It’s a new year, so you deserve some new TV to stream … or maybe you don’t—I don’t know you.
Anyway: Here are six new series that have premiered or are premiering in January 2023 that are worth a look. It’s not a bad bunch, considering the only exceptional shows to premiere last January were HBO Max’s Peacemaker and Apple TV+’s The Afterparty.
We’ve all forgotten about Fox’s Joe Millionaire reboot, right? Good for us.
Mayfair Witches (AMC+; Sunday, Jan. 8): Aside from witches and the supernatural, the biggest suspension-of-disbelief ask of Mayfair Witches might be Alexandra Daddario (The White Lotus) as a brain doctor. In this adaptation of Anne Rice’s Lives of the Mayfair Witches, saucer-eyed neurosurgeon Rowan Fielding (Daddario) learns that she’s descended from a powerful dynasty of witches. On the downside, the Mayfairs (which include Harry Hamlin and Annabeth Gish) are dogged by a dark spirit—there’s always a catch with family.
Koala Man (Hulu; Monday, Jan. 9): Middle-aged dad Kevin (voiced by Michael Cusack) dons a koala mask and battles low-low-low-level crime in his small Australian town—who says the superhero genre is exhausted? Besides anyone who suffered through Black Adam? Besides show creator Cusack (YOLO: Crystal Fantasy, Smiling Friends), the animated Koala Man also features the Australian and New Zealander voices of Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords), Sarah Snook (Succession) and Hugh Jackman (Swordfish).
Velma (HBO Max; Thursday, Jan. 12): Looks like HBO Max didn’t get around to canceling everything. This new adult-animation series traces the high school origins of Velma Dinkley (voiced by Mindy Kaling), the future brains and lesbian icon of the Scooby-Doo gang. Scooby himself doesn’t appear, but the present-day-set and hyper-meta Velma does have Fred (Glenn Howerton), Daphne (Constance Wu), Shaggy (Sam Richardson) and a purposefully diverse cast of guest voices. Scooby purists—do they exist?—will probably hate it.
The Last of Us (HBO, HBO Max; Sunday, Jan. 15): Set 20 years after the fungal-pandemic fall of civilization, The Last of Us (based on the PlayStation videogame) follows a smuggler (Pedro Pascal, free of his Mandalorian helmet) hired to transport a teen girl (Bella Ramsey, Game of Thrones) out of a quarantine zone into a post-apocalyptic U.S. of A. Besides expansive sets and mutated monsters, The Last of Us also stars Anna Torv, Nick Offerman and Melanie Lynskey. The nine-episode first season only cost $100 million to make; no pressure.
Poker Face (Peacock; Thursday, Jan. 26): Like a road-tripping Columbo—Wiki it, kids—Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) travels the country solving criminal cases by using her innate gift of detecting when someone is lying. Sound like a quaint USA Network episodic crime throwback? Think again: Poker Face was created and partially directed by Rian Johnson, who brought us Knives Out and the nearly-as-good Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. (Let’s not get into a whole thing here.) Peacock may finally have a winner.
Wolf Pack (Paramount+; Thursday, Jan. 26): It’s about teenage werewolves, and it comes from the same showrunner—but Wolf Pack has nothing to do with Teen Wolf. Wolf Pack, based on the 2004 Edo van Belkom novel, has a subtle environmental-impact impact message, with werewolves being dislocated from the wild by forest fires and logging companies—it’s so California that it’s shocking the Red Hot Chili Peppers haven’t written a song about it. The big hype of Wolf Pack is the TV return of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Buffy the Vampire Slayer herself. Can we get a hairy Seth Green cameo?
