelps from Agatha Christie’s novel, this two-part drama stars Rufus Sewell as Mark Easterbrook. When a murder investigation is launched into the death of a young woman, a mysterious list of names is discovered in her shoe – prompting an inquiry not only to find the killer, but also to understand the list of names. Who wrote the list, and who do these names refer to?

The End: Season 1

Dame Harriet Walter and Frances O’Connor star in The End, an amusing and touching drama about three generations of a family with separate but intersecting obsessions, who are trying to figure out how to die with dignity, live with none and make it count. O’Connor plays Dr Kate Brennan, an Australian-based specialist in palliative care. Euthanasia is a hot-button topic in Kate’s field of work, and she is passionate in her opposition. On the other side of the world, Kate’s mother Edie Henley (Walter) feels just as strongly about her right to die. After she attempts to take her own life, Kate has little choice but to ship her out from England and deposit her in a nearby retirement village in the Gold Coast – Edie’s worst nightmare. While Kate struggles with her own problems, her children are trying to work out who they are, and who they want to be. What follows is a story about parents and children, ethics and emotion, and mostly how it’s never too late to start again.

The Split: Season 2

The Defoe sisters, Hannah (Nicola Walker), Nina (Annabel Scholey) and Rose (Fiona Button) – and their formidable mother Ruth (Deborah Findlay) – are back for another round of legal dramatics on London’s divorce circuit. Hannah and her sisters make for engrossing, compellingly human television. With so much seething distrust, jealousy and resentment simmering under the surface, the fun lies in seeing each relative use their clients as ammunition to snipe at the others, while watching Hannah try to navigate the tensions between her unhappy marriage to Nathan (an excellent Stephen Mangan) and her desire to be with former flame Christie (Barry Atsma), who works with her. Throw in the always-excellent Chukwudi Iwuji as Alex, her boss, and you have a show that’s as gripping as ever.

Narcos: Mexico: Season 2

Scoot McNairy goes head-to-head with Diego Luna as Netflix’s Narco spin-off continues to explore the origins of the modern drug war by going back to its roots – the Mexican trafficking world when it was a loose and disorganised confederation of independent growers and dealers. Luna plays Félix Gallardo, who takes the helm of the Guadalajara Cartel in the 1980s, with McNairy playing DEA agent Walt Breslin.

Hunted: Season 5

Channel 4’s absurdly gripping series returns to follow members of the public trying to stay off-the-grid while being tracked by a team of hunters.

Cable Girls: Season 5, Part 1

The fifth and final season of Netflix’s Spanish period drama, which sees the girls take very different paths towards what seemed like a promising future. The Spain they knew is divided into two sides, and after years of struggle and progress towards equality, freedom is being lost in a Civil War that will change their destiny, as well as those of their families and those of the new characters that will appear to turn everything upside down. The rights obtained in the democratic period will disappear, women will be expelled from the labour market, and all the girls will find themselves against the ropes.

Get Even

On the surface Kitty, Margot, Bree and Olivia appear to have nothing in common – but there’s one passion which unites them: to expose injustice. They form their own secret society, DGM – they Don’t Get Mad, they Get Even – playing anonymous pranks to expose bullies.

Homeland: Season 8

Carrie recovers from her time in a gulag with a fractured memory. Saul is sent to Afghanistan to broker peace talks with the Taliban. Can he bring her in safely to help? And will Carrie recover? Find out in the final season of the gripping spy drama.

Outlander: Season 5

The Fraser family navigate the trials and tribulations of life in colonial America as they establish a home in the New World, which is by no means an easy task. Protecting their home proves even more difficult – particularly in the wild backcountry of North Carolina, during a period of dramatic socio-political upheaval.

The Chef Show: Volume 3

Jon Favreau and chef Roy Choi return for a third portion of their mouth-watering cooking series.

Spectros: Season 1

This supernatural thriller, written by Douglas Petrie (Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Marvel’s Daredevil), follows a group of teens in Liberdade, a neighborhood in São Paulo known by its large Japanese community. Drawn into an unearthly reality they cannot comprehend, which ties back to the same part of the town in 1908, they discover that someone is bringing back the dead and those spirits want vengeance for the mistakes done in the past.

