Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce Will Play the Spy Game on MGM+ This March

MGM+ is poised for a big winter and spring, complete with a rebrand and a host of major premieres. During a presentation at the Television Critics Association 2023 Winter Press Tour, the premium channel and streaming service previously known as Epix announced it will debut British thriller A Spy Among Friends, starring Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce, true-crime docuseries Murf the Surf, and From Season 2 in the coming months.

Leading MGM+'s new slate is A Spy Among Friends, which aired in the U.K. in late 2022. Set in England in 1963, six-episode limited series stars Lewis (Homeland, Billions) as an MI6 officer who learns his close friend and colleague (Mare of Easttown's Pearce) has been secretly working as a double agent for the KGB and has defected to Russia. Alex Cary, who previously worked with Lewis as a writer on Homeland, adapts the series from Ben Macintyre's non-fiction book of the same name. A Spy Among Friends premieres March 12 on MGM+.

The rebranded network's TCA Winter Press Tour presentation also included a panel for Murf the Surf, premiering February 5. The true-crime series tells the story of enigmatic celebrity Jack Roland Murphy, a.k.a. Murph the Surf, who organized the infamous 1964 heist of New York's Museum of Natural History. Murph the Surf marks writer/director R.J. Cutler's (Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry) first foray into the true-crime sphere, but he has some expert filmmakers to look to for guidance: Imagine Entertainment's Brian Grazer and Ron Howard serve as executive producers on the show.

On April 23, Harold Perrineau (Lost) drama From returns for its second season of supernatural horror. Season 2 will reveal hidden truths about the nightmarish town that traps all who enter and introduce mysterious newcomers who plunge the lives of the residents into chaos. When From was renewed, Epix noted that the show was the most-viewed original series premiere "in the history of the premium network," with ratings indicating that it was on track to be the network's second-most watched original series behind Godfather of Harlem.

MGM+ also announced a series of renewals and revealed details about projects currently in development. Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) drama Rogue Heroes, starring Dominic West and Connor Swindells, will return for a second season in 2024, while original series Billy the Kid will continue to chart the American outlaw's (Tom Blyth) adventures in Season 2.

Looking ahead, MGM+ has ordered an adaptation of Stephen L. Carter's best-selling novel The Emperor of Ocean Park; a drama series based on 1997 film Hoodlum; post-apocalyptic drama Earth Abides; half-hour comedy American Classic starring Kevin Kline; and sci-fi drama Ark.

On the unscripted front, the network and streamer is developing a series about the Black experience in Hollywood; disco doc Hot Stuff; The Devil Within, a true-crime series based on the hit Cavalry Audio podcast of the same name; and Wonderland Murders & the Secret History of Hollywood, an exploration of Scott Thorson's connection to the infamous Wonderland Murders from best-selling crime novelist Michael Connelly.

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.