November TV preview: Muhammad Ali, Sam Bankman-Fried, and a return to Middle-earth

Get ready to go back to Middle-earth for another installment of TV’s most expensive series, whose third season will jump forward in time and see the forging of the One Ring To Rule Them All. (A little timeline condensation makes sense in a tale this epic.) Former Stranger Things villain Jamie Campbell Bower joins the cast as Galadriel’s presumed-dead husband Celeborn, and we can expect some darker themes as the series introduces the Nazgnagôl, the precursors to the Black Riders we all know from The Lord Of The Rings. 

The Good Daughter (Peacock, November 12)

Following in the footsteps of its successful female-led limited series All Her Fault, Peacock’s twisty crime drama The Good Daughter stars Rose Byrne and Meghann Fahy as a pair of sisters whose family was shattered by a brutal act of violence and who are brought back together after a decade of estrangement by another horrific crime. Based on the book of the same name by bestselling author Karin Slaughter, the series will explore both the complexities of sisterhood and the long-tail impact of trauma.

12 12 12 (Apple TV, November 13)

This slick heist drama unfolds across three timelines—the 12 12 12 of the title refers to the three stages of plotting, executing, and escaping the robbery at its center—and follows a cat-and-mouse chase between a disgraced former FBI agent (Anthony Mackie) and a career criminal (Jamie Dornan) attempting to pull off a historic bank job. Apple TV not releasing this series on the 12th (or December 12, for that matter) feels like a huge missed opportunity, but we digress: If the trailer is anything to go by, expect high-stakes chases, more than a few explosions, and some gorgeous scenery. 

The Altruists (Netflix, November 19)

Netflix’s buzzy drama about the collapse of crypto exchange FTX stars Anthony Boyle and Julia Garner as Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison, a pair of nerdy, ambitious idealists allegedly out to remake the global financial system in the name of doing good, but who ended up as fraudsters accused of cheating their customers out of billions of dollars. Inspired by the New York Magazine articles written by Kevin T. Dugan and Jen Wieczner, the eight-episode series aims to delve into the pair’s on-again/off-again personal relationship, which ended with Ellison testifying against Bankman-Fried at trial. 

Yellowjackets season 4 (Showtime, November 20)

The final season of Yellowjackets has plenty of big questions to answer, and just 10 episodes with which to do it. Luckily, it sounds as if the show’s going to come out swinging: Season four will bring the surviving members of the titular girls’ soccer team back to civilization after 19 months of surviving in the Canadian wilderness. The fallout of that culture shock will show us how these traumatized young women evolved into the adult versions we’ve watched alongside them in the show’s present-day timeline. Expect plenty more shocking twists before we’re through. 

Dig (Peacock, November 23)

It’s a Parks And Recreation reunion as Michael Schur and Amy Poehler reteam for this Peacock comedy that follows a group of archeologists in Greece who manage to stumble upon some kind of rare artifact that embroils them all in an international conspiracy. Is it an unexpected premise from these two? Kind of. Is there any doubt they’ll manage to deliver something that’s full of both humor and heart? Not even a little bit 

Photo by: Colleen Hayes/Peacock

Blade Runner 2099 (Prime Video, November 25)

Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer lead this sequel to both Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic and Denis Villeneuve’s critically acclaimed 2017 follow-up (which were, of course, both inspired by Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?), set in a darker future Los Angeles where a replicant uprising has flipped the franchise’s established hierarchy. Yeoh plays Olwen, a dying Blade Runner who enlists the help of Cora (Schafer) to track down a group of missing replicants in a world where the machines are now in charge, served by the humans who created them. In an interesting flip of the script, Cora is secretly human, hiding in plain sight and trying to survive. 

More November premieres

11/1

The Gilded Age season 4 (HBO)

11/3

Bass x Machina (Netflix)

11/5 

Black Doves season two (Netflix)

11/6

Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook (Apple TV)

It Gets Worse (Paramount+)

11/11

The Body (Netflix)

Rivals season two, part two (Hulu)

11/16

Crime And Punishment In America (PBS)

11/20

Percy Jackson And The Olympians season three

11/26 

The Hunting Wives season two