What to watch in December 2022: best TV shows on Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Sky, BBC and Channel 4
and live on Freeview channel 276
New month, new television: with the start of December comes a whole host of new offerings to look out for.
Here’s your guide to what’s on TV across December 2022, with a look at all the highlights across both terrestrial channels and the major streaming networks.
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Hide AdWe’ve selected our top picks and the best of the rest to give you an idea of what to watch this month.
BBC
Top Picks
The teachers and students of Abbey Grove school return for a careers day, and reflect how things have changed since they saw each other last. Jack Whitehall, Mathew Horne, and Sarah Solemani all-star in this one-off special, ahead of a new series lead by Layton Williams and Charlie Wernham arriving next year.
The Philip Pullman series concludes with its adaptation of the third book in the series, The Amber Spyglass. Dafne Keen, Ruth Wilson, and James McAvoy star.
Best of the Rest
Granite Harbour | BBC One, Friday 2 December
When the death of a local oil magnate stuns Aberdeen, trainee detective Davis Lindo is thrown in at the deep end. Three-part crime series, featuring rising stars of Scottish drama.
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Hide AdDr. Max Liebermann and Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt return to solve more mysteries in 1900s Vienna: a hotbed of philosophy, science, and art, where cultures clash and ideas collide in the city’s grand cafes and opera houses. Season 3 finds Max and Oskar once again thrust into the dark underbelly of glittering Viennese society, with episodes set in a luxury fashion house, the Chinese antiquities trade, and the budding world of cinema.
ITV
Top Picks
ITVX Launch | Thursday 8 December
New streaming service ITVX is set to launch on Thursday 8 December. Espionage drama A Spy Amongst Friends, period drama The Confessions of Frannie Langton, a feature-length episode of historical sitcom Plebs, and teen drama Tell Me Everything will all be available at launch, with new series available weekly thereafter.
Best of the Rest
Chris Kamara: Lost for Words | Tuesday 13 December
Broadcaster Chris Kamara discusses his diagnosis of aphasia, and explores how the condition affects people across the UK.
Channel 4
Top Picks
Ruth, a loving and concerned mother, witnesses her teenage daughter Freya retreating into herself as she becomes more and more consumed by the pressures of social media. Kate Winslet and her real life daughter Mia Threapleton star in a feature-length edition of Dominic Savage’s I Am anthology series.
Best of the Rest
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Hide AdA festive special edition of Joe Lycett’s consumer rights comedy show, elaborating on his Qatar World Cup money-shredding performance piece earlier in the month.
Channel 5
Top Picks
Bradley Walsh: The Laugh’s On Me | Sunday 11 December
A documentary about the life and career of the host of The Chase, Bradley Walsh, from his days as a footballer to when he starred on Coronation Street.
Dave
Top Picks
Live at the Moth Club | Thursday 1 December
A comedy series blending sketches and stand-up, set in the iconic Moth Club in Hackney, featuring established comedians and emerging talent. Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Jamie Demetriou, Ellie White, Natasia Demetriou, and more star.
Sky & NOW TV
Top Picks
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Hide AdRosie Molloy is addicted to everything. After an embarrassing incident at her brother Joey’s wedding Rosie wakes up in hospital and decides to change her life. Sheridan Smith and Ardal O’Hanlan star.
Best of the Rest
Predators | Sunday 11 December
A five-part nature documentary, focusing on apex predators and charting the lives of polar bears in Canada, wild dogs in Zimbabwe, pumas in Chile, lions in Botswana, and cheetahs in Tanzania. Tom Hardy narrates.
Netflix
Top Picks
Detective Benoit Blanc travels to Greece to peel back the layers of a mystery involving a new cast of colourful suspects. At a lavish private estate on a Greek island, Blanc soon meets a distinctly disparate group of friends gathering at the invitation of billionaire Miles Bron for their yearly reunion. When someone turns up dead, everyone is a suspect
Trained and groomed by MI6, Adam Lawrence’s career seems set. But when the past catches up with him in the form of Kara, a Russian spy with whom he shares a complicated past, he is forced to question everything and everyone in his life. Charlie Cox, Olga Kurylenko, and Oona Chaplin star.
Best of the Rest
Emily in Paris S3 | Wednesday 21 December
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Hide AdFaced with two very different paths, Emily will have to decide exactly where her loyalties lie — at work and in her romantic life — and what those decisions mean for her future in France, all while continuing to immerse herself in the adventures and surprising twists and turns that life in Paris provides.
White Noise | Friday 30 December
At once hilarious and horrifying, lyrical and absurd, ordinary and apocalyptic, White Noise dramatizes a contemporary American family’s attempts to deal with the mundane conflicts of everyday life while grappling with the universal mysteries of love, death, and the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world. Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, and Don Cheadle star in Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of the Don DeLilo novel.
Amazon Prime Video
Top Picks
Three Pines | Friday 2 December
A man investigates murders in Three Pines. He sees things that others do not: the light between the cracks, the mythic in the mundane, and discovers long-buried secrets and faces a few of his own ghosts. Alfred Molina stars in this adaptation of Louise Penny’s novel Still Life.
Best of the Rest
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan Series 3 | Wednesday 21 December
Wrongly implicated in a wide-reaching conspiracy, Jack Ryan is on the run and in a race against time. John Krasinski plays the CIA analyst turned fugitive in the third series of the Tom Clancy action drama.
Disney+
Top Picks
National Treasure: Edge Of History | Wednesday 14 December
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Hide AdJess, a brilliant and resourceful dreamer, searches for answers about her family; she embarks on the adventure of a lifetime to uncover the truth about the past and save a lost Pan-American treasure. Lisette Alexis and Justin Bartha star in this television sequel to the Nic Cage movies.
Best of the Rest
If These Walls Could Sing | Friday 16 December
In this personal film of memory and discovery, director Mary McCartney guides us through nine decades to tell the stories of some of the studio’s most iconic recordings — and the people who made them happen.
Apple TV+
Top Picks
Slow Horses Season 2 | Friday 2 December
Long-buried Cold War secrets emerge and threaten to bring carnage to the streets of London. When a liaison with Russian villains takes a fatal turn, our hapless heroes must overcome their individual failings and raise their spy game in a race to prevent a catastrophic incident. Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, and Kristen Scott Thomas star.
Paramount+
Top Picks
The Flatshare | Thursday 1 December
Struggling for cash, two twenty-something Londoners Tiffany and Leon enter an unusual rental agreement: they share a flat with a single room, each of them having access to the flat for a twelve-hour period. What happens when they start to fall for one another – without actually having met? Jessica Brown Findlay and Anthony Welsh star in this adaptation of Beth O’Leary’s 2019 romantic novel.
Best of the Rest
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Hide AdJessica Chastain and Michael Shannon star in this true-story drama about the romance between country music stars Tammy Wynette and George Jones.
The Yellowstone prequel traces the history of a new generation of the Dutton family and explore the early 20th century when pandemics, drought, the end of Prohibition, and the Great Depression all plague the mountain west and the Duttons who call it home. Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren star.
And keep an eye out for…
The new Gossip Girl is returning to HBO Max for its second series on Thursday 1 December. You can watch the first series on BBC iPlayer, but a UK release date for the new episodes is yet to be announced.
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