By Caryn JamesFeatures correspondent
HBOCaryn James picks out the biggest offerings – from HBO's adaptation of hit videogame The Last of Us to Rian Johnson's murder mystery series Poker Face and reality show The Traitors.
1 Happy Valley
Seven years after the last season ended, we finally have the third and final instalment of Sally Wainwright's lifelike, emotional police drama set in Northern England. Catherine Cawood (played with brilliant down-to-earth realism by Sarah Lancashire) is about to retire from the police force in the Yorkshire town of Hebden Bridge – then a dead body points her toward the series' once-and-future villain, Tommy Lee Royce, who raped Catherine's daughter and caused her eventual suicide. The usually dashing James Norton returns in evil mode as Royce, the father of Catherine's 16-year-old grandson. With Lancashire's bracing performance and Wainwright's deft mix of family ties and detailed detective work, the series has always surpassed the tropes of the police genre. In the runup to the new season, The Guardian declared it "one of the best TV dramas of the 21st Century."
Happy Valley continues on BBC1 in the UK and will be on AMC+ in the US later this year
Netflix2 Kaleidoscope
It's choose-your-own chronology in this heist drama. Giancarlo Esposito stars as Leo Pap, mastermind of a gang trying to rob mogul Roger Salas (Rufus Sewell) of $7 billion held in his supposedly impenetrable New York City vault. The trick is that the eight episodes are designed to be watched in any order you choose (except for the finale), so that different viewers will piece together the would-be crime in different ways. Pap plays the long game, as the story covers 25 years. The episodes, each identified by a colour rather than a number, have titles like, The Blue Episode: 5 Days before The Heist and The Violet Episode: 24 Years Before the Heist. Sounds like work, but it also looks like Esposito, so smoothly criminal in Breaking Bad, is worth it.
Kaleidoscope is available now on Netflix internationally
Netflix3 The Lying Life of Adults
Based on Elena Ferrante's 2019 novel, this Italian-language series is a coming-of-age story set in Naples, familiar to readers of Ferrante's four other Neapolitan novels and their television adaptation, My Brilliant Friend (from different producers). The period is the 1990s, when teenaged Giovanna (Giordana Marengo) overhears her father tell her mother that their daughter is ugly, just like his sister Vittoria. Giovanna seeks out free-spirited Aunt Vittoria (Valeria Golino, The Morning Show), whose social status is far below that of her upscale brother's, and who takes Giovanna under her wing. Obviously, neither aunt nor niece is ugly, inside or out, but Ferrante specialises in bringing to light the vicious, hurtful comments that can change a life.
The Lying Life of Adults is available now on Netflix internationally
Netflix4 Copenhagen Cowboy
A thriller laced with the surreal, Nicholas Winding Refn's series premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, which makes sense. In its fluorescent visual look and dark, mysterious sensibility, it resembles his feature films, including The Neon Demon and Drive. The show's six episodes are set in Refn's native Copenhagen, where a woman named Miu (Angela Bundalovic) has been sold to various owners who were able to exploit her genie-like powers. Now out for revenge on those who abused her, she travels through the city's criminal underworld, where one person she encounters wonders if she is a ghost, and another asks if she is a devil. Clarity and plot have never been Refn's main concerns, but his dynamic, action-fuelled style is like no one else's.
Copenhagen Cowboy is available now on Netflix internationally
Amazon Prime Video5 The Rig
This big-budget supernatural thriller is set on an oil drilling platform in the North Sea, far off the Scottish coast. Just as the crew is about to head back to land, a mysterious fog envelops them, cutting off communication with the outside world, causing mayhem and psychological meltdowns. Imagine that feeling of the WiFi going down, multiplied exponentially. Lights flicker, fires erupt, and the crew – played by Emily Hampshire (Stevie Budd on Schitt's Creek), Martin Compston (Line of Duty), Iain Glen and Mark Bonner among others – are rightly terrified. David Macpherson, the series' creator, has said about its influences, "I am a big fan of the Alien films", a good template for a show about something monstrous stalking humans in very cramped quarters.
The Rig is available now on Amazon Prime Video internationally
Hulu6 Koala Man
This animated adult comedy is a superhero satire, set in an Australian suburb where an average middle-aged dad named Kevin (voiced by the series' creator, Michael Cusack) puts on a Koala mask, ties a home-made cape around his shoulders and goes into battle. His main targets are not supervillains, but pesky people who break the rules. "I've made it my life's mission to clean up our streets," he says, and he just might mean pick up the rubbish. Hugh Jackman is the voice of Big Greg, the egotistical head of the Town Council and Kevin's boss at his office day job, and Sarah Snook (Shiv on Succession) is Kevin's sometimes exasperated wife. The success of animated series like Bojack Horseman and Rick and Morty (Justin Roiland, that show's co-creator, is an executive producer here) have created an appetite for this kind of skewed, savvy humour.
