10 of the best TV shows you can watch in February

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9. The Gray House

Set during the American Civil War, this historical drama is inspired by the true stories of four very different Southern women – a socialite and her mother, a concubine and a formerly enslaved woman – who became spies for the Union Army, secretly sending intelligence from within the Confederacy. Mary-Louise Parker plays Eliza Van Leeuw, but the story focuses more on Eliza’s daughter, Elizabeth (Daisy Head) and the formerly enslaved Mary Jane Richards (Amethyst Davis). There are battle scenes as well as espionage in this ambitious series, directed entirely by Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields). Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman are among the show’s executive producers, and it’s also one of several historical scores to use contemporary music recently, with country singers including Willie Nelson and Shania Twain on the soundtrack.

The Gray House premieres February 26 on Prime Video globally

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10. Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette

True romance or exploitation? This story of the meeting, marriage and death of John, a golden boy scion of the Kennedy family, and Caroline, a beautiful former Calvin Klein publicist, comes 27 years after their deaths in the crash of a plane piloted by JFK Jr. For the main roles, this series chose relatively unknown characters who vaguely resembled real people: Paul Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon. Others in the cast are more familiar, with Naomi Watts as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (who died before her son married and never met Caroline), Alessandro Nivola as Cline, and Grace Gummer as Caroline Kennedy. The show is produced by Ryan Murphy, and for all its glossy romance, it doesn’t quite sugarcoat the fierce arguments the couple reportedly had. He has already been criticized by Caroline’s son, Jack Schlossberg, who said on Instagram that the show was “profiting off” on his uncle’s life and death in a “grotesque way,” a post that sparked a media tussle between him and Murphy, who then claimed that Schlossberg’s comments caused “threats against my personal safety.”

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bisset premieres February 12 on FX and Hulu in the US and February 13 on Disney+ in the UK.

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