FESTIVE SEASON TOP TV SHOWS

LONDON. – These are five of the best TV shows to watch this Holiday Season.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

Jude Law stars as a mysterious maybe-Jedi in this latest Star Wars spin-off, but the adventure story belongs to four children lost in another galaxy trying to find their way home. “I think it’s a lost Jedi temple,” one of them says when they stumble across a hole in the ground, and before they know it they’re hurtling along in a space ship. Star Wars: Skeleton Crew premieres 3 December in the US and 4 December in the UK on Disney+

Black Doves

What if there was a show like The Diplomat but almost everyone was an assassin? This captivating political spy thriller starring Keira Knightley feels like that, which is high praise. Knightley plays Helen Webb – not her real name – who is married to the British Minister of Defence (Andrew Buchan) but is also spying on him for a mercenary information-gathering organisation called Black Doves. Black Doves premieres 5 December on Netflix internationally

The Sticky

The title makes a lot more sense when you know the plot of this comedy, inspired by a real-life crime known as the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist. In 2012, thieves stole about $18m worth of maple syrup from Quebec’s reserves, reselling it on the black market, and disrupting the syrup economy. The Sticky premieres 6 December on Amazon Prime internationally

Dream Productions

Given the blockbuster status of both Inside Out (2015) and this year’s sequel, Inside Out 2, a television spinoff of those animated movies was inevitable. This series is set in between the two films, and features Riley and her many emotions before she hits adolescence. That means there are none of the new characters from the sequel, no Anxiety or Ennui, but the old emotions are still there, processing Riley’s memories every night. Dream Productions premieres 11 December on Disney+

Squid Game

You couldn’t have predicted this when Squid Game premiered in 2021. But with its dynamic plot of a children’s game in which the winner gets rich and everyone else dies, and its colourful neon green and pink costumes, it helped usher in greater receptiveness for Korean television in the West, and still holds the record as Netflix’s most watched show ever. Squid Game premieres 26 December on Netflix internationally. – BBC