7 New Shows to Watch This Weekend on Netflix, Prime Video and More (September 12-14)

Laura Sanderson (Robin Wright) is protective of her adult son, Daniel (Laurie Davidson), so when he brings home his beautiful new girlfriend, Cherry (House of the Dragon‘s Olivia Cooke), she’s naturally standoffish — and just a little bit suspicious. Cherry tries to win Laurie over, but how can she ignore some troubling signs, like when the cat disappears after Cherry stays over, her jewelry goes missing or when she sees Daniel’s new girlfriend punch a man in the face? Is Cherry who she says she is? Or is it Laura who can’t let her son go?

The Girlfriend is an intriguing, six-episode thriller that genuinely keeps you guessing until the very last minute. Told from both women’s points of view, the series explores issues of motherhood and modern romance while also weaving a relatively realistic mystery. Both Wright and Cooke are fantastic as women who have valid reasons for acting like they do, even if it results in some shocking acts — including murder.

Everyone’s favorite oddball, crime-solving trio returns in Only Murders in the Building season 5, which depicts yet another murder at the Arconia. The high rent isn’t the only thing that’s lethal as the building’s beloved doorman, Lester (Teddy Coluca), is dead, and Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) have to solve his murder. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Joining the cast this season are Oscar winners Christoph Waltz and Renée Zellweger as Bash Steeg and Camilla White, two highly influential — and extremely rich — New Yorkers who are somehow involved in Lester’s death. Other new suspects include Téa Leoni’s Sofia Caccimello, a mobster’s wife with some to hide, and Logan Lerman as Jay Pflug, a young billionaire who gives nepo babies everywhere a bad name. 

Television’s biggest night happens this Sunday, September 14, as the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards take place in downtown Los Angeles. Comedian Nate Bargatze is the host this year, and if you haven’t seen any of his Netflix comedy specials, take my word for it — the dude is funny.

Severance leads all shows with its impressive 27 nominations, including Best Drama Series and Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Adam Scott. On the comedy side, Apple TV+’s hit series The Studio greenlit 23 nominations, including a nod for Seth Rogen in the Best Actor in a Comedy Series category. Other notable nominees include The Bear, Hacks, Abbott Elementary, Andor, The Penguin and Netflix’s much-talked-about limited series, Adolescence.

For a full list of this year’s Emmy nominations, click here.

We’re still waiting to find out if the excellent HBO series Mare of Easttown will ever get a second season, but the network’s new show Task looks, feels and sounds like the next best thing. That’s because it’s from Mare’s creator, Brad Ingelsby, who wrote all of the show’s seven excellent episodes. 

Like Mare, Task is a crime drama set in working-class Pennsylvania. Mark Ruffalo stars as Tom, a former priest-turned-FBI agent who is investigating a series of increasingly violent robberies involving Robbie (Tom Pelphrey). Both cop and robber are similar — they are still recovering from the loss of a loved one and feel lost and empty. That doesn’t deter them from doing what they need to do to survive, which sets up a deadly cat-and-mouse game.

Task is a terrific thriller, but it’s also an engrossing character study of blue-collar professionals just trying to get by. The show’s moral compass isn’t black and white but rather shades of gray — Tom isn’t an angel, and Robbie is more sympathetic than you might think. Task is the perfect show to binge-watch this fall — it’s an intelligent, chilly drama that you can’t stop watching, even if some tense moments make you want to look away.  

Don’t call it a reboot: Instead, The Paper is a new comedy set in the The Office universe. This spinoff uses the same mockumentary approach in chronicling its cast of bored, fed-up employees, who work at The Toledo Truth Teller, a struggling newspaper in Ohio. New editor-in-chief Ned Sampson (Domnhall Gleeson) wants to make the paper great again, but he’ll have to convince a jaded staff that he has what it takes to reverse traditional print journalism’s downward spiral.

It sounds serious, but much like the classic Steve Carell sitcom it spawned from, The Paper gets laughs from the most mundane situations, like HR training sessions and office meetings that descend into passive-aggressive power plays. Is it as great as The Office? No, but that show wasn’t great either when it first debuted. The Paper has potential and a game cast that’s committed to being just as memorable — and loony — as Michael Scott, Dwight, Creed and the rest of The Office folk.

Have you watched all of The Summer I Turned Pretty season 3 and can’t wait for Outer Banks to return in 2026? The Runarounds should fulfill your need for pretty young people suffering first-world problems in high-income suburbs.

The Runarounds centers on a rock band of recent high school graduates who struggle to realize their dreams of musical stardom. It’s not all about the music, however, as lead singer Charlie (William Lipton) falls for a girl he thinks is out of his league. Can Charlie realize his dreams of being a rock star and strike up a romance before the real world intervenes?

The Runarounds is pure fantasy, but it’s entertaining to watch Charlie and his band race against time to make their dreams a reality. Their music is good, too, with several toe-tapping originals that will make you hum along during and after the show. 

It’s fitting that just as Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty is wrapping up its third and final season, Netflix dropped My Life with the Walter Boys season 2. Both shows have a lot in common, with a teenage female protagonist dealing with the pleasures and pitfalls of growing up. For My Life’s Jackie Howard (Nikki Rodriguez), that means dealing with losing her family in a car accident and falling in love with brothers Alex (Ashby Gentry) and Cole Walter (Noah LaLonde).

Season 2 explores more of Jackie’s romance with the brothers, who both go through their own transformations to try to win her heart. Alex gains more confidence as a result of a summer spent at a rodeo camp, while Cole studies more to try to get into a good college — or any college, for that matter. My Life with the Walter Boys feels more like the classic WB show Everwood than your average soapy YA romance. In other words, it’s fairly realistic and serious, while still giving viewers plenty of melodrama to feast on over its 10 episodes.

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