May’s TV premieres travel to Hollywood, Central Park, and the afterlife

The newest true-crime offering from the streaming juggernaut fuses together the sensationalism found in exploring some of the most famous trials of the recent past with a critical spotlight on the media’s role in each. From the earliest cases of TV-covered murders to 21st-century political scandals, the six-part series will explore the ways the press has shaped (and distorted) public perception of controversial courtroom dramatics. Stories include the shooting of Amadou Diallo by the NYPD and the downfall of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, and with a sharp eye on the way victims, defendants, and prosecutors are depicted in the media, this program might just serve as a sober judge in its own right. [Alex McLevy]

Airing across two nights on PBS, Asian Americans is a moving, in-depth exploration of the contributions and tribulations of what the 2010 census determined is the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the United States. This groundbreaking five-part docuseries shines a light on several chapters in Asian American history, including immigration, internment, and anti-Asian laws. Asian Americans’ filmmaking team includes producer Renee Tajima-Peña, and counts Hari Kondabolu, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, and author Erika Lee among its many participants. But the series, narrated by Daniel Dae Kim and Tamlyn Tomita, is just as focused on more intimate storytelling as on tales of success and the role of Asian Americans on political and cultural issues. Like PBS’s Native America, Asian Americans offers a new lens through which to view this country’s history. [Danette Chavez]

In these dark times, it’s hard to imagine anything more welcome than a new special, especially an interactive one. In Kimmy Vs. The Reverend, Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) has apparently finally found true love with Prince Frederick (Daniel Radcliffe). But just days before her wedding, Kimmy finds out that the evil Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (Jon Hamm), who kept her captive for so many years, may have another bunker full of mole women, who of course she must now try to save. It’s all up to you and your interactive choices, thanks to the same technology used in the 2018 Black Mirror special “” (and yes, there are do-overs). Do you want Kimmy and Frederick to make out or wedding plan? Should Kimmy and Titus (Tituss Burgess) wait 4,000 minutes for an Uber or just walk? We suspect we will be taking some very strange plot paths on the way to Kimmy’s wedding/mole women rescue, an ideally inventive return for the Unbreakable character. [Gwen Ihnat]

History is pretty funny, right? Well, that’s at least part of the premise of The Great, a Hulu show from writer Tony McNamara that repositions the rise of Russia’s Catherine The Great as a bit of a wacky female-empowerment comedy. Starring Elle Fanning as Catherine and Nicholas Hoult as her dope of a doomed husband, Peter III, the show also acts like some kind of anti-rom-com, where young Catherine dreams of the fabulous life she’ll have with Russia’s royal family only to be immediately confronted with the grim lack of any kind of romance and the undeniable fact that her husband straight-up sucks. Hulu bills The Great as a “comedic drama,” which hints at some darkness beyond throwing a dog with a parachute off of a balcony, but any real drama is evidently being saved for the final product. Of course, depending on how far into the story this goes, we might see plenty of drama between Catherine and Peter. [Sam Barsanti]

Emerging from a notoriously troubled development that saw both showrunner Josh Friedman and pilot director Scott Derrickson depart over “creative differences” with TNT, Snowpiercer, the cable network’s expanded adaptation of , is pulling out of the station at last. Set, like the film, on an eternally circling super-train that’s humanity’s last respite from an apocalyptic global freeze, the series stars Daveed Diggs, Jennifer Connolly, and Mickey Sumner as three passengers living at three very different points of the Snowpiercer’s rigidly stratified class structure. Already renewed for a second season, the series’ pace will hopefully offer an extensively fleshed-out picture of train-based society, along with a de-rigeur season-long mystery plot to entice any viewers for whom “humanity’s last survivors play out bloody class warfare on a massive train while the world freezes around them” somehow wasn’t compelling enough. [William Hughes]

Stargirl, based on the DC Comics character of the same name, is about a teen girl named Courtney (Brec Bassinger) who finds a “cosmic staff” that once belonged to a superhero named Starman and allows her to fly and shoot laser blasts. It turns out that her stepfather (Luke Wilson) was the hero’s sidekick and a member of classic DC super-team The Justice Society Of America, and under his guidance she takes up Starman’s mantle and joins the fight against The Injustice Society. Bassinger’s Stargirl will even be putting together a new JSA of other young heroes, plus her stepfather in a mech suit called S.T.R.I.P.E. (which sounds worryingly cool for a show with a CW/DC Universe budget). A different version of Stargirl and the JSA appeared on The CW’s a few years ago, but this appears to be a much more YA-friendly take on the characters with no direct connection to the Arrowverse—though anything’s possible after Crisis On Infinite Earths. [Sam Barsanti]

