5 best new shows: quick links
5 best new shows this week
Jane Austen: Rise Of A Genius (16 June) – ABC iview
Series. It is a truth universally acknowledged that no more than five minutes can pass without a new Jane Austen adaptation or documentary series. But this one, coinciding with the author’s birth 250 years ago, promises to be pretty good.
A BBC production streaming on ABC iview in Australia, it’s been billed as the ‘surprising story of how a self-taught young woman from a small English village defied the odds in 18th-century England, to become one of our most important and best-loved writers’.
Narrated by the actress Juliet Stevenson ,and featuring many informed Janeites, we’ll learn about the usual stuff (Austen’s birth, background, setbacks and successes) but also, we’re told, rarer tidbits that will have current and future fans salivating.
We Were Liars Season 1 (18 June) – Prime Video
Series. Based on the 2014 novel of the same name by E. Lockhart, this psych-thriller series follows Cadence Sinclair Eastman and her tight-knit inner circle, nicknamed the Liars (bodes well, hey) during their summer escapades on her grandfather’s New England private island.
The Sinclairs are American royalty – known for their good looks, old money and enviable bond – but after a mysterious accident changes Cadence’s life forever, everyone, including her beloved Liars, seems to have something to hide.
Starring Emily Alyn Lind, Shubham Maheshwari, Esther McGregor and Joseph Zada. Watch the trailer.
The Buccaneers Season 2 (18 June) – Apple TV+
Series. We’re back with a group of fun-loving, wealthy, ambitious young American women who – in Series 1 – exploded into the tightly corseted doily-bothering London of the 1870s, setting hearts racing and kicking off an Anglo-American culture clash.
Leighton Meester joins the cast for Season 2, where the Buccaneers are no longer the invaders – England is their home. In fact, they’re practically running the place.
The young women have been forced to grow up and now have to fight to be heard, as they wrestle with themes consuming women since time immemorial.
Starring Kristine Froseth, Alisha Boe, Josie Totah, Aubri Ibrag and Imogen Waterhouse. Watch the trailer.
Moonbird (19 June) – SBS On Demand
Series. Moonbird was one of only eight projects worldwide to be featured in the Short Forms Competition at Series Mania in 2025. It is a co-production between the first-ever Tasmanian Aboriginal screen production company, Kutikina Productions, and Sheoak Films. And, in a way more importantly than any of that: it looks like it’s going to be great.
The series explores the relationship between a recently sober father (Kyle Morrison) and his son (Lennox Monaghan) who attempt to reconnect through a traditional muttonbirding season on a remote Tasmanian island. We’ll see it all unfold from the son’s perspective – a moving coming-of-age with lots to say about preserving culture.
Moonbird is co-created, and co-written by Adam Thompson, and co-created, co-written and directed by Nathan Maynard. Watch the trailer.
Families Like Ours (20 June)
Series. The first television series from Thomas Vinterberg, director of the Oscar-winning film Another Round.
Over seven one-hour-ish episodes the drams considers what might happen if an entire country (i.e., Danmark) had to be evacuated due to rising seas, scattering the population across the globe and turning their former home into just a memory.
Starring Amaryllis August, Paprika Steen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas. Watch the trailer.
