Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Ollie Upton/HBO, Laurence Cendrowicz/Netflix, Hopper Stone/HBO, Miya Mizuno/HBO
Once again, the arrival of a new year gives us the chance to feel optimism for the future, election year and global conflict and overall sense of doom be damned! TV, thank God, will still be here for us, and 2023 offers plenty of cause for hope. There are big new and returning series from HBO and Max — a fresh season of True Detective, Kate Winslet in The Regime, more of the dragon show — and we’ll all continue to feel at least a little perplexed about the difference between HBO and Max. FX, as always, has several promising titles, a tradition that will hopefully continue as FX comes to rest in the heart of Disney’s bosom: another season of The Bear, a new iteration of Feud, Capote vs. The Swans, and a remake of Shōgun. Broadcast shows like Abbott Elementary and Law & Order: SVU (don’t pretend you don’t watch) are finally back after a strike-lengthened hiatus. Seasons come and seasons go, but TV marches on. How comforting!
Netflix, January 4
Michelle Yeoh plays a triad leader’s wife with eyes on securing the gangster crown for herself in this series from Byron Wu and Brad Falchuk. Though The Brothers Sun sometimes feels like a grab bag of disparate elements (including furious martial-arts sequences and a recurring use of clips from The Great British Baking Show), its performances are solid, with Yeoh in particular finding new angles to an archetype she has played over and over. —Roxana Hadadi
Disney+, January 9
Echo follows vigilante Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) as she attempts to untangle herself from Kingpin’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) wrath. It’s the first Marvel project under the new banner of Marvel Spotlight, indicating that you don’t need prior MCU-canon knowledge to tune in — even if Echo is a spinoff of Hawkeye featuring characters from Netflix’s Daredevil and possibly She-Hulk (a.k.a. Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock). But hey, we’ll gloss over that for now. —Savannah Salazar
Peacock, January 12
There is so much to love about the inaugural season of The Traitors: a devilish game of social manipulation, humiliating challenges for cash, Kate Chastain. And yet the cast proved so imbalanced that the game lacked suspense; Survivor legend Cirie Fields had such an advantage over the competition — Bravolebs and normies who never stood a chance — that it felt like watching LeBron James play a pickup basketball game with children, holding the ball above his head and letting the clock run out. Season two promises to even the playing field by scrapping the commoners and doubling down on reality-TV royalty. It’s exciting and terrifying to consider Survivor killer queens Parvati Shallow and Sandra Diaz-Twine trying to out-maneuver The Challenge bros Chris “C.T.” Tamburello and Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio as Housewives drag each other at the roundtable. —Nic Juarez
HBO, January 14
This fourth True Detective installment will be the first without creator Nic Pizzolatto at the helm. It has Barry Jenkins executive-producing and Issa López showrunning and directing, Jodie Foster and Kali Reis in lead roles, and a creepy premise about Arctic researchers going missing. The description emphasizes “dark truths lying underneath the Arctic ice,” which sounds a lot like The Thing or that one episode of The X-Files. —RH
Peacock, January 25
An adult stop-motion animated series about life on an NPR talk show? Sign me up! (No, for real, I genuinely want to watch this.) —Jen Chaney
Netflix, January 25
Sofía Vergara breaks very bad in Netflix’s latest cartel drama, from Narcos showrunner Eric Newman and director Andrés Baiz, about the life of “cocaine godmother” Griselda Blanco. Though she’s best known for comedy, Vergara spent more than a decade trying to make this limited series. —Jackson McHenry
Prime Video, January 26
Lulu Wang, director of the exquisite indie drama The Farewell, has teamed up with Nicole Kidman, who frankly never stops working, for a limited series about disparate American women in Hong Kong brought together by a sudden tragedy. The series is based on Janice Y.K. Lee’s novel The Expatriates and casts an eye across differences of race and class in the metropolis. —JM
Apple TV+, January 26
Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg complete their World World II television triptych, rounding out Band of Brothers and The Pacific with a miniseries depicting the experiences of the 100th Bomb Group. It features some of the more striking aviation combat scenes this side of Top Gun: Maverick and an ensemble cast that includes Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Barry Keoghan, and Ncuti Gatwa. Butler’s accent makes an appearance too. —Nicholas Quah
