Spring is in the air—and so are at least two cocktails of radioactive elements. As we near the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, CNN is diving deep to offer up never-before-seen footage from the costliest disaster in human history, and people who experienced the events are speaking out for the first time.
Hulu, too, is taking the opportunity to go radioactive with a partly fictionalized version of the lesser known—and far less devastating—Goiânia incident, a contamination event that took place in Brazil just one year after the events of Chernobyl and killed four people.
It’s not all doom and gloom on your favorite streaming services, though: After 12 years, Lisa Kudrow is starring in the third and final season of The Comeback, a painfully funny mockumentary in which her now Emmy-winning B-list actress character, Valerie Cherish, has been tapped to star in the first AI-written sitcom. The future looks bright.
Here are our 10 picks for the best TV shows to binge in March.
Disaster: The Chernobyl Meltdown
April 26 marks the 40th anniversary of the worst nuclear accident in the history of the world, and the most expensive disaster of any kind. Yet, four decades later, the incident—and what we learned from it—remain highly relevant, as nuclear proliferation has once again become a daily talking point for Americans in the wake of our current conflict with Iran.
For anyone who needs a refresher, CNN’s four-episode miniseries, which run March 1 through March 8, will recount the terrifying details of how the collapse of a nuclear reactor, and the subsequent government cover-up of exactly what happened, have changed both the political and literal landscape of the area. The series features never-before-seen footage from inside the exclusion zone, as well as interviews with insiders who are going on record for the first time, giving this historic event a modern context.
Daredevil: Born Again
Daredevil is back for a second season—again. More than a decade after Netflix went all in on the MCU with shows like Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, and The Punisher, then suddenly canceled them all, Daredevil got a chance at redemption. Now a Disney+ production with a brand-new title, Daredevil: Born Again, got off to a slow start when a massive overhaul delayed its original premiere date. Still, star Charlie Cox, who plays the titular blind lawyer-superhero Matt Murdock, kept the character close with roles in Spider-Man: No Way Home, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Echo, and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. And fans rejoiced when the series officially returned in 2025, as the eponymous superhero once again faced off against the evil crime lord-turned-politician Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio). The show’s gritty style had led to frequent comparisons to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, which is just about the most flattering comparison a superhero project can get. Born Again’s second season arrives on March 4, with a third season already in the works.
The Dinosaurs
Although he stepped away from directing duties after the second film in the Jurassic Park franchise, Steven Spielberg has remained closely connected to the entire series as an executive producer. Now, he’s bringing that fascination with “the lost world” to this four-part Netflix docuseries, which traces the history of dinosaurs across hundreds of millions of years. Oscar winner Morgan Freeman narrates the proceedings, adding an extra oomph of gravitas to the fascinating evolutionary story of how these prehistoric creatures came to be and why they eventually went extinct. It gives viewers both a history lesson and scientific explanation for how life finds a way.
The TikTok Killer
In August 2023, 42-year-old Sevillian Esther Estepa went missing while traveling in her native Spain. While the authorities struggled to make sense of her disappearance, her family and friends took it upon themselves to investigate the digital footprint she had left behind, including text messages, videos, and social media posts. Eventually, it led them to José Jurado Montilla, aka “Dynamite,” a TikTok travel influencer who they determined was the last person to see Estepa—and may have known more about her final movements.
While a number of research studies have highlighted the negative mental health impacts of excessive social media use, Estepa’s story is evidence of where our 24/7 online culture can actually be a good thing. Especially as the police learn more about Montilla’s past. This two-part Netflix docuseries, which drops on March 6, tells Estepa’s story.
Friends Like These: The Murder of Skylar Neese
More than a decade before Esther Estepa went missing in Spain, investigators 4,000 miles away realized that social media could be the key to uncovering the truth about the death of a teenage girl in Star City, West Virginia. At approximately 12:30 am on July 6, 2012, 16-year-old Skylar Neese went missing from the apartment where she lived with her parents. Security footage captured her climbing out of her bedroom window and into a waiting car. Six months later, her body was discovered just over the state line, in Brave, Pennsylvania—just about 30 miles from her home.
