Netflix: 10 of the best new TV shows to watch in February

The Tinder Swindler

Wednesday, February 2nd
Swiping right and matching with a suave millionaire may be the stuff of Tinder fantasies but for several women it became a living nightmare. The Tinder Swindler follows the curious case of Israeli fraudster Shimon Hayut who posed as a Russian oligarch and managed to catfish and con his way into the hearts of trusting dating app users. Hayut racked up eye-watering bills as he romanced these women throughout Europe with his demands becoming ever more extreme and his story ever more complicated. This tightly focused, thrilling two hour documentary shows the seedy side of social media as it unravels the tale of the Romeo scammer through the eyes of the women he swindled who eventually banded together to exact their revenge.

Murderville

Thursday, February 3rd
Based on the cult BBC 3 series Murder in Successville, Murderville cleverly splices together our love of police procedurals, true crime and our fondness for sitcoms and goofy game shows. The American version of this hybrid beast sees Will Arnett (Arrested Development) playing walking cliché Senior Detective Terry Seattle, a moustachioed old pro from the homicide squad. Each episode follows Seattle investigating his latest case, the twist being he's joined by a celebrity guest improvising their way through the story trying to figure out whodunnit. Stars such as Sharon Stone, Annie Murphy (Schitt's Creek) Conan O'Brien and Ken Jeong gamely let loose as Arnett orchestrates the chaos in this postmodern version of Cluedo.

Catching Killers – Season 2

Wednesday, February 9th
One of Netflix's most grimly compelling true crime series, Catching Killers eschews the flashy editing and sometimes sensationalist storytelling of its contemporaries preferring to focus on the facts. The series continues to explore the shattering effects that serial murders have on the wider society whilst delving into the memories of the dogged detectives and prosecutors that worked on these high profile cases. This season recalls the sniper shootings in Phoenix, Arizona, the story of Toronto's Bruce McArthur and the crimes of Dennis Rader AKA The BTK. Rader's story was the connective tissue of David Fincher's sadly defunct Mindhunter and although we may never get his take on the unsuspecting church leader and self proclaimed 'family man', Catching Killers will provide the sobering unvarnished truth about his crimes.

Love is Blind - Season 2

Friday, February 11th
The dating show that dominated our pre-Covid existence is back. Jessica and her wine-tasting dog may seem like a foggy, distant memory but Love is Blind is ready to capture the cultural conversation all over again, with its selection of hopeless romantics ready to throw themselves down the aisle with a relative stranger. Perhaps the post-lockdown world is the perfect time for the show to return as within the dating world the stakes have never been lower. Singletons are now settling for any kind of comfort after two long years of isolation. Back during its first season we looked upon these wild-eyed subjects with cynicism and scorn as their desire to be coupled up led them to falling for a disembodied voice behind a glass wall. Now after the tyranny of Zoom dating, the tiny pods of potential suitors waiting to be betrothed seems almost quaint and civilised.

Patrick Freyne: What really matters is how sickeningly rich one is

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TV guide: 21 of the best shows to watch this week, beginning tonight

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Claire Byrne gives Leo Varadkar the upper hand

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Inventing Anna

Friday, February 11th
Shonda Rhimes is the master of flashy, glamorous, gripping spectacle. The kind of confident sophisticated storytelling that used to dominate broadcast television. From Grey's Anatomy right through to Scandal and Bridgerton, Rhimes innately understands how to shape and pace a story that explodes like a powder keg; it's therefore no surprise that she would be the showrunner tasked with bringing the beguiling tale of Anna Delvey to the screen.  Adapted from the electrifying New York magazine article it details how a fake heiress fooled Manhattan high society into funding her lavish lifestyle.

Starring Ozark's Julia Garner as Delvey and Veep's Anna Chlumsky as the journalist on her trail, Inventing Anna examines ideas around the pseudo-identities that are created with ease in modern society. It's a rawkus, exhilarating trip through a rarefied world that is made tantalisingly attainable through the everyday opulence on display on Instagram.

jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy

Wednesday, February 16th
This three-part documentary attempts to assess the life and work of the confounding Kanye West. West, or Ye as he is now known, is one of the most polarising figures in recent pop culture history. A genius musician, a creative visionary, a formidable hip hop artist, an irritant, an agitator, an egotist, a mindless provocateur, all these contradictory aspects live within the maverick who commands our attention and has had the world's press in a choke-hold since 2004.

Videographers Coodie and Chike have been filming over fifteen years of pure Ye, from his early days as an emerging artist trying to prove himself, his self mythologising firmly in place to the chaotic days of his mental health issues and Trump supporting free fall.  An intimate portrait that is not a salacious hit job nor a mild hagiography, it captures Ye in all his aggravating, astounding, glory and wonders what the next chapter will bring.

Space Force – Season 2

Friday, February 18th
The American Office co-creator duo of Steve Carrell and Greg Daniels team up once again for this workplace misfits sitcom. Much maligned on its first outing even though it included a roster of supreme talent such as John Malkovich, Lisa Kudrow and the late Fred Willard, this time around the season has been shortened to just seven half hour episodes in the hope it will distill the laughs. Following on from the first season, Carrell's General Naird and his bumbling team are now under scrutiny from the new administration and will each have to prove their worth or risk leaving the Space Force entirely; whether it will be their final mission for Netflix remains to be seen.

The Cuphead Show

Friday, February 18th
Netflix's newest animation series is based on the award winning and much loved Cuphead video game. The delightful hand-drawn tribute to the vibrancy and off-kilter strangeness of 1930s cartoons won praise from fans and critics alike upon its release in 2017. The series is a lovingly put together extension of this very specific universe. A beautifully designed nostalgic cartoon comedy, it follows Cuphead and Mugman on their adventures through the surreal world of Inkwell Isles. The brothers cause mayhem on their journey falling foul of The Devil himself who makes it his mission to terrorise the hapless twosome.

Downfall: The Case Against Boeing

Friday, February 18th
Documentarian Rory Kennedy (Last Days in Vietnam) puts the aviation industry under the microscope in this bruising film. Downfall : The Case Against Boeing investigates the twin tragedies of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airline crashes of 2018 that left 346 people dead. Both planes involved in these disasters were Boeing 737- Maxes. Through interviews with engineers, employees and pilots, Kennedy's sobering documentary pieces together the flaws not only in the plane's design and manufacturing but the mistakes made through corporate greed and the constant need to innovate at any cost. With Boeing inferring that the pilots were responsible for both crashes, the film attempts to refocus this narrative with contributions from the victims family members and analysis from respected aviation and aerospace reporters.

Vikings: Valhalla

Friday, February 25th
Netflix's latest historical epic is a spin off of the ever popular Vikings series. Set 100 years after the events in the original Norse drama, it's more beards, boats and battles as they fight to survive in a new Europe. Somewhere in amongst the muscle clenching and sword wielding there is a vague storyline about The St Brice's Day Massacre where King Aethelred II of England ordered the murder of all Danes on his land. Famed Viking adventurer Leif Eriksson (Sam Corlett) takes centre stage vowing to avenge his ancestors. Showrunner Jeb Stuart – screenwriter for Die Hard and The Fugitive – is certainly bringing his action credentials to the series, destroying London Bridge, upping the colossal combat sequences and generally dispensing with any kind of Game of Thrones-style po-faced lore. There is no time for earnest contemplation in Vikings: Valhalla, this is fast-paced, pumped-up Scandi-silliness-on-steroids.