Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of May’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)
New to Amazon Prime Video
‘The Idea of You’
Starts streaming: May 2
Anne Hathaway plays a middle-age woman on a wild, globe-hopping adventure with a new lover in this romantic dramedy, based on Robinne Lee’s best-selling novel. Hathaway stars as Solène, who accompanies her teenage daughter to Coachella, where she meets and discovers an instant rapport with Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), a 24-year-old lead singer of a mega-popular boy band. The movie’s director, Michael Showalter — who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jennifer Westfeldt — has shown a facility with blending low-key humor and realistic relationship angst in his films “The Big Sick” and “Spoiler Alert.” So while “The Idea of You” features fabulous-looking people and catchy songs, it’s mostly about how the two leads’ genuine yearning for each other helps them withstand some uncomfortable public scrutiny.
Also arriving:
May 9
“The GOAT” Season 1
“Maxton Hall: The World Between Us”
May 16
“Outer Range” Season 2
May 23
“The Blue Angels”
“The 1% Club”
May 24
“Dom”
May 31
“The Outlaws” Season 3
New to AMC+
‘Scrublands’ Season 1
Starts streaming: May 2
In the opening sequence of this Sundance Now mystery series, a priest (Jay Ryan) in a run-down Australian Outback town pulls out a rifle after Sunday services and kills five of his congregants. One year later, a burned-out investigative journalist (Luke Arnold) is assigned to write a short article about how the community is recovering from the trauma. But thanks to a helpful local (Bella Heathcote), the reporter quickly realizes that the official story about what happened that Sunday may be wrong. Based on a Chris Hammer novel and directed by Greg McLean (best-known for the Aussie horror classic “Wolf Creek”), the moody and twisty “Scrublands” is about a town with dark secrets and a man who risks his life and career to expose them.
Also arriving:
May 3
“Skeletons in the Closet”
May 12
“Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire” Season 2
May 13
“Harry Wild” Season 3
May 15
“In the Kitchen With Harry Hamlin” Season 1
May 17
“Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever”
May 27
“The Truth”
May 31
“Stopmotion”
New to Apple TV+
‘Dark Matter’
Starts streaming: May 8
Based on a novel by Blake Crouch (who also serves as the series’ showrunner), this trippy science fiction thriller stars Joel Edgerton as Jason, a physics professor who has a happy life with his wife (Jennifer Connelly) and their teenage son (Oakes Fegley). When Jason is attacked one night by a masked stranger, he finds himself transported to an alternate reality where he has no wife and no son — but where he does have the kind of prestigious reputation that his brilliant scientist brother (Jimmi Simpson) has always enjoyed. Once he shakes off the initial disorientation, Jason faces a choice: to accept that this new version of himself is who he was always meant to be, or to use his knowledge of quantum theory and inter-dimensional travel to embark on a quest through infinite worlds, to find his way back to his family.
‘The Big Cigar’
Starts streaming: May 17
The magnificent actor André Holland plays the Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton in “The Big Cigar,” which tells the strange but mostly true tale of his friendship with the politically progressive Hollywood producer Bert Schneider (Alessandro Nivola). When Newton was wanted for murder, Schneider reportedly helped him escape to Cuba, using a fake movie production as a cover. The mini-series recreates the headiness of the early 1970s, when various artistic, social and cultural movements were pushing hard against the establishment. This historical drama is based on a magazine article by the reporter Joshuah Bearman, whose work previously inspired the Oscar-winning movie “Argo,” a similar story about the worlds of showbiz and politics colliding.
Also arriving:
May 1
“Acapulco” Season 3
May 8
“Hollywood Con Queen”
May 22
“Trying” Season 4
New to Disney+
‘Jim Henson Idea Man’
Starts streaming: May 31
Jim Henson will always be remembered for creating the Muppets, which have been beloved since they debuted on television in 1955. But Henson was also a filmmaker, a visual artist, and a businessman shrewd enough to use the commercial appeal of his creations to bankroll his more ambitious projects, most of which were made to celebrate to the warmer side of the human spirit. For the documentary “Jim Henson Idea Man,” the director Ron Howard and his team were allowed extensive access to the Henson archives. The film combines archival clips of the Muppets with rare home-movie footage and diary entries — along with behind-the-scenes photos and sketches and new interviews with some of Henson’s collaborators — to tell the story of a visionary who built an empire out of feelings and felt.
Also arriving:
May 4
“Star Wars: Tales of the Empire”
May 5
“Monsters at Work” Season 2
May 8
“Let It Be”
May 10
“Doctor Who” Season 14
May 22
“Chip ’n’ Dale: Park Life” Season 2
May 24
“The Beach Boys”
New to Hulu
‘The Contestant’
Starts streaming: May 2
In 1998, an aspiring comedian named Tomoaki Hamatsu — nicknamed Nasubi, the Japanese word for eggplant, because of his long face — won the opportunity to compete on an extreme kind of game show. Locked in a spartan apartment and stripped naked, Nasubi was challenged to survive off whatever he could win from mail-in contests advertised in magazines. Unbeknown to him, his ordeal was broadcast to a rapt nation. Clair Titley’s documentary “The Contestant” looks back at Nasubi’s year of deprivation and isolation, which was framed for the TV audience as a hilarious and heartwarming adventure. The truth, of course, was far more complicated, which Titley covers in a film that examines how fans of reality TV can sometimes forget they’re watching — and judging — real people.
