Streaming This Spring: A New Season of TV Dramas Arrives in Australia

The new season of Paramount+ programming is shaping up to be another cracker, with a roster of excellent new titles slotting into the streaming platform’s library. At the top is a suite of action-packed drama – spanning spy thrillers, a serial killer’s origin story, a Southern oil boom saga and mafia machinations – including no fewer than three new additions from cowboy showrunner Tayler Sheridan. Here are our top picks.

2024 is Zoë Saldaña’s year, and we’re all just living in it. Not only is her latest film, Emilia Pérez, garnering major Oscar-nom momentum, the second-highest-grossing actress of all time (after Scarlett Johansson) is also starring in her second season of Lioness. The new instalment follows the Lioness team into a very physical bout of tracking and assassinating global terrorists. The show’s cast and crew, which includes Yellowstone auteur Taylor Sheridan, as well as Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman in supporting roles, is seriously stacked. And together they’ve delivered another thrill ride of a season loaded with action and heart.

Speaking of Taylor Sheridan, the Yellowstone creator and busiest man in showbusiness continues his hot streak with the debut of Landman on November 17. Set in west Texas, this series follows the machinations of oil executives as they ride the oil boom, and features Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Hamm and Demi Moore in towering performances. If you’ve ever wondered what a modern-day mash-up of Dallas and There Will Be Blood would look like, this 10-episode watch will go down a treat.

Some concepts and characters are just so irresistible that they stick around through multiple spin-offs and crossovers. And since Dexter, the serial killer who hunts serial killers, first showed up on our screens in 2006, we’ve been hooked. Dexter: New Blood was an excellent reprisal for the character. But while we wait for its follow-up, we’re being treated to Dexter: Original Sin – a prequel to the original series that will show us exactly how everyone’s favourite sociopath first started to let his Dark Passenger do the driving. Michael C Hall is back, this time as Dexter’s “inner voice,” while college-aged Dexter will be played by Patrick Gibson. With a supporting cast featuring the likes of Christian Slater, Patrick Dempsey (Grey’s Anatomy) and Sarah Michelle Gellar , you’re in for a bloody good time.

Let’s be real, Sylvester Stallone just looks like he was born to play a mob boss, right? Especially one that lives in the American South. The guy just pulls off chunky gold jewellery, open-collar shirts and cowboy hats better than us mere mortals. Taylor Sheridan (like we said, busiest man in showbusiness) gave us one of 2022’s best releases with Tulsa King’s first season, which follows Stallone’s Dwight Manfredi, a mafia caporegime fresh out of a New York prison, dispatched to Oklahoma to establish a criminal operation. And season two picks up right where we left off for even more pulpy action and drama. Tulsa King hasn’t got a heap of episodes and all of season two will finish airing by November 17, so it’s the perfect time to jump in – it won’t take long to catch up.

The Agency isn’t out just yet, but boy do we wish it was. Michael Fassbender and Richard Gere just have Resting Spy Face – the two of them in espionage-related roles? Chef’s kiss. And that’s what we’ll get with The Agency, an adaptation of the French hit Le Bureau des Légendes. Fassbender will play Martian, a CIA agent who abandons his life undercover to return to his post in London. There, he’ll grapple with relationships and an old flame from his past, as well as an unexpected intersection between his real identity and his fake one – with potentially deadly implications. Gere, meanwhile, plays Bosko, the London Station Chief who previously spent eight years undercover. The Agency, produced by George Clooney (a fellow Resting Spy Face actor), is in production now, and can’t come out soon enough.

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Paramount+. Sign up at paramountplus.com/au now to browse its new season of drama.