Forget the Easter weekend. Showmax is delivering a whole month of treats for TV fans. There are loads of new (and returning) scripted series, reality shows, movies, documentaries and kids’ entertainment. We’ve cherry picked our “must watch” choices for April below, but you can find the full line-up, subject to change, here.
Series
Some big award-winners are back in April. Gritty crime series Gangs of London returns for its second season, with episodes every Monday from 10 April. Meanwhile the fourth and final season of popular South African telenovela Gomora starts on Monday, 24 April, express from DStv’s Mzansi Magic channel. Dark comedy Barry is the exact same boat – its fourth and final season will enjoy episode drops every Monday from 24 April.
Of the series returnees, we’re most excited, and surprised, to see dark survival drama Yellowjackets S2 back already, with a new episode every Saturday from 1 April (less than a week behind the US). No waiting for the whole season to drop this time! In the new set of episodes (reportedly 9 in total), the stakes are even higher. In 1996, the high school football team who survived a plane crash in the wilderness are facing a brutal winter, while in the present day, the adult survivors are grappling with the possibility that the forest’s darkness never left them.
Starring Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis and Tawny Cypress, with Lauren Ambrose, Simone Kessell, and Elijah Wood joining the grown-up cast for S2.
When it comes to new series debuts, top of our list is HBO limited series Irma Vep. French filmmaker Olivier Assayas revisits his 1996 comedy drama of the same name, with Alicia Vikander playing Mira, a disillusioned American movie star who comes to France to star in a television series adaptation of the French silent film Irma Vep. Playing a femme fatale cat burglar, Mira starts to struggle to distinguish between herself and the character she plays.
Binge all 8 episodes of Irma Vep from 7 April.
Films
Apart for our top picks below, other notable movie additions to Showmax in April are Father Stu (6 April), a heart-warming biographical drama starring Mark Wahlberg as a hellraising boxer who becomes a priest; and Michael Bay’s high-intensity action thriller Ambulance (27 April), where Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Jake Gyllenhaal’s bank heist goes wrong, forcing them to hijack an ambulance.
You probably want to have the tissues ready for road-trip comedy drama Dog, where emotionally scarred army veterans Briggs (Channing Tatum) and Lulu (a Belgian Malinois dog) race down the Pacific Coast in hopes of making it to a fellow soldier’s funeral. Along the way, they drive each other crazy, break a handful of laws, narrowly evade death, and learn to let down their guards in order to have a chance of finding happiness.
Watch Dog from 10 April.
We love intense survival thrillers, and lesser-known Australian film Gold delivers a career-best performance from Zac Efron to boot. Set in the not-too-distant future, Gold follows two desert drifters who come across the biggest gold nugget ever found. To excavate their find, one man leaves to get the necessary tools, while the other remains; enduring harsh desert elements, ravenous wild dogs, mysterious intruders and his own growing paranoia.
Watch Gold from 13 April.
Just in time for the Easter holidays is Minions: The Rise of Gru, the fifth film in the Minions film series, and second prequel to focus on the franchise’s adorable henchmen. Long before he becomes the master of evil, Gru (Steve Carell) is just an 11-year-old boy in 1970s suburbia, plotting to take over the world from his basement. Then he meets Kevin, Stuart, Bob, and Otto, aka the Minions, which will be useful in facing the Vicious 6.
Watch Minions: The Rise of Gru from 6 April.
Documentaries
On the documentaries front, our number 1 recommendation is War Dogs and I, a harrowing but heart-warming look at one man’s efforts to get his beloved dogs, Tiekie, Ollie, Jessie and Kaya, to safety when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The feature centres on South African Kobus Oliver, Ukraine Cricket CEO, who put his own life in danger to protect his furkids during a trial-filled escape from the warzone.
Watch War Dogs and I from 13 April.