Also arriving:
May 1
“Elvis”
“Shardlake” Season 1
May 2
“Welcome to Wrexham” Season 3
May 3
“Prom Dates”
May 7
“Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story”
May 8
“In Limbo” Season 1
May 9
“Black Twitter: A People’s History”
May 10
“Biosphere”
“Eileen”
“Past Lies” Season 1
May 12
“Where the Crawdads Sing”
May 14
“The Killing Kind” Season 1
May 15
“Uncle Samsik” Season 1
May 17
“Birth/Rebirth”
“The Sweet East”
May 22
“Chief Detective 1958” Season 1
May 24
“Ferrari”
New to Max
‘Hacks’ Season 3
Starts streaming: May 2
The first two seasons of the dramedy “Hacks” followed the codependent relationship between a complacent stand-up comic, Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), and the cynical, self-sabotaging comedy writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), hired to help add edge to Deborah’s Las Vegas act. Season 2 ended with the ladies parting ways after working together on a hit comedy special; but they reunite in Season 3 as Deborah makes plans to right some old wrongs by landing a gig as a late-night talk show host. “Hacks” is about the sometimes wildly varying values of two different generations of comedians. It’s also about two women who have made a lot of messes in their lives — and have come to rely on each other to help with the cleanup.
Also arriving:
May 2
“Turtles All the Way Down”
May 3
“Stop Making Sense”
May 9
“Pretty Little Liars: Summer School”
May 10
“The Iron Claw”
May 11
“Nikki Glaser: Someday You’ll Die”
May 20
“Stax: Soulsville U.S.A.”
May 23
“Thirst with Shay Mitchell”
May 29
“MoviePass, Moviecrash”
New to Paramount+
‘Evil’ Season 4
Starts streaming: May 23
One of TV’s most unusual and entertaining dramas comes to an end with its latest season, which finds its demon-hunting heroes dealing with satanic cults and devil babies. Katja Herbers returns as Dr. Kristen Bouchard, a forensic psychologist who works alongside the Catholic priest David Acosta (Mike Colter) and the tech whiz Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi) to investigate paranormal phenomena. The job frequently puts them at odds with the mysterious sociopath and impish mischief-maker Dr. Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson). Created by Michelle and Robert King (the team behind “The Good Fight” and “Elsbeth”), “Evil” is a witty and often genuinely creepy horror procedural, which considers whether the modern world’s wickedness is supernatural in nature or just a case of humans being humans.
Also arriving:
May 1
“Behind the Music” Season 2
May 7
“Kiss the Future”
May 10
“The Chi” Season 6, Part 2
May 14
“Pillowcase Murders”
May 17
“Mourning in Lod”
“RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars” Season 9
“RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars: Untucked” Season 9
May 21
“LOLLA: The Story of Lollapalooza”
May 30
“Pyramid Game”
New to Peacock
‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’
Starts streaming: May 2
In this historical drama based on a true story, an older Jew named Lali Sokolov (Harvey Keitel) meets regularly with the aspiring author Heather Morris (Melanie Lynskey) to tell her a story he had previously kept to himself, for almost his entire life: all about how he survived Auschwitz by making himself useful to his jailers. Based on the book that the real-life Morris produced from interviews with Sokolov — a blend of unflinching Holocaust testimony and page-turning fiction — “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” portrays the moral compromises required to endure an atrocity. But it’s also about an unlikely love affair, which develops between Lali (played by Jonah Hauer-King in flashbacks) and Gita (Anna Prochniak), a woman he befriends while he’s tattooing her arm.
‘We Are Lady Parts’
Starts streaming: May 30
One of Peacock’s best foreign TV acquisitions, this British sitcom is the brainchild of the writer-director Nida Manzoor, whose work draws on her love of pop culture and her experiences growing up in a Pakistani Muslim family. Last year she released her debut feature film “Polite Society,” a martial arts comedy; and now Manzoor returns with a second season of the wonderful “We Are Lady Parts,” which stars Anjana Vasan as Amina, a dorky college student and observant Muslim who joins a radical all-female, all-Muslim punk band. In Season 1, this eclectic group of ladies became a cult success. In Season 2, they have an opportunity to record an album and grow their audience but find themselves unsure if that’s what they really want.
Also arriving:
May 3
“The American Society of Magical Negroes”
May 7
“Eurovision Song Contest 2024”
May 9
“Love Undercover” Season 1
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