New shows this winter to watch, try — or maybe skip
With the sun setting closer to lunch than bedtime, winter is the perfect time to find all of your new binges.
Here are the buzziest new TV shows of the season to watch, try or avoid — based solely on trailers and descriptions (no spoilers here).
Watch
“Pivoting”: What, three middle-aged women grieving the death of their fourth best friend doesn’t sound like a laugh to you? Not a historically funny premise but Fox has branded “Pivoting” a comedy, and anything that puts Maggie Q, Ginnifer Goodwin and Eliza Coupe in the same room — or graveyard — is a winner. Premieres Thursday, Fox.
“The Gilded Age”: Julian Fellowes’ long-awaited followup to “Downton Abbey” is finally here with “The Gilded Age,” which appears to be a grandiose study of the most pretentious millionaires in 1880s New York society. If you’re going to make a show about obnoxious rich people with blinkers on, you’d better give them great hats. Jan. 24, HBO.
“Promised Land”: A generational epic about two Latino families vying for land in California’s wine country will almost certainly have someone’s son and someone else’s daughter sneaking around in an illicit affair. Jan. 24, ABC.
“How I Met Your Father”: “How I Met Your Mother” will go down in history as having one of the worst series finales, right behind “Dexter” and “Game of Thrones.” We can only hope that the showrunners have learned their lesson for the remake, which thrusts Hilary Duff back into the dating scene. Ultimate Nice Guy Chris Lowell is a big draw here, too, but anything to encourage the return of the rom-com is a positive. Jan. 28, Hulu.
“The Afterparty”: Like “Pivoting,” this is a series that entirely hinges on a fantastic cast. Tiffany Haddish, Sam Richardson,
Zoe Chao, Ben Schwartz, Ike Barinholtz, Ilana Glazer, Jamie Demetriou and Dave Franco solving a murdermystery at their high school reunion? Yeah, sign us up. Jan. 28, Apple TV+.
“Monarch”: A great strategy for success is to just let Susan Sarandon do whatever she wants, so if that means playing the over-the-top matriarch of a country music legacy, have at it. Give us the big hair and the big accents and the big drama. Jan. 30, Fox.
“Pam & Tommy”: We were sold on “Pam & Tommy” from the very first still image from the set: Lily James caked in fake tanner with a mass of blonde hair and Sebastian Stan covered head to toe in tattoos and hair gel. Each subsequent photo and trailer got better and better for this series sparked by the leaked sex tape of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, one of the most infamous viral moments in history. Feb. 2, Hulu.
“Inventing Anna”: The spectacular story of con woman Anna Delvey felt like it was scripted by Shonda Rhimes from the day the news broke, so it’s only fitting that Rhimes is the one to bring her to the small screen. The tale of the Russianborn fraudster who fooled the Manhattan elite is tailor-made for TV. Julia Garner stars. Feb. 11, Netflix.
“The Thing About Pam”: At some point, we as a society
should evaluate our fascination with brutal crimes, but until then, the scandalous true story about the 2011 murder of Betsy Faria and arrest of Pam Hupp is as juicy as they get, especially with a cast including Renee Zellweger, Katy Mixon, Josh Duhamel and Judy Greer. March 8, NBC.
Try “Women of the Movement”:
Emmett Till’s story should be told again and again until the lessons of the brutal 1955 murder of a young teen in the Jim Crow South are learned, because they certainly weren’t at the time. The limited series “Women of the Movement” tells the story of his mother, Mamie Till-mobley (Adrienne Warren), who turned her trauma into becoming a civil rights activist. Jan. 6, ABC.
“Single Drunk Female”: Both Chuck Lorre’s “Mom” and Freeform’s own “The Bold Type” did something special: they showed that alcoholism isn’t a death sentence, but it’s also not a problem solved with a snap of the fingers. “Single Drunk Female” looks like the successor to the crown with a messy millennial (Sofia Blackd’elia) whose rock bottom isn’t one disastrous night but rather a string of bad decisions. Jan. 20, Freeform.
“The Endgame”: Everything about “The Endgame” has been a little vague, probably (hopefully?)
by design: it’s about an international arms dealer and criminal mastermind (Morena Baccarin) and the FBI agent who captured her (Ryan Michelle Bathe). A little “Money Heist?” A little “Blacklist?” A little “White Collar?” Probably — and hopefully. If it takes all the best parts of those shows, it could be really fun. Feb. 21, NBC.
“Super Pumped”: The bizarre characters who make up Silicon Valley are rich templates for Hollywood (see: “The Social Network” and, well, “Silicon Valley”) but the successful ones aren’t — and can’t be glowing profiles of tech bros. This dramatized version of the inner
workings of ride-share app Uber and the ousting of CEO Travis Kalanick ( Joseph Gordon-levitt) has to know when to pump the brakes. Feb. 27, Showtime.
“Shining Vale”: Almost no one watched “Cougartown,” so it’s easy to write Courteney Cox off as the Type-a Monica Geller, but the “Friends” alum is actually great at playing flustered and messy. In “Shining Vale,” described as a horror comedy, she’s a former party girl who cheats on her husband and then moves the entire family into a seemingly haunted house. That’s a lot of moving pieces, but as we saw from “Trial & Error” (which no one watched either), creator and writer Jeff Astrof is really good at puzzles. March 6, Starz.
Avoid
“Naomi”: Sure, a superhero show by Ava Duvernay hits the right SEO, but please, can we set a limit on TV characters shooting fireballs out of their hands instead of just talking through their issues? Jan. 11, CW.
“Peacemaker”: The entire appeal of John Cena’s Peacemaker in “The Suicide Squad” was a big buffoon with a quick trigger finger. And yet early trailers for the sequel series are insistent on convincing us that he’s actually deep and damaged and broken, the perfect example of not even coming close to understanding the assignment.