Baby, it’s cold outside. Like really, really cold. So for the next few months, the wisest move might be to hunker down indoors with the TV clicker close at hand.
2019 is looking to be another incredible year on the small screen capped by the final season of Game of Thrones (in April), the series finale of The Big Bang Theory (May) and the return of Stranger Things (July 4). Along the way we’ll see a revamp of HBO’s True Detective (airing Sunday), more adventures from the USS Discovery on Star Trek: Discovery (Jan. 17), the return of the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (April) and another helping of Killing Eve (April). Fans of Big Little Lies, Ozark and Mindhunter can also expect new seasons of those series later this year. Here’s a look at 22 shows and movies we’re most excited to see. All dates are subject to change.
True Detective
Season 3 debut— Jan. 13 (HBO Canada, Crave)
Fans of True Detective will finally get to dive into the third season with back-to-back episodes. Oscar winner Mahershala Ali is Wayne Hays, a state police detective from Northwest Arkansas who traces a macabre crime that unfolds over three decades. In 1980, Will and Julie Purcell, the children of feuding parents Tom and Lucy Purcell, go missing a week after Halloween. In 2015, a true-crime documentary producer asks retired detective Hays, who originally investigated the crime, to look back on the twists of the unsolved case. Stephen Dorff and Carmen Ejogo co-star.
The Passage
Series debut— Jan. 14 (Fox)
Based on the first book in Justin Cronin’s Passage trilogy, Mark-Paul Gosselaar stars as a federal agent who helps a young girl (Saniyya Sidney) escape from a top-secret government program. Stephen King hailed the book as “one of the great achievements in American fantasy fiction.”
Roswell, New Mexico
Series debut — Jan. 15 (Showcase)
Roswell native Liz Ortecho (Jeanie Mason from Grey’s Anatomy) returns to her hometown to care for her ailing dad. But when she arrives she reconnects with her teenage crush who is now a Roswell police officer. The only hitch? It turns out he’s an alien who has kept his unearthly abilities hidden his entire life.
The Punisher
Season 2 debut — Jan. 18 (Netflix)
Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) is back in all-too-familiar territory. With Castle’s former brother-in-arms Billy Russo (Ben Barnes) slowly beginning to heal from the traumatic brain injury Frank inflicted on him, it’s only a matter of time before Billy starts to put the pieces of the puzzle back together to become the formidable Marvel villain Jigsaw. Josh Stewart is set to play a secondary antagonist by the name of John Pilgrim.
Star Trek: Discovery
Season 2 debut— Jan. 17 (Space); Jan. 18 (Crave)
Set decades before the events in the original 1960s Star Trek series, the new season will introduce Ethan Peck as a young Spock and The Inhumans’ Anson Mount as USS Enterprise captain Christopher Pike.
BREXIT
Movie— Jan. 19 (HBO Canada, Crave)
Benedict Cumberbatch loses his hair to star as Dominic Cummings in this made-for-TV film, which looks at the controversial tactics employed by the brain trust behind the 2016 “Vote Leave” campaign that led to Britain severing its ties with the European Union.
Black Monday
Series debut— Jan. 20 (Showtime, Crave)
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg exec produce this series which takes us back to Oct. 19, 1987, aka Black Monday, the worst stock market crash in Wall Street history, and the aftermath that followed. Golden Globe winner Don Cheadle and Regina Hall star.
Cardinal
Season 3 debut — Jan. 24 (CTV)
Widowed detective John Cardinal (Billy Campbell) and his partner Lise Delorme (Karine Vanasse) investigate a gruesome double murder that brings them precariously close to a doomsday cult with nothing to lose.
I Am the Night
Limited series— Jan. 28 (Bravo; available on Crave following its broadcast run)
Inspired by true events, Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins teams with Chris Pine in a story about an adopted teen whose investigation into her past brings her into the orbit of Hollywood’s most infamous crime — the Black Dahlia murder.
