Mindy Kaling, Kenya Barris, and a few MCU alums lead April’s TV premieres

The massive and sudden success of kicked off a whole slate of new Spielberg-riffing properties about kids getting involved with the strange or supernatural. But few leaned heavier on the mystery aspect of these stories than Simon Stålenhag’s art book , filled to the brim with wonder-heavy paintings of kids interacting with robots, dinosaurs, and more in a slightly used vision of the future. Having already been adapted into a well-received tabletop RPG, Tales has now also been given the TV treatment, with Legion writer Nathan Halperin penning all eight episodes of the semi-futuristic series. But where Stranger Things goes heavy on the horror, Tales looks to be much more built on awe—a world of curious robots, mysterious beauty, and places where snow sometimes, somehow, falls up. Starring Rebecca Hall and Duncan Joiner, it’s both gentle-looking and a little ominous. [William Hughes]

HBO and the Emmy-winning documentary studio Show Of Force shine a light on a tragic and unsettling chapter in Atlanta’s history in the five-part docuseries Atlanta’s Missing And Murdered: The Lost Children. During a two-year stretch between the late ’70s and early ’80s, an unknown killer claimed the lives of 30 Black children and young adults. The city’s populace lived in fear, then seemingly rallied around government and law enforcement officials over the arrest and conviction of Wayne Williams, a former club promoter. But systemic inequalities were exposed along with Williams’ heinous crimes, all of which are explored in Atlanta’s Missing And Murdered, along with the retesting of evidence. Many Atlanta residents, including members of the victims’ families, don’t believe Williams was guilty. The case was recently dramatized in Netflix’s Mindhunter, but this new docuseries, executive produced by John Legend and Jay Z, takes a look at other suspects and leads through unprecedented access to court documents, investigators, and journalists. [Danette Chavez]

Get ready to get your fix when Daisy Coulam’s Deadwater Fell makes its way Stateside this month. David Tennant continues in the morally compromised vein of Netflix’s , playing a man who doesn’t escape suspicion when his family is murdered in their own home. As Dr. Tom Kendrick, Tennant once more dons a veneer of respectability, but it begins to crack when his late wife’s friend Jess Milner (Cush Jumbo) looks for answers in her grief. Like Broadchurch, this four-part series explores how a tight-knit community deals with shocking violence and its aftermath. Deadwater Fell is just as eager to reckon with the past, though, as Jess and Kate’s friendship also goes under the microscope. The limited series builds gradually, determinedly to its big conclusion, but Tennant and Jumbo’s performances reveal more than any investigation. [Danette Chavez]

A lot of us make silly, impulsive promises when we’re younger; what HBO’s Run offers is the unusual proposition that some among us might actually stick to those seemingly fanciful propositions. The eight-part series stars Domhnall Gleeson and Merritt Wever as former college lovers who fulfill a 17-years-earlier promise to drop everything and meet each other on a cross-country train if they both respond to the other’s single-word text: “RUN.” As they reunite and begin to untangle each others’ complicated life stories, questions start to arise about why each of them showed up and if they’re really telling one another the truth. That’s an intriguing setup, but it’s the behind-the-scenes talent—Run is exec-produced by Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge (who also has a recurring role) and created by Waller-Bridge’s frequent collaborator Vicky Jones—that has us running to check this one out. [Alex McLevy]

For all the class tensions and repressed feelings present in his series, there’s something rather comforting about Julian Fellowes’ oeuvre—maybe it’s just the fact that we can always count on seeing clever women, gorgeous costume and set design, and reformed cads. But with Belgravia, Fellowes is trying to recapture the spirit and sprawling cast of a Charles Dickens tale rather than . The modern-day chronicler of interclass conflict and the vapors has adapted his own literary work, which he published in installments as Dickens once did, for this limited Epix series. Starring Tamsin Grieg, Alice Eve, and Tom Wilkinson, Belgravia is part wartime romance, part eulogy for an epoch past. [Danette Chavez]

Based on an Israeli series, ABC’s new sitcom offers yet another entry into the “regular guy lands fantasy woman” category. Miami baker Daniel Garcia (Victor Rasuk) somehow gets picked up by international superstar Noa Hamilton (Nathalie Kelley) after a public and humiliating breakup. Noa’s attention and Daniel’s entry into the paparazzi spotlight helps boost his Cuban American family’s bakery, which he runs with his parents and siblings. The brief trailer fails to hint at anything actually intriguing past the inevitable culture clashes over whether he can live in her world and she can live in his, etc., etc., ad nauseam. But the stunning Hamilton, who recently played Cristal in The CW reboot of , offers an intriguing, enigmatic version of the beauty character, which may bode well for the couple chemistry this series depends on. After all, ABC is billing it as part of a “date night” lineup with the latest Bachelor spinoff: Listen To Your Heart—alongside that, The Baker And The Beauty might look pretty good in comparison. [Gwen Ihnat]

FX on Hulu’s grand drama about one woman’s fight against second-wave feminism already touts one of the best ensembles in recent years. Mrs. America stars Cate Blanchett as Phyllis Schlafly, the real-life conservative woman who stood against the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Blanchett alone is enough of a powerhouse to ramp up excitement; adding Rose Byrne, Sarah Paulson, Margo Martindale, Uzo Aduba, John Slattery, and appearances from James Marsden and Niecy Nash (to name only a few!) makes it an embarrassment of riches. The product of predominantly female talent—including writer and executive producer Dahvi Waller of and —culminates in the kind of distinct, sprawling storytelling that most have to come to expect from FX. Mrs. America will undoubtedly pull double-duty as an evergreen story about the battle for inequality and a suitable escape from reality via unmitigated star power. [Shannon Miller]

creator Kenya Barris has certainly drawn from his own life in telling the story of the Johnson family in his ABC sitcom, now in its sixth season. But for #blackAF, his new Netflix comedy, Barris digs deeper still into his own history—he even plays a heightened version of himself alongside co-executive producer and co-star Rashida Jones. The star plays Barris’ wife Joya, a biracial woman raising six kids while being held to the same standard as her husband when it comes to living up to the show’s title. Barris says he aims to “flip the script” on the family sitcom with #blackAF, but also promises that we’ll get the same insights on parenting, relationships, race, and culture that Black-ish has yielded throughout the years. Guest stars include Nia Long, Ava DuVernay, Issa Rae, and Kym Whitley, which reminds us that the show was once dubbed . [Danette Chavez]