The natural world is finally blooming, and spring TV is starting to look pretty vibrant, too. If there’s one thing that unites the best new shows of April 2025, it is an irrepressible liveliness. We’ve got a relatively hot-blooded Agatha Christie adaptation, a high-spirited sitcom set in the northernmost reaches of Canada, a madcap animated comedy about a Muslim family negotiating their Americanness after 9/11, and a fast-talking ballet epic that pings back and forth across the Atlantic. Even the series that’s about a woman dying of cancer is fun, sexy, and bursting with life.
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#1 Happy Family USA (Amazon)
On Sept. 10, 2001, Rumi Hussein is just a regular Egyptian American kid—living in the suburbs, grieving his grandfather, making horny mix CDs for the teacher he’s hoping to woo into becoming the next Mary Kay Letourneau. Then comes 9/11. Suddenly, neighbors urged to “say something” when they “see something” are treating the Husseins like terrorists. Rumi’s dad responds with a frantic performance of patriotism to prove they’re the safest, most secular family in town. His mom veers in the opposite direction, embracing her given name, Sharia; donning a hijab; and trying to connect with fellow Muslims at a local mosque. Meanwhile, Rumi’s older sister Mona is struggling to come out as queer. Then an FBI agent moves in across the street.
This is some heavy material for adult animation. But if anyone can be trusted to make a light but not glib show about post-9/11 Islamophobia work, it’s Ramy Youssef, the creator behind two great dramedies that capture the experience of being Muslim in 21st century America: Hulu’s Ramy and Netflix’s Mo. A collaboration with South Park vet Pam Brady, #1 Happy Family USA is a funny and insightful kid’s eye view of growing up in a society that forces you to choose between constantly code-switching to appease bigots and being openly hated for who you are. Led by Youssef, who plays Rumi as well as his dad, the voice cast also features Alia Shawkat, Mandy Moore, Chris Redd, Kieran Culkin, and Timothy Olyphant. The lively animation was designed by Pulitzer-winning illustrator and journalist Mona Chalabi, also an executive producer.
Agatha Christie’s Towards Zero (BritBox)
Sometimes a project adds up to precisely the sum of its parts—and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that if those parts are all solid. Here we’ve got a three-episode BBC miniseries adapted from an undersung Agatha Christie novel, set in 1930s England, at the seaside mansion of the imperious, housebound Lady Tressilian (Anjelica Huston). Her beloved nephew Nevile Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a dashing tennis player, and his gorgeous new wife, Kay (Mimi Keene), are visiting the estate on their honeymoon. Also there for an extended stay: Nevile’s first wife, Audrey (Ella Lily Hyland), with whom he’s obviously not yet finished, even after a messy public divorce. The holiday household is rounded out by a fractious assemblage of relatives, employees, and lovers played by great actors like Clarke Peters, Jack Farthing, and Anjana Vasan. So there’s plenty of interpersonal friction happening long before the murder takes place.
About that murder: the conceit of Towards Zero is that it doesn’t happen until more than halfway through the series, allowing us to get to know the cast of characters before they’re split into victims and suspects. The premiere opens with Peters’ Mr. Treves, a lawyer, giving a dinner-table speech about how a murder is the end of a story that begins much earlier. This isn’t as groundbreaking as it might’ve been in Christie’s time; the result is just a more chronological version of the archetypal whodunit, with less need for flashbacks. The show’s real draw is its cast, which expands to include Matthew Rhys as a troubled detective, and a skillful adaptation that highlights the glossiest, cleverest elements of classic Christie—and adds a pinch of eros.
Dying for Sex (FX)
The title Dying for Sex evokes trashy reality series like Sex Sent Me to the ER, but the show takes its name from the acclaimed podcast that the real Molly Kochan recorded with her best friend, Nikki Boyer (an executive producer of the adaptation), about Kochan’s radical response to her Stage IV diagnosis. Rather than resign herself to a chaste marriage with a husband who treated her as a patient more than a lover, she left him and embarked upon a sexual odyssey. By the time she died, in 2019, she had explored her desires with more partners than most people would rack up in 10 lifetimes. [Read the full review.]
Étoile (Amazon)
You know you’re living in tumultuous times when even the biggest names in comfort TV feel compelled to get topical. Étoile is the latest project from Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband and frequent collaborator, Daniel Palladino. Sherman-Palladino is known for making chatty, witty, compulsively referential, female-focused shows that take a special interest in the arts; she previously spotlighted ballet in her short-lived but beloved series Bunheads. The voice behind all of the above titles is certainly recognizable in Étoile. But the show also represents a novel attempt to marry escapism with engagement. It’s just one of the many ambitious juxtapositions that make this vindication of high art in a world on fire as fascinating—and fun—as it is messy. [Read the full review.]
North of North (Netflix)
What is it about Canadian comedies? From Schitt’s Creek to Sort Of, the CBC never stops cranking out funny shows that feel gentle, wholesome, and family-oriented but also contemporary. Fans of those imports—and, really, anyone who could use a pick-me-up—should add another title from the public broadcaster to their Netflix queue: North of North. Created by Stacey Aglok-MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, both Arctic locals and members of the Inuit community, the sitcom is set among the mostly Indigenous residents of a fictional town in the country’s extreme north.
Anna Lambe gives a wonderfully charismatic performance as Siaja, a 26-year-old Inuk wife and mother who has come to realize she doesn’t want to spend her life with Ting (Kelly William), the self-absorbed heartthrob she married after high school. The rest of the cast is delightful as well, from Maika Harper as Siaja’s spitfire mom to comedy stalwart Mary Lynn Rajskub (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Larry Sanders Show) as Siaja’s exacting boss, the town manager. Bonus: the region’s sunlit snowscapes make a gorgeous backdrop.