Alex Casey and Sam Brooks round up the new content coming to Lightbox this month, including some sunny Philadelphians, Harvey Specter’s return and Lightbox’s first original content ever!
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Seasons 9-12 arrive March 15)
They’re the worst people on TV – and some of the funniest. If you’ve missed the show for the past 12 (!) seasons, here’s the premise: Frank (Danny DeVito) owns a bar in Philadelphia and his two children Dennis (Glenn Howerton) and Dee (Kaitlin Olson), plus their two friends Mac (Rob McElhenny) and Charlie (Charlie Day), try to help him run it. But they’re all terrible people, and they come up with endless schemes to get out of work and make a quick buck.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is like Friends if the characters in Friends were actually honest about how terrible they are to each other, and unrepentant about it. Always Sunny would be unbearable if it wasn’t so genuinely funny – and in the later seasons they get into wilder and stranger places, including going on a Family Feud-type game show, getting trapped on a sinking cruise ship, and an episode where the gang is played by African-American actors. It’s essential TV, and with the upcoming 13th and 14th seasons, it’s close to breaking the record for the most watched live-action sitcom ever. / SB
Bates Motel (Season 5 coming March 16)
Freddie Highmore has just been in our fair land to promote the current US network smash The Good Doctor (our interview with him is coming on Friday!), but never forget that he’s also deliciously freaky in Psycho-spinoff-prequel Bates Motel. He’s also very freaky in the Johnny Depp Willy Wonka film, but who isn’t? As Aaron Yap wrote in his Monitor column, Bates Motel has “a younger-demo-aiming vibe that’s one mopey teenager away from being Dawson’s Creek. But I’d like to think that the perverse side of Hitchcock would’ve appreciated the bait-and-switch the show has pulled. While operating under the glossy veneer of teen soap, Bates Motel journeys down some exceedingly dark, unpleasant avenues to map out the evolving psychopathic tendencies of its protagonist.” / AC
VicTORIous (available to stream now)
Here’s one for your kids: The popular Nickelodeon sitcom stars Victoria Justice as Tori Vega, a girl who is accepted into the Hollywood Arts High School after taking her older sister’s place as an audition. It follows her wild and presumably wacky adventures with the other students at the school, including a ventriloquist with a puppet who everybody treats as human, her goth frenemy Jade, and her best friend and musical prodigy Andre. It’s a show with a tremendous amount of charm and enough offbeat wackiness to keep not just your tweens engaged, but your adult self gagging for more. (Also keep an eye out for Ariana Grande as the appropriately named Cat Valentine!) / SB
You’re The Worst (Seasons 1-3 available to stream now)
“That’s not the kind of rom-com You’re the Worst is. Though it is one where you know these people are meant to be together – they’re as messed up as each other, and the ways that they’re messed up are also what make them gel so well together, and what stops them from getting to know and love anybody else. They’re the kind of people who go to bed with makeup on, who lie to everybody around them, and don’t pretend they’re anything other than what they are. They’re truly, beautifully, awful people.” / SB
Suits (Season 7 arrives weekly from March 29)
“Harvey Specter from Suits is a living legend. Despite putting up more emotional walls than a mansion of Bachelor rejects, his shirts are always well pressed, he has beautiful hair, and he embraces a clear desk policy. No wonder the ladies love him.” This is what our resident Suits fan Tara Ward said about the show when she lived as Harvey Specter for a day (and look forward to her second day living as Harvey Specter coming later this month!)
Suits is everybody’s favourite lawyer show, and Harvey Specter is back to dress up nice and tell people what they’re doing wrong – and Lightbox is beaming episodes straight from the US, weekly. If you love Suits, this’ll be taking up one night of your week, and if you’ve never seen it (what else have you been doing with your life!) then this is your chance to catch up, especially because it’s the last season with fan favourite and soon-to-be-Princess Meghan Markle. / SB
The High Road (arrives March 30)
The High Road is super exciting for two reasons: One, it’s one of Lightbox’s first forays into original drama (the other being the children’s show Nori: Rollercoaster Boy) and two, it’s a critically acclaimed web-series that has been adapted and uplifted into a longer, glitzier (but still gritty) form. The High Road is a comedy drama created by Justin Harwood, ex-bassist of Flying Nun band The Chills. It stars Mark Mitchinson (Outrageous Fortune), and follows burnt-out London rocker Terry Huffer who moves to Piha so he can run a radio station from a caravan, all while dealing with a money-grabbing and persistent ex-wife and his own crush on somebody else’s partner. It’s a wild, rollicking ride of a show, and a strong lead for Lightbox’s new original content. / SB
The Night Shift (Season 4 arrives March 22)
It’s the new season of The Night Shift, everybody’s favourite drama about working in a hospital… at night! Here’s what we wrote about the first three seasons:
“What’s the best way to add intrigue, drama and high stakes to the already intriguing, dramatic and very high stakes world of the medical drama? Set it at night. Also, make the hospital be struggling to make ends meet. That helps too. Despite the countless catastrophes, medical dramas also make for the best kind of sit down in front of the TV comfort food. Do yourself a favour, treat yourself to a night shift where you don’t have to work.” / SB
Raised by Wolves (Seasons 1 and 2 arrive March 31)
Caitlin Moran, co-writer and co-creator of Raised by Wolves, perhaps summed it up best: “We’re well-read yet brassy working-class women who’ve punched their way up from a council house in Wolverhampton to a TV series,” she said on her Facebook page, pointing out that Raised by Wolves is “currently the only TV series in Britain by and about working-class woman.” Written with her sister Caroline, it’s a semi-biographical look at daily life in the Morans’ childhood home. Come for the liquid eyeliner, stay for the name that rhymes with urethra.
Watch all these and much, much more on Lightbox right here:
