Scrubs to Love Story: 10 of the best TV shows to watch this February

From the revival of the hit hospital sitcom to erotic thriller 56 Days, and Ryan Murphy's latest series about America's 1990s golden couple John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette.

Bruno Calvo

1. Vanished

This thriller seems to have borrowed something – at least its title and premise – from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1938 classic The Lady Vanishes, in which a passenger on a train apparently disappears into thin air. Here Kaley Cuoco (The Flight Attendant) and Sam Clafin (Daisy Jones & the Six) play Alice and Tom, a romantic couple happily planning a future together. While they are travelling from Paris to the South of France by train, she wakes from a nap and realises he is nowhere to be found. As she hunts for him at their destination, she discovers that he has a secret life which could involve lethal danger for him and for her. Even the local police mysteriously warn her to be careful. Unlike Hitchcock's film, the series offers a colourful, sunny French background to the search.

Vanished premieres 1 February on MGM+ in the US and 27 February on Prime Video in the UK

Peacock/ Elizabeth Morris

2. The 'Burbs

With films like Nope and One of Them Days, Keke Palmer has shown a knack for choosing winning projects. Now she and Jack Whitehall star in this comic horror series inspired by the 1989 film with Tom Hanks and Carrie Fisher that has gained a cultish following. Samira (Palmer) and Rob (Whitehall) move with their baby from the city to the suburbs to live in his parents' old house. Samira finds herself in Hinckley Hills, which calls itself "The safest town in America", a motto that seems bogus once she starts to suspect that a spooky-looking abandoned house in the neighbourhood hides some murderous secrets. How can the heroine of a comic series not investigate that? Julia Duffy, Mark Proksch and Paula Pell play the neighbours who join her. In episode one, look for a brief Easter Egg tribute to Hanks.

The 'Burbs premieres 8 February on Peacock in the US

Netflix/ Christopher Barr

3. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast

Lisa McGee, the creator of the beloved series Derry Girls, adds a mysterious death to her repertoire in this comic thriller about three women, friends since school and still close two decades later, who receive an email telling them a fourth, estranged friend has died. But when they travel to her wake, the body they see is not hers, which sets off an antic search to learn what happened. McGee, who created and wrote the series, has called it "a mash-up of my favorite genres, mystery and comedy". As in Derry Girls, the story revolves around female friendship, with Sinéad Keenan (Unforgotten), Roisin Gallagher and Caoilfhonn Dunne as the women who find themselves searching for the truth about their long-lost friend and possibly about themselves. And despite the mystery thread, the trailer makes its clear that the show will lean into McGee's flair for sharp, outlandish comedy.

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast premieres 12 February on Netflix internationally

AMC

4. Dark Winds

In the fourth series of this crime procedural set among the Indigenous people of America's southwest, one of television's best dramas expertly keeps evolving while staying true to its 1970s setting, its emphasis on Navajo traditions, and its focus on Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, as he constantly assesses right and wrong. In several episodes this season, Joe (Zahn McClarnon) and his colleagues on the Navajo Tribal Police travel from New Mexico to Los Angeles to search for a missing teenaged girl. Franka Potente (Run Lola Run) plays a vengeful killer who is hunting down the girl. Joe is heartbroken because his wife Emma has left him and moved to LA. And Leaphorn's fellow police detectives Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) and Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Maten) are a romantic couple, which creates thorny work-life problems. As always the story is based on a Tony Hillerman novel, this time The Ghostway (1984), with its subplot about "ghost sickness". In Navaho lore, if someone witnesses a death or is exposed to a dead body, the dead person's spirit will inhabit them. That phenomenon adds a very eerie twist for one major character.

Dark Winds premieres 15 February on AMC and AMC+ in the US

Amazon Prime Video/ Philippe Bossé

5. 56 Days

Pandemic stories might just be over. This thriller is based on Catherine Ryan Howard's bestselling novel 56 Days (2021) in which the Covid shutdown is a major plot point. The series does away with that backdrop and just focuses on the sex and murder in the story, which is plenty to deal with. Ciara (Dove Cameron) and Oliver (Avan Jogia) meet at a grocery story and quickly fall into a hot erotic relationship. Fifty-six days later, a decomposing body is found in Oliver's apartment. The show weaves back and forth in time between a single day in the police investigation and the flashbacks that reveal how Ciara and Oliver's relationship played out, who the murder victim is, and who has some violent secrets in their past. James Wan, the director/producer known for intense horror films like the Saw franchise, is behind the show, so you can expect the tension to keep ramping up.