Bravo, January 30
The Scandoval engulfing the tenth season of Vanderpump Rules was inescapable. Rachel Leviss has since left the show (and those coded lightning-bolt necklaces are no more), but Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix still own a home together, so expect that to be a source of spectacle this year. Also in question is whether anyone besides Tom Schwartz dares to maintain a friendship with Sandoval or if we’re in for a disjointed season in which various cast members refuse to hang out with each other. (Jax Taylor is coming back for a few episodes, so consider that an ominous sign.) —RH
FX, January 31
Tom Hollander returns to his true calling, playing a nefarious gay man in a TV miniseries. This time around, he’s Truman Capote in Ryan Murphy’s newest edition of Feud, based on Laurence Leamer’s book about the society women the writer befriended and then betrayed by using them as material in his books. The metatext, at the very least, of Murphy using actresses in a similar fashion is already compelling. The lead “swans,” as Capote called them, include Babe Paley (Naomi Watts) and Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart) with a supporting cast of Chloë Sevigny, Diane Lane, Demi Moore, Molly Ringwald, and so very many wigs. —JM
90 Day: The Single Life (TLC, January 1)
Fool Me Once (Netflix, January 1)
Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale (AMC+, January 4)
The Golden Wedding (ABC, January 4)
RuPaul’s Drag Race, season 16 (MTV, January 5)
All Creatures Great and Small, season four (PBS, January 7)
Grimsburg (Fox, January 7)
81st Annual Golden Globes (CBS, January 7)
La Brea, season three (NBC, January 9)
Break Point, season two (Netflix, January 10)
Criminal Record (Apple TV+, January 10)
The Trust: A Game of Greed (Netflix, January 10)
Ted (Peacock, January 11)
Bluey, season three, part three (Disney+, January 12)
Belgravia: The Next Chapter (MGM+, January 14)
Monsieur Spade (AMC, January 14)
Death and Other Details (Hulu, January 16)
Wild Cards (The CW, January 17)
On the Roam (Max, January 18)
Law & Order, season 23 (NBC, January 18)
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, season 25 (NBC, January 18)
Law & Order: Organized Crime, season four (NBC, January 18)
Sort Of, season three (Max, January 18)
Chad, season two (the Roku Channel, January 19)
The Woman in the Wall (Showtime, January 19)
Hazbin Hotel (Prime Video, January 19)
The Bachelor, season 28 (ABC, January 22)
Sexy Beast (Paramount+, January 25)
Hightown, season three (Starz, January 26)
Choir (Disney+, January 30)
Prime Video, February 2
Two years into Donald Glover’s Amazon deal and nearly one after Swarm, he delivers his second TV project with an adaptation of Mr. & Mrs. Smith. It was a surprise when Phoebe Waller-Bridge, originally co-creator and co-star, left after six months of work, but the ensuing cast and crew shuffling — Atlanta’s Francesca Sloane is showrunner and PEN15’s Maya Erskine took over Waller-Bridge’s role — is intriguing. And unlike the 2005 film made famous by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s real-life romance, this version sets up John (Glover) and Jane (Erskine) as strangers who pretend to be married to work together as spies, with each episode following a new mission. —RH
ABC, February 7
After publicly supporting the writers’ and actors’ strikes earlier this year, the Abbott Elementary team is back in its prime-time slot. Viewership went way up in the series’ second season, which was bumped up from 13 to 22 episodes loaded with Principal Ava’s loathable and lovable antics, steady updates on Janine and Gregory’s slow-burn romance, and a long-running arc about the tension between charter and public schools. Expect more of all that, and at least one highly cringe moment from Mr. Hill, in the third season’s 14 episodes. —RH
Netflix, February 15
The rapper and Abbott Elementary alum gets his own low-key, funny show in which he plays a multi-hyphenate hip-hop artist, loosely based on himself, who has a tendency to get recognized in unexpected places — like at a bank in the middle of a robbery, when one of the armed dudes realizes he and Vince go way back. —JC
Netflix, February 22
This generation-defining Nickelodeon animated series has already had one infamously bungled live-action film adaptation. But the series got a second burst of popularity when everyone streamed it during lockdown, and now Netflix is introducing its own live-action take on what happened after the Fire Nation’s attack. What’s intriguing about this one: a cast notably not whitewashed that includes names like Daniel Dae Kim as Ozai and a bunch of fun newcomers. What’s cause for trepidation: The Last Airbender’s original creators, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, split from the project after creative differences with Netflix. —JM
