The Crown to Doctor Who: 12 of the best TV shows to watch this November

Caryn James picks out the biggest offerings – from the final series of The Crown and a new season of Fargo to a Squid Game reality show and new Doctor Who specials.

1. All the Light We Cannot See

This adaptation of Anthony Doerr's 2014 bestselling novel about Marie-Laure, a young blind woman working for the French Resistance, and Werner, a German soldier drawn to her radio broadcasts, received tepid reactions when it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. Indiewire called it "schmaltzy" as well as "speedy, tear-jerking and handsome enough". But that might not bother the book's many fans, who can now appreciate the appealing cast as well as the dramatic story. Newcomer Aria Mia Loberti, who has impaired vision herself, received high praise as Marie-Laure. The Hollywood Reporter called her "radiant". Mark Ruffalo plays her devoted father, and Hugh Laurie the uncle they stay with during the Nazi occupation. Written by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) and directed by Shawn Levy (best known for the Night at the Museum films), the four-part series comes with World War Two intrigue, family emotion and a built-in audience. 

All the Light We Cannot See premieres on 2 November on Netflix internationally

2. Lawmen: Bass Reeves

Executive producer Taylor Sheridan adds another Western saga to his empire with this anthology series, each season featuring a different real-life hero. The initial season has familiar genre tropes, all those cowboy hats and horses, but a bracingly different story. David Oyelowo (Selma) plays the US Deputy Marshal Bass Reeves, famous for having arrested more than 3,000 men. An enslaved man who was forced to fight for the Confederacy in the US Civil War, he escaped, and became one of the first black US Marshals. It's a story Oyelowo, also a producer of the show, has wanted to make since 2015, before Sheridan's company was involved. As he told Vanity Fair, Reeves lived "at a time that in many ways defines who and what America is", a history viewed here "through the personal eyes of one black man and his family". The ing cast includes Donald Sutherland, Garrett Hedlund and Yellowstone regular Moses Brings Plenty.

Lawmen: Bass Reeves premieres on 5 November on Paramount+

3. The Buccaneers

It's set in the 1870s, but feels like today, with pop music and champagne-swilling bridesmaids setting off the action. Based on Edith Wharton's posthumous, unfinished novel and a real-life phenomenon, The Buccaneers follows young US women with fathers who have become newly, fabulously rich. They go to England to find aristocratic husbands, whose families welcome a cash infusion to save their historic estates. The groom brings status to the marriage; the bride brings dollars. At the centre is the guileless Nan St George (Kristine Froseth), whose four brash friends are out of their depth amidst British customs and etiquette. Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) plays Nan's mother, trying to shepherd her and her sister, Jinny (Imogen Waterhouse) through a world she herself doesn't understand. There is scheming on both sides of the culture clash, many romances and even more period costumes and wigs in a series that asks what giddy young women and impoverished dukes and lords will do for money or love.

The Buccaneers premieres on 8 November on Apple TV+ internationally

4. For All Mankind

For three seasons, this alternate history series about astronauts has been one of the best under-the-radar shows on TV, an absorbing drama about the space race that is also about society, the cost of ambition, and the now-timely theme of private companies launching their own rockets. In this fictional world, in the 1970s the Soviet Union became the first country to land on the moon, which really annoyed and motivated the US team at Nasa, including the bold astronaut Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman). The fourth season is set in 2003, when Ed and his team are part of an international colony on Mars. The show has claustrophobia in space stations, endless empty expanses on Mars, and lots of family problems back on Earth. The returning cast includes Wrenn Schmidt as Margo Madison, the former Nasa head last seen in Russia after the US discovered she was a Soviet spy.

For All Mankind premieres on 10 November on Apple TV+ internationally

5. The Curse

Nathan Fielder, creator of the mind-bending series The Rehearsal, and indie director Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems) created and star with Emma Stone in this uncommon satire of television, do-goodism, ego and culture clashes. Stone and Fielder are Asher and Whitney, a married couple starring in a home-improvement show, fixing up the town of Espanola, New Mexico, while dealing with their own fertility issues. Everyone has issues, including Safdie's character of their self-absorbed producer. When a young girl puts a curse on Asher, the series explodes into the realm of the absurd, or might be making the point that life was absurd to begin with. Barkhad Abdi (the "I am the captain now" pirate in Captain Phillips) plays the girl's father. Stone, in the same year as her Oscar-tipped performance as a Frankenstein-like creature in Poor Things, takes on another audacious role as the funny, multi-layered, slippery Whitney.  

The Curse premieres on 10 November on Paramount+

6. A Murder at the End of the World

High-tech meets Agatha Christie in this smart, atmospheric drama, with Emma Corrin (the younger Diana in The Crown) as Darby, a famous hacker and amateur detective who is invited by a tech billionaire named Andy, played by Clive Owen, to other guests at his isolated retreat in Iceland. If you think that ends well, you've never seen a murder mystery or Rian Johnson's Glass Onion. As Andy asks Darby in the trailer, "Why is it wherever you go, death follows">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });