Best new TV shows in March: Heavyweight series Yellowjackets and Succession make their triumphant returns

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According to a 2017 study by the Canadian Pediatric Society, high exposure to television was found to negatively affect language use and acquisition, attention, cognitive development and executive function in children under five.

Thankfully, you're not a child under five, your cognition is as developed as it's ever going to get, and executive function is pretty overrated. So fill your boots when it comes to TV! Really. Go to town.

Here are some good places to start.

Shelved

When I got laid off for the first time, I wound up spending a lot of time in Toronto's public libraries. They had a lot that I needed: they weren't my 300-square foot bachelor apartment, they had WiFi if I felt motivated to do what little freelance work I had or look for a job, but also if I just wanted to hang out and be sad, that was fine — and I probably wouldn't have been the saddest person there. Plus, you could stay there all day without buying anything. 

So having spent a lot of time in libraries, I can tell you it makes absolute sense that former The Office and Little Mosque on the Prairie writer Anthony Q. Farrell would choose to set a workplace comedy there. It's a rich setting for material. Your average downtown librarian has a constant firehose of unfiltered humanity shot at them, and is charged with creating some sort of order from that chaos, while also helping people find gardening manuals and Sidney Crosby's autobiography or whatever. That's funny. Shelved premieres March 6 at 9:30 p.m. on CTV and is streaming on CTV.ca.

- Chris Dart, web writer, CBC Arts

The Glory

If you're looking for a reason to keep that Netflix subscription, here's mine: The Glory, Season 2. The hit drama from South Korea follows Moon Dong-Eun (played by Song Hye-Kyo), who seeks revenge against her high school bullies and the adults who enabled their abuse. The first season begins as Dong-Eun embarks on her revenge plot, occasionally darting back to the past to reveal the violent episodes that drive her all-consuming grudge.

After eight tightly-wound episodes, Dong-Eun's endgame is still carefully obscured, maybe even to herself. It's clear she wants to ruin their lives, but how? What will ever feel like enough? The answers (hopefully) lie in the show's second and final season. Season 2 of The Glory starts streaming March 10 on Netflix.

- Jane van Koeverden, producer, CBC Q

UnPrisoned

Paige (Kerry Washington) is a single mom and relationship therapist whose life implodes when her ex-drug dealer dad Edwin (Delroy Lindo) gets released from prison and has to come to stay with her. Heartwarming hilarity ensues or whatever.

I would watch Kerry Washington read the Calgary phone directory, Delroy Lindo is medically incapable of delivering a bad performance, and in my head canon, Edwin is actually Rodney from Clockers, now a senior citizen and on a path to redemption. I'm in. UnPrisoned starts streaming March 10 on Disney+.

- Chris Dart, web writer, CBC Arts

Money Shot: The Pornhub Story 

What a time for Netflix to be platforming a documentary about Pornhub, just as their You star Penn Badgley has been expressing his aversion to sex on screen and their hit series Sex/Life is returning March 2 with a second season. The latter series has been satisfying a thirst for eroticism that has been sapped from the movies post-Pornhub. Money Shot, meanwhile, aims to makes sense not only of Pornhub's phenomenal success and cultural impact but the turbulence on the Canadian-owned website over the past few years. 

Pornhub has been notoriously slow to respond to requests to remove content, much of which had been posted illegally. The platform came under attack by a Christian non-profit group called Exodus Cry, which seized on illegal child pornography that was on the site. Their outcry, and a damning story about sex trafficking in the New York Times, motivated credit card companies to remove their merchant services from Pornhub — which then compromised content creators who make a legitimate living on the site.

The situation is a political mess. The documentary, which interviews Pornhub staff, activists and content creators hopefully puts a human face on a troubling situation without demonizing sex workers. Money Shot: The Pornhub Story starts streaming on Netflix March 15.

- Radheyan Simonpillai, contributor, CBC Arts

Ted Lasso 

The cheery American football coach who wormed his way into every softie's good favour returns. Ted Lasso, the fish-out-of-water comedy about a divorced man finding healing across the pond, was the rare big hit in its first season because its warmth and ceaselessly positive vibes was a balm during the pandemic. The second season dared to complicate things, with Sudeikis' Lasso suffering from anxiety and confronted by the limits to his own kindness. A late-season betrayal, where Lasso's private and emotional affairs are splashed out into the headlines, now feels a bit uncanny, given the way it's echoing Sudeikis' own private life. 