56 Days premieres 18 February on Prime Video internationally

Disney/ Anne Marie Fox

6. Paradise

Sterling K Brown isn't in the bunker anymore. As former Secret Service Agent Xavier Collins in this dynamic series – part political thriller, part murder mystery and part post-apocalyptic drama – he and his two children have escaped a nuclear holocaust and have been living in the lush underground city that has been built, it turned out, by the uber-villain known as Sinatra, played with chilling calm by Julianne Nicholson. But now that Xavier knows his wife might still be alive above ground, he heads up there to find her in season two. "We'll be introduced to people on the outside and they sort of flash back to their lives," Brown told Variety. "If Lost and The Wire had a baby it would be Paradise." How are things above ground? Well he's riding on horseback if that's a clue. Shailene Woodley guest stars and James Marsden returns in flashbacks as the murdered US president Xavier once guarded.

Paradise premieres 23 February on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK

NBC/ Scott Gries

7. The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins

This sitcom with a mock documentary format is also an odd-couple comedy. Tracy Morgan plays Reggie Dinkins, a one-time star of the National Football League whose reputation was shattered by a gambling scandal. Daniel Radcliffe plays Arthur Tobin, an Oscar-winning but now down-on-his luck documentary filmmaker whom Reggie hires to make a film that will restore his reputation. Egos and strategies collide as the chaotic, illogical Reggie tries to control his image, while the artsy Arthur tries to keep his integrity. Erika Alexander plays Reggie's ex-wife, who is still his agent and manager, and Bobby Moynihan is his best friend, who lives in his basement. The series was created by Robert Carlock and Sam Means, longtime collaborators of Tina Fey, who is an executive producer. They all worked on 30 Rock, so it's safe to assume the show will be smarter than Reggie himself.

The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins premieres 23 February on NBC and 24 February on Peacock in the US

Disney/ Jeff Weddell

8. Scrubs

Zach Braff does not want you to call the return of his hospital-set sitcom a reboot. He told Esquire the show is more accurately a revival, bringing back the same characters and actors from the long-running series, which ended 16 years ago. Braff once again stars as JD, who was a young intern as the show started. Now in middle age, he returns to Sacred Heart Hospital, where it all began and where his pal Turk (Donald Faison) is the head of surgery. Sarah Chalke, Judy Reyes and John C McGinley from the original cast are back, along with new characters played by Vanessa Bayer and Joel Kim Booster. The JD and Turk bromance remains, but now they are 50 and complaining about their backs. And it's not as if they've been invisible all these years. Braff and Faison's television ads together for the T-Mobile phone network, singing and playing off their characters' Scrubs friendship, are pretty hard to miss.

Scrubs premieres 25 February on ABC and 26 February on Hulu in the US

Gray House Inc

9. The Gray House

Set during the US Civil War, this historical drama is inspired by the true stories of four very different Southern women – a socialite and her mother, a courtesan and a formerly enslaved woman – who become spies for the Union army, secretly sending intelligence from within the Confederacy. Mary Louise Parker plays Eliza Van Lew, but the story is more focused on Eliza's daughter, Elizabeth (Daisy Head) and the formerly enslaved Mary Jane Richards (Amethyst Davis). There are battle scenes along with the espionage in this ambitious series, entirely directed by Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields). Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman are among the executive producers of the show, which is also one of many period pieces lately to use contemporary music, with country singers including Willie Nelson and Shania Twain on the soundtrack.

The Gray House premieres 26 February on Prime Video internationally

Getty Images

10. Love Story: John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette

True romance or exploitation? This story about the meeting, marriage and deaths of John, the golden-boy scion of the Kennedy dynasty, and Carolyn, the beautiful former publicist for Calvin Klein, comes 27 years after they died in the crash of a plane JFK Jr was piloting. For the principal roles, this miniseries has gone for relative unknowns who vaguely resemble the real people: Paul Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon. Others in the cast are more familiar, with Naomi Watts as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (who died before her son married and who never met Carolyn), Alessandro Nivola as Klein and Grace Gummer as Caroline Kennedy. The show is produced by Ryan Murphy, and for all its glossy romance doesn't sugar-coat the fierce arguments the couple reportedly had. It has already been criticised by Caroline's son, Jack Schlossberg, who on Instagram said the show was "profiting off" his uncle's life and death "in a grotesque way," a post that set off a tussle in the media between him and Murphy, who then claimed Schlossberg's comments caused "threats against my personal safety."

Love Story: John F Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette premieres 12 February on FX and Hulu in the US and 13 February on Disney+ in the UK

-- 

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.