Patton Oswalt is one of the most incisive and agreeable comedians out there, making his Netflix specials a sure thing. Despite not having the usual 30- or 60-second promotional clip (the trailer wasn’t available at the time of this writing), we think we can assume that’s also the case for Patton Oswalt: I Love Everything, his latest hourlong trip into his personal history. The Emmy- and Grammy-winning comic opens up about enjoying his 50s, a time in which he’s had to choose his daughter’s grade-school art show over nerding out inside a full-scale Millennium Falcon. We know that’s not much to go on, but because Oswalt has built his act on enthusiasm and empathy as much as navel-gazing and commentary, we look forward to watching him effuse over, well, everything. [Danette Chavez]

Birthed into existence, pretty much out of whole cloth, by a notoriously stupid presidential Tweet-turned-policy-idea, Netflix’s new comedy series Space Force hopes to answer what happens to someone after they get unexpectedly placed in charge of “the sixth branch of the United States Armed Forces,” whatever the hell that actually entails. Reuniting ’s Greg Daniels and Steve Carell—the latter also starring as the hapless general forced to make this loosely defined “Space Force” function—the series probably has more talent on hand than the actual governmental body, with Tawny Newsome, Ben Schwartz, Lisa Kudrow, Jimmy O. Yang, Fred Willard, and John Malkovich all on board to play key “Spacemen” and their ground-based support. It’s not easy to out-absurd reality right now, but from the glimpses we’ve seen, the show’s 10-episode first season looks to be giving it the old Space Force try. [William Hughes]

Animator Loren Bouchard is no stranger to a spirited musical number. As the co-creator of and Home Movies, some of his best work can be found in the more melodious episodes of each (as evidenced by both Bob’s Burger’s “Topsy” and Home Movies’ “Bye Bye, Greasy”). As he takes his talents over to Apple TV+, Bouchard is fully leaning into these inclinations with his new animated musical series, Central Park, a tale about a passionate community of New Yorkers who aim to protect the beloved park from an enterprising, dog-wearing heel voiced by Stanley Tucci. Between a familiar aesthetic and a cast packed with Broadway heavy-hitters (including a small, yet indulgent Hamilton reunion with Daveed Diggs and Leslie Odom Jr.), Central Park isn’t exactly a hard sell for theater enthusiasts and/or enamored fans of Bouchard’s 10-seasons-and-counting Fox hit. For those who aren’t necessarily fans of either, they might just be lured by an ostensibly bright show about believing in something. [Shannon Miller]

Not to be confused with the series of scandals back in the ’50s that inspired the 1994 movie Quiz Show, three-part miniseries Quiz dramatizes a more recent disgrace to the good name of TV game shows: the story of Charles Ingram (Matthew Macfadyen), the British man who was accused of cheating his way to £1,000,000 on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? In 2001. The ripped-from-the-headlines premise is reminiscent of Ryan Murphy and his series on FX, but AMC is playing host to this particular take, which co-stars Michael Sheen as Millionaire host Chris Tarrant. Early stills showing Sheen mugging for the camera with a fake tan and a fake smile seem to promise a pointed, irreverent take on the material, as does the involvement of A Very English Scandal’s Stephen Frears. But writer James Graham () says that he took a balanced approach, adding that “we do the classic Who Wants To Be A Millionaire ask the audience” to allow viewers to make up their own minds. Even that will probably be a bit cheeky, though—this is the British we’re talking about. [Katie Rife]

From the mid-’60s to the mid-’70s, California’s Laurel Canyon attracted a diverse community “of musicians and long-haired weirdos,” a lengthy list including Crosby Stills Nash & Young, The Byrds, The Eagles, The Doors, The Mamas And The Papas, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, even The Monkees. This new Epix two-part docuseries explores the “bubble of creativity and friendship” that helped inspire so much music in that era, promising “rare and newly unearthed footage and audio recordings,” as well as new interviews with Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Michelle Phillips, Graham Nash, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, and Roger McGuinn. Music fans should enjoy this trip back to hanging out at Joni Mitchell’s house on Lookout Mountain, learning how Stephen Stills influenced his roommate Peter Tork’s music career, or how Henley and Glenn Frey went from being Linda Ronstadt’s backup singers to forming The Eagles during the era now considered as creatively prosperous as Paris in the ’20s. [Gwen Ihnat]

season five, spring premiere (5/3); fifth and final season (5/15); season two (5/22); season two (5/29)