Intelligence: Season 1

Created by Nick Mohammed, this workplace comedy is set in the UK’s GCHQ—a kind of weedier, geekier version of MI5, where they tackle international and domestic Cyber Crime from a desktop. But when a pompous, maverick NSA agent Jerry (David Schwimmer) comes over from the U.S. to join the team, he enlists an inept and tactless computer analyst Joseph (Nick Mohammed) in a power grab that threatens to disrupt the team’s ability to combat cyber terrorism.

Hunters: Season 1

Amazon’s conspiracy thriller, created by David Weil and exec-produced by Academy Award-winner Jordan Peele, follows a diverse band of Nazi Hunters in 1977 New York City. Inspired by true events, Hunters sees The Hunters discover that hundreds of high-ranking Nazi officials are living among us and conspiring to create a Fourth Reich in the USA. The eclectic team set out on a bloody quest to bring them to justice and thwart their new genocidal plans.

The series stars Al Pacino alongside Logan Lerman, Josh Radnor, Kate Mulvany and more.

The Walking Dead: Season 10, Part 2

AMC’s rejuvenated zombie hit returns to continues its return to form.

Better Call Saul: Season 5

After facing an uphill battle to regain his law license in Season 4, Season 5 sees Jimmy McGill decide to take on the world as Saul Goodman. But in order to do that, he’ll have to build his new persona piece by piece. Needless to say, Jimmy’s transformation into Saul will create unexpected and profound waves of change for those in his orbit – including DEO Hank Schrader, with Dean Norris returning to reprise his role from Breaking Bad.

Flesh and Blood

In the aftermath of a family celebration, a body lies on the beach, terribly injured – perhaps dead. But who is it? Imelda Staunton (A Confession, Maleficent, Paddington, Harry Potter, Vera Drake), Francesca Annis (Home Fires, The Little House, Cranford), Russell Tovey (Years and Years, Quantico) and Stephen Rea (Dickensian, War & Peace, The Honourable Woman) star in Flesh and Blood – a darkly witty and gripping four-part drama created and written by Sarah Williams (The Long Song, Case Sensitive, Poppy Shakespeare), which explores family dynamics and modern relationships as they spiral towards a tragedy and possible crime.

The Windsors

Channel 4’s royal sitcom returns for a third season, picking things up as Wills (Hugh Skinner) is torn by the older royals deciding to go on strike and Charles (Harry Enfield) trying to persuade him to join forces. When trying to make his decision Wills is given advice by a portrait of Queen Victoria played by none other than Miriam Margolyes. Julia Deakin (Spaced, Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz) and Simon Day (The Life of Rock with Brian Pern, The Fast Show) will also guest star as Carole and Mike Middleton. Charles and Camilla (Haydn Gwynne) will reluctantly agree to visit the Middletons’ house with Wills and Kate (Louise Ford). While there Charles thinks he hears Mike threatening to chop off his and Camilla’s heads. Charles informs Camilla who takes matters into her own hands and plots to kill the Middletons, but will Wills (Hugh Skinner) stop Camilla’s evil plan before it’s too late? Tom Durant-Pritchard may have taken over from Richard Goulding as Prince Harry, but expect the same hysterical silliness from the irreverent comedy.

The Twilight Zone: Season 1

Jordan Peele, the mind behind Us and Get Out, invites you back into another dimension in this revival of the classic anthology series, with stars such as Chris O’Dowd, Seth Rogen, Greg Kinnear, Sanaa Lathan and Adam Scott appearing in a series of spine-tingling, stand alone morality tales with wicked twists – all updated for a new, socially conscious generation.

Altered Carbon: Season 2

Based on the classic science fiction novels by Richard K. Morgan, Netflix’s drama is set more than 300 years in the future, when society has been transformed by new technology: consciousness can be digitised and human bodies are interchangeable. Season 2 sees Anthony Mackie take over from Joel Kinnaman as Takeshi Kovacs, the lone surviving soldier in a group of elite interstellar warriors who were defeated in an uprising against the new world order.

RuPaul’s Drag Race: Season 12

Start your engines! 13 new queens line up to strut their stuff in front of drag queen royalty RuPaul as the global phenomenon returns for its 12th run.

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