New to SoHo in December

Black Narcissus, a three-part BBC drama about young nuns trying to set up a mission in the Himalayas, will premiere next month on SoHo.

Reviews were mixed for the adaptation of the Rumer Godden novel, which stars Gemma Arterton, Alessandor Nivola and Aisling Franciosi.

“From its slick marketing materials, one might expect a scary thriller set in a convent in the Himalayan mountain,” The Washington Post said.

“If you know about the novel (or have perhaps seen the 1947 film adaptation), you’d expect more of a psychological thriller threaded with forbidden desire.

“One might also tune in expecting an uplifting story of nuns starting a mission school where others have failed. It could also be about a crisis of faith.

“Too long to be a movie and too short to satisfy as a miniseries, this Black Narcissus dabbles in being all of the above, and, alas, doesn’t fully succeed at any of them.”

The series will screen 8.30 Tuesdays from December 23, a month later than on FX and Hulu in the US and around the same time as BBC1 in the UK.

Screening 8.30 Tuesdays from December 8 will be Your Honor, a Showtime drama starring Bryan Cranston as a New Orleans judge who confront his deepest convictions when his son is involved in a hit and run that embroils an organised crime family.

“Whenever there’s a character who is facing an emotional, ethical dilemma, it draws me in,” Cranston told Entertainment Weekly of his first TV series role since Breaking Bad.

“And with this dramatic construct of having your son make a mistake and panic and leave the scene of an accident, which results in a death, is disturbing and very, very possible.

“You go, ‘Yeah, I think under stress and shock, you could make a mistake like that.’ That possibility lends itself to some really terrific drama.”

The Hollywood Reporter described Transhood (SoHo2, 9.30 Tuesdays from December 8) as a “gentle and absorbing” HBO documentary series about childhood gender transition.

Filmed cinema verité-style over five years, starting in 2015, Transhood follows four Kansas City families in various stages of this conversely agonising and rewarding process. Offering no narration, expert talking heads or text interstitials, [director Sharon] Liese forgoes contextualising the culture wars and instead lets her subjects speak for themselves. Their pathos, however, doesn’t always localise where you’d expect.

Returning, for its third season, will be A Million Little Things (SoHo, 8.30 Sundays from December 13), in which the characters’ lives are upended by Covid-19, while graduating from Neon will be A Teacher (SoHo, 8.30 Mondays from December 7).