FX, February 27
Adapted from the 1975 James Clavell novel, this ten-episode limited series from married collaborators Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks stars a primarily Japanese cast (including the always-fantastic Hiroyuki Sanada). Set in 1600 at the beginning of a civil war that draws in Jesuit priests, Portuguese merchants, and questions of religion and class, Shōgun looks sweeping in scope, bloody in execution, and all-around appealing. —RH
HBO, TBA
The fact that the very good, very under-the-radar Tokyo Vice got a second season feels miraculous. Creator J.T. Rogers wrote the second season while filming the first, so there should be solid continuity as Miki Maya and Yosuke Kubozuka join the cast. But season two better start off by clarifying the fate of gangster Sato, since the endlessly riveting Show Kasamatsu, a great onscreen smoker, was the best part of season one. —RH
Genius: MLK/X (National Geographic, February 1)
66th Annual Grammy Awards (CBS, February 4)
Curb Your Enthusiasm, season 12 (HBO, February 4)
Below Deck, season 11 (Bravo, February 5)
One Day (Netflix, February 8)
Halo, season two (Paramount+, February 8)
The New Look (Apple TV+, February 14)
Love Is Blind, season six (Netflix, February 14)
Ghosts, season three (CBS, February 15)
Constellation (Apple TV+, February 21)
Pokémon Horizons: The Series (Netflix, February 23)
The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy (Prime Video, February 23)
30th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards (Netflix, February 24)
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live (AMC, February 25)
Survivor, season 46 (CBS, February 28)
Elsbeth (CBS, February 29)
Me Hereafter (Hulu, February 29)
The Tourist, season two (Netflix, February 29)
HBO, March 3
With Succession and The Menu’s Will Tracy as showrunner, The Regime is a palace-intrigue satire about an authoritarian ruler (Kate Winslet) whose grip on power starts to fail. It seems primed to be one of those shows where you’re not sure if it’s so dark it’s funny, or so funny it’s unbearably bleak. —KVA
Netflix, March 14
The hilarious portrait of a ’90s girl group that reforms in middle age moves from Peacock to its new home on Netflix. Hopefully, it will bring more musical masterpieces like “B.P.E.” and “New York Lonely Boy” with it. —JC
Apple TV+, March 15
Tip-top, grade-A material for your most history-loving, Apple TV+–subscribing older male relative, Manhunt stars Tobias Menzies (yes, please!) as Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who’s tasked with tracking down John Wilkes Booth after Lincoln’s assassination. It’s the first American true-crime story. It’s full of mutton chops. What could be better? —Kathryn VanArendonk
Apple TV+, March 20
This comedy about high-society climbers in early-’70s Palm Springs has a dream cast of comedy actors — Kristen Wiig, Laura Dern, Carol Burnett, Allison Janney, Leslie Bibb — and yes, I will watch anything they are all in together. —JC
Netflix, March 21
Foundation seems to be working pretty well for Apple TV+, so it’s time for another television attempt at adapting a notoriously unadaptable science-fiction series. This time, the creators of Game of Thrones are making a Netflix show out of the cerebral, notably abstract Chinese novel about Earth’s first alien encounter. Seems like a potentially fraught project! Fingers crossed on this one? —KVA
BMF, season three (Starz, March 1)
96th Academy Awards (ABC, March 10)
Grey’s Anatomy, season 20 (ABC, March 14)
Photographer (Disney+, March 18)
Apples Never Fall (Peacock, TBA)
AMC, TBA
Rolin Jones’s flamboyant adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel turned the corner into quiet-hit status at just the right narrative moment. Its second, even more dramatic season explores Louis and his vampire daughter Claudia’s (Delainey Hayles, recast from season one) relationship after they seemingly kill his maker and former lover, Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid). Expect both a bigger role for Assad Zaman’s nearly 600-year-old vampire, Armand, as Jones continues expanding Rice’s story across cultures and ethnicities and further spectacle as Louis and Claudia cross paths with the ruthless performance troupe the Theatre de Vampires. —RH
Netflix, May 16
It’s time for another high-society romance to blossom in the Bridgerton universe. Season three focuses on Penelope (Nicola Coughlan) and Colin (Luke Newton), a classic slow burn of a “friends to lovers” relationship. Colin, the third-eldest Bridgerton boy, is back from his international travels and dapper as ever; Penelope is still stealthily lethal with her pen as Lady Whistledown. —Devon Ivie
HBO, TBA