Koala Man premieres on 9 January on Hulu in the US
Peacock7 The Traitors
Just before Christmas, this high-concept reality show based on a Dutch format was a mega-hit in the UK. That bodes well for the US iteration, which features the perpetually bemused and appealing Alan Cumming as host. The format is the same: in a Scottish castle, contestants face challenges, all the while lying and scheming as the players designated The Faithful try to root out the Traitors and avoid being "murdered" by them. This time, however, not all the players are ordinary people, as they are in the British version. The US show mixes a sales executive, a hair stylist and a yoga instructor with veterans of reality series, among them Kate Chastain of Below Deck and Brandi Glanville of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Peacock is calling this a star-studded cast. You decide. But it may be interesting to see if the players already experienced in on-camera plotting, manoeuvering and psychological trickery have an edge.
The Traitors premieres on 12 January in Peacock in the US
HBO8 The Last of Us
There's a plague-driven quarantine and zombies – one part of this much-anticipated, post-apocalyptic story is perfectly relatable today. The series, based on the groundbreaking 2013 videogame, is set 20 years after a worldwide infection has caused civilisation itself to crumble. Joel (Pedro Pascal, fresh from The Mandalorian) is hired to smuggle 14-year-old Ellie (Bella Ramsey, aka Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones, and most recently star of Lena Dunham's Catherine Called Birdy) from a quarantine zone to safety. Their road trip is prone to bad weather and filled with people ready to kill them, not to mention those nasty zombies. They also encounter guest appearances from Melanie Lynsky, Nick Offerman, Murray Bartlett and Storm Reid. At first Joel says Ellie is no more than cargo; we'll see how long that lasts. A promising indicator for the series: it was created by Craig Mazin, who did the suspenseful HBO drama Chernobyl, working with Neil Druckmann, creative director of the PlayStation game.
The Last of Us premieres on 15 January on HBO and HBO Max in the US and 16 January on Sky Atlantic and Now in the UK
Fox(Credit: Fox)9 Accused
The trend for anthology series hasn't peaked yet. This crime drama is based on the British series that ran for two seasons from 2010 to 2012, in which each episode begins in court, with a defendant waiting for a verdict. That defendant's flashbacks unveil what really happened. In this US translation, the cast and setting once again change with each instalment, with the likes of Wendell Pierce, Michael Chiklis, Margo Martindale, Abigail Breslin, Rachel Bilson and Jack Davenport cropping up. Olivia Colman won a Bafta for the British series, so the bar is set high. Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, producers of Homeland, and David Shore (House) are the creative team behind this version, and Fox teases that they are likely to include topical, resonant social justice issues.
Accused premieres on 22 January on Fox in the US
Peacock10 Poker Face
Created by Rian Johnson, this mystery-of-the-week series is a knowing throwback and homage to the days of Columbo. Natasha Lyonne plays Charlie, a private investigator with a gift for weeding out lies, who goes on the road and in each episode finds a crime to solve in a new location. The format allows for a revolving door of guest stars, among them Adrien Brody, Chloe Sevigny, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nick Nolte and Ron Perlman. Lyonne's droll, no-nonsense demeanor (on display in the mind-bending series Russian Doll) should define the tone. And the playful crime-solving with a large, starry cast is reminiscent of Johnson's Knives Out films, which make old-fashioned mysteries feel new again.
Poker Face premieres on 26 January on Peacock in the US
Apple TV+11 Shrinking
If you have ever wished that a therapist would stop asking questions and just tell you what they think, Jason Segal may be the doctor of your dreams. In this comedy, he plays Jimmy Johns, a widowed psychiatrist who copes with grief by breaking the rules and bluntly telling his patients what's wrong. Harrison Ford, whose first regular television role began just last month with the Western series 1923, gets his second here as Jimmy's friend, mentor and partner in his practice, a level-headed psychiatrist with problems of his own. Segal, who wrote the funny, touching film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, created the series with Bill Lawrence, co-creator of Ted Lasso, and Brett Goldstein, a Ted Lasso writer and producer better known for playing Roy Kent on the show. The smart, humane approach of that series echoes here, with more of an edge to the wit.
Shrinking premieres on 27 January on AppleTV+ internationally
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