11 of the best TV shows to watch this October

Apple TV+

10. Down Cemetery Road

Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson team up in this suspense series based on one of Mick Herron’s non-Slow Horses novels, the first of his four Zoë Boehm books. Thompson plays Zoë, in a leather jacket and with punk-white hair, who with her meek husband is partner in a struggling detective agency. Wilson plays Sarah Tucker, an Oxford-based art restorer. When an explosion destroys a house in Sarah’s suburban neighbourhood, she becomes obsessed with finding a little girl who was injured in the blast and then disappeared from the hospital, and enlists Zoë’s agency to help. As violent acts start piling up, we know much sooner than Zoë and Sarah that MI5 is somehow involved. “It’s a road movie and it’s an odyssey for these two characters,” Wilson told TV Insider. “It is in the same world and [has] the same humour and wit as Slow Horses, but actually structurally it’s quite different.” Any Slow Horses echoes are a bonus. For plenty of viewers, Emma Thompson and/or Ruth Wilson are enough.

Down Cemetery Road premieres 29 October on Apple TV+ internationally

Netflix

11. Nobody Wants This

It was a bold move to call a show Nobody Wants This, a title that would have boomeranged if no one had. But this romantic comedy about Joanne, an agnostic with a sex and dating podcast, and Noah, a rabbi, became a hit, largely due to the easy-going appeal of its stars, Kristen Bell and Adam Brody. At the end of last season, Noah was offered a job as head rabbi of a congregation, an offer that would vanish if he had a non-Jewish wife. Joanne was not ready to convert, and how their choices play out should shape the comic drama this season. Justine Lupe, as Joanne’s sister and podcast co-host, and Timothy Simons as Noah’s brother, will have relationship plots of their own. Seth Rogen and Brody’s wife Leighton Meester are among the guest stars. And the show has brought on two new showrunners who know something about comically complicated relationships – Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan, who worked together on Lena Dunham’s Girls.

Nobody Wants This premieres 23 October on Netflix internationally

—

If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can’t-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week.

For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.