A docuseries about Jerrod Carmichael in the aftermath of his acclaimed HBO comedy special Rothaniel, which follows Carmichael navigating his life as both a comedian and a newly out gay man. His work deliberately toys with audience expectations and the false constructs of authenticity onstage; that stance makes for potentially fascinating documentary fodder. —KVA
Apple TV+, TBA
Colin Farrell stars as a private detective investigating the disappearance of a “beloved granddaughter of a legendary Hollywood producer” in this series directed by City of God filmmaker Fernando Meirelles. Frankly, that’s all the information you need to know that this is worth checking out. —JC
HBO, TBA
One of the many pleasures of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning epistolary novel is sinking into the writing of his wry, brilliant protagonist, a double agent juggling the expectations of a refugee in 1970s L.A. with the orders of the Communist regime back home in Vietnam. If anyone’s up for the challenge of bringing those often-conflicting worlds to the screen, it’s Oldboy director Park Chan-wook, who co-showruns the HBO series with Don McKellar. The cast includes Sandra Oh, Robert Downey Jr., and Cowboy Bebop’s Hoa Xuande. —Julie Kosin
Hulu, TBA
Lisa Vanderpump leaves behind her West Hollywood restaurants to travel to her French villa, the day-to-day running of which Hulu will document in this new series. If you ever wondered what a hybrid of Below Deck and The White Lotus would look like, here you go! —RH
The Big Door Prize, season two (Apple TV+, TBA)
The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin (Apple TV+, TBA)
Fallout (Prime Video, April 12)
We Were the Lucky Ones (Hulu, TBA)
Netflix, June
It’s an open question whether audiences in 2024 will be interested in a story about escaping a pandemic. However, Netflix’s dramedy adaptation of the canonical western-lit classic The Decameron is being created by Kathleen Jordan, showrunner of Teenage Bounty Hunters, one of the funniest and most underrated Netflix series of the past five years. Stars include Zosia Mamet, Tony Hale, and Saoirse-Monica Jackson. —KVA
HBO
The dragons are back! The dragons are back! —KVA
HBO
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet concludes its gorgeous prestige-TV run with the adaptation of The Story of the Lost Child, in which Lenù and Lila’s relationship faces the aftermath of one final, unbearable tragedy. —JK
Disney+
WandaVision kicked off Marvel’s foray into television, and now Agatha: Darkhold Diaries may be the show to revive it. Helmed by Jac Schaeffer, the same head creative behind the Elizabeth Olsen–led series, Agatha brings back Kathryn Hahn as the devious witch and Wanda’s former neighbor. Breaking free of the curse that kept her in Westview, Agatha assembles a coven of witches and allies including apparent roommates Patti LuPone and Aubrey Plaza, Sasheer Zamata, and Joe Locke. —SS
Netflix
A ton of Yellowstone wannabes got the green light since Taylor Sheridan’s series reached cultural omnipresence, but American Primeval, a period piece set in the early days of the American West, seems more Deadwood and Godless than Dutton. Director Peter Berg and star Taylor Kitsch team up for their second Netflix project after the limited series Painkiller and are joined by writer Mark L. Smith, who penned the screenplay for The Revenant. Netflix describes the show as “raw,” “violent,” and “lawless and untamed”; if that means Kitsch is sweaty most of the time, we’re in. —RH
HBO
Formerly titled Dune: The Sisterhood, this prequel spinoff about the Bene Gesserit, the formidably trained and politically nefarious witchy sisterhood of Frank Herbert’s Dune universe, was announced in summer 2019 with a mostly male creative team. Behind-the-scenes shuffling followed as a series of showrunners and cast members left and joined over the next four years. The new name suggests a clearer connection to Denis Villeneuve’s films about the promised prophet Paul Atreides, whose galaxy-disrupting actions are partially due to his mother Jessica’s membership in the group. —RH
Paramount+
The third-season finale of one of the most batshit shows on television featured a disturbing pregnancy announcement, a ritualistic celebration of the birth of some sort of freaky goblin baby, and an amazing sequence in which Andrea Martin beats the hell out of a bunch of invisible demons with a shovel. We’re counting the minutes until season four returns to outdo it all. —JC
HBO
No one can write about the incompetent antics of the people who wander the halls of government like Armando Iannucci, whether those halls are The Thick of It’s Parliament or Veep’s Washington. For The Franchise, he turns to a different, similarly broken machine — Hollywood — and a group of people trying and mostly failing to make a superhero movie. The cast is led by Himesh Patel, who was so good on Station Eleven, as well as Aya Cash, Billy Magnussen, and Richard E. Grant. Isn’t it funny this is being made by the same people trying to sell you a show about the Penguin? —JM