Like many teens, Neese documented much of her life on social media, though using Twitter posts as an investigation tool was a “new frontier” at the time, according to authorities. The strategy paid off, however, when the unthinkable truth about how, why, and who killed Neese eventually came to light. The groundbreaking case, which eventually led to the passing of “Skylar’s Law,” is recounted in this Hulu docuseries, which arrives on March 6.
Scarpetta
From Big Little Lies to The Perfect Couple, Nicole Kidman seems to have a penchant for TV crime dramas. In this new series for Prime Video, which kicks off on March 11, the Oscar winner takes on the role of Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the fictional and forensics-forward Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia that has been at the center of nearly 30 books by novelist Patricia Cornwell.
The eight-episode series, which will drop at once, will feature dual timelines—one in which we see how Dr. Scarpetta rose to her place of prominence, and another that places her at the center of a grisly murder when she heads back to her hometown. Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis costars as Kidman’s older sister, with fellow Oscar winner Ariana DeBose as Curtis’s daughter.
Radioactive Emergency
CNN isn’t the only network going radioactive this month. On March 18, Netflix will premiere Radioactive Emergency, a five-episode docudrama about the disaster that is unleashed when a group of scavengers unearth a retired radiotherapy device at an abandoned hospital. As the intriguing find changes hands, an increasing number of people are exposed to the dangerous substance—increasing the chances of unleashing a full-on radioactive disaster.
Ultimately, a dedicated team of doctors and scientists might race against time to ensure that his chance discovery does not endanger the lives of hundreds of individuals. While it may read like a sci-fi nightmare, the series is based on a very real radioactive contamination accident that occurred in Goiânia, Brazil, on September 13, 1987, and claimed the lives of four people.
The Comeback
After starring in a megahit sitcom like Friends for a decade, it can be hard for audiences to ever shake their view of a star as their most famous character. And while millions of people will always think of Lisa Kudrow as quirky Phoebe Buffay, it’s no stretch to say that the role of Valerie Cherish—the B-list sitcom actress who is desperate to find her way back into the spotlight—is her crowning achievement.
The critically acclaimed HBO series premiered in 2005 and lasted just one season; in 2014, it returned for a shortened second season that saw the always-awkward Cherish starring in … her very own HBO series. Once again, The Comeback is coming back for a third (and final) time on March 22. This time around, we’ll see Cherish still hustling to be allowed a table at The Ivy, this time by starring in the first-ever sitcom written by AI. It’s exactly the kind of setup that plays to Kudrow’s improv training, and precisely what makes this mockumentary sitcom one of the finest pieces of cringe comedy to come along since The Larry Sanders Show, one of HBO’s earliest original efforts.
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen
Stranger Things may be over, but The Duffer Brothers aren’t done with Netflix just yet. In the case of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, they’re serving as executive producers only. Here, it’s creator-showrunner Haley Z. Boston who is taking the reins, and promising that the series will live up to its title.
There’s not a whole lot more to say about the show, as Netflix—and its creators—have only shared some very minor details: It’s very much a horror show, it follows a young couple in the week leading up to their wedding, and, well, something very bad is most likely going to happen. In an interview with Tudum, Boston placed it somewhere between Carrie and Rosemary’s Baby on the horror scale, but also promised moments of levity. All eight episodes drop on March 26.
For All Mankind
Speculative fiction has a habit of being hit-or-miss when it’s adapted. In the case of For All Mankind, which was cocreated by Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica icon Ronald D. Moore, it falls firmly into the former category—even if the series is flying wildly under the radar.
Kicking off in 1969, the Apple TV series imagines what America might look like if the Soviets had beat NASA to landing the first person on the Moon and the Space Race never ended. Though the show is a work of fiction, it mixes in real events and reimagines how they might have played out using this alternate version of history. Each season spans about a decade of time, which means that we’ll be close to the present day (well, 2010s) when Season 5, which premieres on March 27, debuts. That also gives you plenty of time to binge the first four seasons if you’re new to the series.