From the return of HBO's holiday-resort satire to a political thriller starring Robert De Niro and the latest violent period drama from Peaky Blinders creator Stephen Knight.

After Jane Austen died, in 1817, her sister, Cassandra, destroyed many of her letters, guarding her privacy and setting generations of Janeites' and scholars' hair on fire. Miss Austen, based on Gill Hornby's bestselling novel, imagines what might have been behind all that. The series is wonderfully cast, with Keeley Hawes as Cassandra. It begins years after Jane's death, when Cassandra visits Isabella Fowle (Rose Leslie), the niece of her long-dead fiancé, with the secret purpose of trying to find letters from Jane that might be in the vicarage. In flashbacks, Synnove Karlsen is the younger Cassandra and Patsy Ferran the young Jane. Max Irons and Alfred Enoch are also in the cast, because an Austen story always needs romance. Hawes teased the show in an interview with the Guardian, saying: “It feels like a classic costume drama, in the vein of Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice. Modern takes like Bridgerton are brilliant, but this feels like part of the Austen canon, so her fans will be pleased." The Austen industry is in overdrive this year, the 250th anniversary of her birth, but few projects are as tempting as this.

Miss Austen premieres 2 February on BBC in the UK and 4 May on PBS in the US

Kaitlyn Dever, who has been great at comedy (Booksmart) and drama (2019 miniseries Unbelievable), takes on a bit of both in this fictional version of a true story. She plays Belle Gibson, an Australian influencer and con woman, who falsely said she had brain cancer and was curing it with natural ingredients and lifestyle, turning that lie into a financial empire selling apps and cookbooks. The show goes beyond her to include four other women in her orbit. One of them is under her spell, another becomes a business rival. The series is set in the early 2010s, at the dawn of Instagram, and tackles the rise of social media influencers. You can guess at its appeal. The show seems to echo the Netflix hit Inventing Anna, with Julia Garner as Anna Delvey, who masqueraded as an heiress, and was convicted of grand larceny and theft of services for her cons.

Apple Cider Vinegar premieres 6 February on Netflix internationally

Laverne Cox stars in one of the last projects executive produced by the comedy legend Norman Lear, who died in 2023 at 101. She plays Desiree, a New York art gallery owner whose business collapses, and who returns home to Mobile, Alabama after 23 years away. Putting a new gender spin on some old sitcom tropes, the premise is that her father, Harry (comedian George Wallace), a car-wash owner she hasn't spoken to in all that time, has no idea that the child he thought of as his son has transitioned. Desiree moves into her old room, and the odd-couple, city-girl-in-a-small-town jokes begin, including one that has Harry putting money in a "Pronoun Jar" whenever he accidentally calls Desiree "son". Cox has been a staple of red carpet awards coverage lately. However this series turns out, it's probably time to remember how good she was in Orange is the New Black.

Clean Slate premieres 6 February on Amazon Prime

This drama about the decades-long aftershocks from a high-school soccer team's plane crash is another show returning after such a long gap, almost two years, that you need a refresher course before watching. Last season, as if being stranded in the woods and resorting to cannibalism when they were teenage girls wasn't enough, the adult versions of the characters faced life-or-death horror at the isolated location where Lottie (Simone Kessell) has formed a cult. As the adult Shauna (Melanie Lynskey, the show's anchor) says in the third season trailer, "Someone wants us dead". Whoever it is already got........

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