FX
This cannot return fast enough. I need more Carmy getting stuck in walk-in refrigerators, more Sydney making omelets with potato chips sprinkled on top, and more Richie singing Taylor Swift songs, and I need it right now! —JC
HBO
It is long past time to catch up with HBO’s investment-banking drama, on which everyone speaks very, very fast and does quite a number of drugs before betraying one another by staring fiercely at computer screens and whispering “Buy it now” into their cell phones. Kit Harington joins the cast for season three. —KVA
Hulu
Charles Yu adapts his own award-winning novel about a generic Asian American guy who longs to break out from the background of a police procedural that’s a metaphysical metaphor for his own life. Given its thoroughly weird and format-breaking nature, Interior Chinatown could be a tricky one to convert to the small screen. But Yu himself has a history in television weirdness, having worked on Legion, Westworld, and American Born Chinese. Taika Waititi executive-produces, and the series stars Jimmy O. Yang, Chloe Bennet, and Ronny Chieng. —NQ
HBO
Nearly a decade after Robert Durst’s hot-mic admission that he “killed them all, of course,” filmmaker Andrew Jarecki returns with a follow-up promising to cover everything that has happened since the real-estate scion’s arrest just hours before The Jinx’s finale aired in 2015. Durst died of COVID in prison in 2022, but that doesn’t mean this story is anywhere close to being over. —NQ
Starz
It’s the period duo you didn’t know you needed: Julianne Moore and the guy who played the gay prince in Red, White & Royal Blue. Moore’s Mary Villiers coaches her son George (played by Nicholas Galitzine, the gay prince in question) on seducing King James I. Originally produced by Sky, the series promises all sorts of sudsy period pleasures: elaborate scheming, giant ruffs, and Moore saying the line “So cockstruck it’s like a curse.” —JM
Netflix
Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel about the striving, duplicitous Tom Ripley has already been made into one classic adaptation. Creator, director, and writer Steven Zaillian (who wrote the screenplays for Moneyball, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and The Irishman) gives the story another go with Netflix’s version. Casting Andrew Scott as Ripley is already a genius move. —RH
Disney+
Disney’s ever-expanding televisual Star Wars universe has dimmed in quality recently, but there are plenty of good reasons to be excited for The Acolyte. From what little Disney’s put out about it, the series seems to zag in an intriguing direction, jumping back in the timeline to the High Republic — even before the prequels — with Amandla Stenberg as the padawan to Lee Jung-jae’s Jedi master. It’s also from an unexpected hire: Leslye Headland, co-creator of Russian Doll and writer-director of the excellent bitter comedy Bachelorette. Here’s to hoping that nudges The Acolyte closer to Andor than The Book of Boba Fett. —JM
Netflix
Netflix has been quietly building a vibrant slate of animated video-game adaptations for a few years now: Arcane, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Castlevania. The streamer looks to expand on its hit rate by taking on the Tomb Raider franchise and handing the creative reins to Powerhouse Animation Studios, previously responsible for the Castlevania anime. Hayley Atwell stars in the title role. —NQ
FX
Steven Knight has remained booked and busy writing TV the past few years with two so-so literary adaptations in 2023 (Great Expectations and All the Light We Cannot See) and three series slated for release in 2024: music-scene drama This Town, boxing-and-crime series A Thousand Blows, and this Elisabeth Moss–starring thriller. Details on The Veil are light, but its logline about two women caught in a tense tête-à-tête on a train “before thousands of lives are lost” seems terrorism adjacent. Not great, but let us reserve judgment. Josh Charles and Dali Benssalah (of Romain Gavras’s unforgettable Athena) round out the cast. —RH
The Diplomat, season two (Netflix)
Emily in Paris, season four (Netflix)
Eyes of Wakanda (Disney+)
The Night Agent, season two (Netflix)
Outer Banks, season four (Netflix)
Star Wars: The Bad Batch, season three (Disney+)
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (Disney+)
Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi, season two (Disney+)
That ’90s Show, season two (Netflix)
The Umbrella Academy, season four (Netflix)
Under the Bridge (Hulu)
X-Men ’97 (Disney+)
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man (Disney+)
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