Sudeikis and ex-wife Olivia Wilde's bitter divorce has been tabloid fodder for some time, stoked in part by a very toxic stunt pulled by the Ted Lasso star. Wilde was ambushed last April by a woman serving her custody papers from Sudeikis while onstage before an industry and media audience presenting her upcoming movie Don't Worry Darling. Such antics will add another layer to the new season, as Ted Lasso fans will have to square Sudeikis' personal life with the character they love for always staying above such behaviour. Ted Lasso Season 3 starts streaming on AppleTV+ March 15.

- Radheyan Simonpillai, contributor, CBC Arts

Yellowjackets

At the end of 2021, I said that Yellowjackets was the show that best summed up the current cultural moment: "A disaster goes on much longer than expected. People turn on each other and eventually begin eating each other. A sort of bland lady you went to school with who posts Minions memes on Facebook is low-key a profoundly unhinged monster. Everyone is breaking down and the effects will be with us for the rest of our lives."

I guess things are a little less screwed up now than they were a year-and-change ago, but I think the point still stands. Misty Quigley (Christina Ricci as an adult, Samantha Hanratty as a teen) is still horror's most weirdly relatable character: an innocuous dork who is secretly an unhinged maniac. Honest to God, any of about a dozen women I went to high school with could now be Misty Quigley. 

Fun additions to this season: Lauren Ambrose — who, after more than two decades, I still get confused with Alicia Witt — is in as adult Van, we're gonna learn which ex-Yellowjackets are still in a cult, and I think things back in 1994 are gonna get REALLY grisly. Yellowjackets Season 2 starts streaming March 24 on Crave.

- Chris Dart, web writer, CBC Arts

Succession

I was a late convert to Succession. I have what I refer to as "the Ray Donovan" rule when it comes to premium cable dramas, which means that if there isn't at least one character with some redeeming, likable features to them, I won't watch it. (Ray Donovan was the worst premium cable drama of the Second Golden Age of Television and I will die on that hill.)

But Jesus this show is funny. Alan Ruck's portrayal of the bumbling libertarian idiot Connor Roy, who is somehow both the worst and the least terrible of the Roy children, is worth the watch alone.

But honestly, what I'm really hoping we get a lot of this year is the family's enfant terrible, Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin), having to actually run Heart of Midlothian, the soccer team he accidentally bought in Season 3. (He thought Hearts were his father's boyhood team, when in reality Roy family patriarch Logan — Brian Cox, who crushes everything he sees — was a supporter of Hearts' hated cross-town rival, Hibernian.) Honestly, I would watch a whole spinoff of giant asshole Roman trying to run a historically dysfunctional team in what is probably Europe's weirdest professional league. I'd want it to be written by Irvine Welsh, but like Logan Roy, Welsh is a Hibs fan, so I don't know if he'd do it. 

Also, the team's fictional purchase resulted in these very real and absolutely fire limited edition Waystar-Royco "sponsored" Hears shirts.

Right now, you're probably wondering "Chris, did you want to write about this show we're all going to watch anyway just so you could go on a weird tangent about Scottish soccer?" The answer isn't no. Succession Season 4 starts streaming March 26 on Crave.

- Chris Dart, web writer, CBC Arts

Mae Martin: SAP 

Mae Martin, the Canadian comedian who pulled a Ted Lasso by moving to the U.K., is returning to Netflix and their country with a new comedy special called SAP. Martin's stand-up comedy over the years — on tours or in her half-hour special Dope — has covered their addiction issues (with drugs and love), obsessions with Bette Midler and the awkwardness coming home to their family in Toronto. Fans are most familiar with their popular Netflix series Feel Good, where Martin plays a fictionalized version of themselves, dealing with recovery while navigating the complications of gender-fluid dating. 

SAP is Martin's first full hour, and one where they play on their Canadianness with a wilderness background. The stage is decorated with pines, shrubbery and a tree stump holding Martin's drink. The title refers to tree sap. According to a Paste Magazine review from the live show, Martin has breezy fun in SAP with an imagined moose and the possibility that Lumière from Beauty and the Beast is non-binary. But more potently, they challenge Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais, comics who made Netflix seem like a hostile space for trans and gender non-conforming people. Mae Martin: SAP starts streaming on Netflix March 28. 

- Radheyan Simonpillai, contributor, CBC Arts