New to AMC+ Etc in December

Christmas comes early for AMC+ subscribers, with the streamer uncorking a string of premieres after a lacklustre year of scripted newcomers.

Exclusive to AMC+ are Anne Rice’s Talamasca: The Secret Order (December 1), Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale (December 26) and Rectify (December 1) while being shared with Acorn TV are Steeltown Murders (December 22), a Madame Blanc Mysteries Christmas special (December 15), and new seasons of The Light in the Hall (December 1), Inside (December 1) and My Life is Murder (December 29).

The first full seasons of both supernatural series are landing at once.

Talamasca is named after a secretive society of the men and women responsible for tracking and containing the witches, vampires, and other creatures scattered around the globe that recruits a student on on the cusp of graduating law school (Nicholas Denton) it’s been tracking since his childhood.

The rest of the seasoned cast includes Elizabeth McGovern, William Fichtner and Jason Schwartzman as well as Eric Bogosian and Justin Kirk, who reprise their roles from Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire as crossover characters in the new series.

“The third instalment in AMC’s Immortal Universe … is a disappointment,” Variety said, “a disjointed and muddled attempt to turn Rice’s centuries-old secret society into a vehicle for a half-hearted spy thriller.”

The Hollywood Reporter had similar concerns but acknowledged:

But credit where it’s due: The twists and turns and red herrings and dropped subplots do lead, eventually, to a pretty good finale, with a grand reveal that’s everything you hope one will be — elegant yet surprising, linking together several seemingly disparate threads while shaking up the board in ways that could pay off in seasons to come.

And rogerebert.com praised Fichtner’s mid-season debut as “the show’s magnetic antagonist who breathes some much-needed life into the series”.

Also ready to binge is Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale, which is set in an idyllic English town where for hundreds of years witches have lived peacefully, as valued members of society.

But when a teenage rugby star dies tragically in an apparent accident, his mother launches a modern-day witch-hunt to get “justice” for his death.

“Sanctuary packs in enough twists to keep its seven hour-long episodes moving along at a brisk clip, but its more fantastical elements are deployed sparingly,” THR said but Paste magazine thought it “a run-of-the-mill genre show”,

Rectify is a four-season Sundance TV drama from the early 2010s starring Aidan Young as a Death Row inmate of nearly 20 years who returns home to a family and a world he no longer understands. Reads the blurb:

Daniel’s unexpected presence not only throws his family into disarray, it ripples out to all the people connected to his case – the prosecutor who rode the notoriety to become a State Senator, the Sheriff who pushed the boundaries of the investigation, and the entire town of Paulie, GA, that blamed him for killing one of their own. Like a deadly spark, Daniel’s release reignites the mystery, the power plays, and the questionable justice that condemned him.

The acclaimed series isn’t new to NZ viewers: it originally aired in SD on Sky’s Rialto channel and previously streamed on AMC+ sister site Acorn TV.

Another Rialto import that’s new to Acorn TV is BBC drama Steeltown Murders, a 2023 miniseries set 20 years earlier in a small Welsh town, where two sexually motivated murder cases from 1973 are about to be reopened.

It follows two vividly different timelines in which Philip Glenister plays a Detective Chief Inspector as his younger and older self “adamant not to make the same mistakes that he and the force had made once before”.

“This illuminating drama tracks the 30-year failure to find the serial killer of three young women in Wales – and its deep dive into police venality really hits a nerve,” said The Guardian.

Closer to home The Post said: “As well as offering up a murder mystery that’s full of twists and turns  … Steeltown Murders also takes the time – a bit like last year’s magnificent Sherwood – to look at the fallout a horrific crime (and one that remains unsolved for so long) can have on a community.”

S2 of The Light in the Hall opens with a double episode, with subsequent episodes rolling out weekly, as does S2 of Welsh prison dramas Inside while S4 My Life is Murder arrives ready to binge.

Sister platform Shudder has two original movie premieres — Reflection in a Dead Diamond, Influencers — a Boulet Brothers’ Holiday of Horrors special, and a festive entry in its anthology, The Haunted Season.