Velvet Buzzsaw
Movie— Feb. 1 (Netflix)
The horror-thriller from Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler, Roman J. Israel, Esq.) is set in the sinister art world of Los Angeles. “There’s a large cast and we’re moving around from person to person as we move through this world,” Gilroy told Business Insider. Jake Gyllenhaal, John Malkovich and Rene Russo star.
Proven Innocent
Series debut— Feb. 15 (Fox)
Rachelle Lefevre and Kelsey Grammer topline this legal drama about a firm that goes to bat for the wrongly convicted.
The Umbrella Academy
Series debut — Feb. 15 (Netflix)
Based on the Dark Horse comic book series created by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way, this fantasy follows six thirty-something “superheroes” who come together after the mysterious death of their billionaire adopted father. Ellen Page leads a cast that includes Mary J. Blige and Cameron Britton.
The Enemy Within
Series debut — Feb. 25 (NBC, CTV)
This thriller casts Morris Chestnut as an FBI agent who enlists an imprisoned ex-CIA operative (Jennifer Carpenter) to help track down an elusive spy.
Whiskey Cavalier
Series debut — Feb. 27 (ABC, CTV)
“It’s an action-comedy,” series star Lauren Cohan told the Sun last year. “I’m calling it an action-comedy, but it’s a drama that’s very funny with some action in it.” Scott Foley (Scandal) co-stars.
Street Legal
Series reboot— March 4 (CBC)
This revamp picks up 25 years after the original series as Olivia Novak (Cynthia Dale) finds herself starting over at a small Toronto law firm. Original cast members Eric Peterson and Anthony Sherwood are also confirmed to return for special guest appearances.
Cynthia Dale as Olivia Novak in Street Legal. (Eric Myer/CBC)
American Gods
Season 2 debut— March 11 (Amazon Prime Video)
Adapted from Neil Gaiman’s bestselling novel, the battle between Old Gods and New Gods continues in the Toronto-shot series’ second season.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Part 2— April 5 (Netflix)
Backed by her spiffy new hairdo that was unveiled at the end of Part 1, Sabrina and the colourful cast from Greendale return with the titular character wrestling to reconcile her dual nature — half-witch, half-mortal — while standing against the evil forces that threaten her, her family and the world we mere mortals inhabit.
Game of Thrones
Season 8 debut April (HBO Canada, Crave)
Winter is going to go a little longer this year. April will mark the beginning of the end for Game of Thrones fans. No one knows what mysteries the final season holds, but with a rumoured cost of $5 million per episode, the ending promises to pack a “summer tentpole-size” punch. “It’s about all of these disparate characters coming together to face a common enemy, dealing with their own past, and defining the person they want to be in the face of certain death,” co-executive producer Bryan Cogman tells Entertainment Weekly.
Killing Eve
Season 2 debut— April 7 (Bravo, Crave)
Fresh from her Golden Globe win, Sandra Oh returns alongside Jodie Comer in this thrilling crime drama that follows the MI5 agent Eve (Oh) and Villanelle (Cormer), the psychopathic assassin she’s obsessed with. What does Oh like most about the storyline in Season 2? “How Eve and Villanelle’s relationship progresses and deepens,” she tells EW.
Sandra Oh as Eve Polastri in a scene from the second season of Killing Eve. (Aimee Spinks/BBCAmerica)
Jodie Comer as Villanelle in a scene from the second season of Killing Eve. (Aimee Spinks/BBCAmerica)
Stranger Things
Season 3 debut — July 4 (Netflix)
“One summer can change everything,” or so goes the logline for the spooky third season of Stranger Things. The season’s eight episodes are finding inspiration in the unlikeliest of places — Chevy Chase’s 1985 comedy Fletch. “The Duffers are so specific each year with the movies,” series star David Harbour told Variety of the show’s creators, Matt and Ross Duffer. “And Fletch is one movie we get to play around and have some fun with this season, which you wouldn’t expect from Stranger Things and you wouldn’t expect from the Spielberg universe and you certainly wouldn’t expect from a darker season.” Expect a new setting for some of the action — Starcourt, Hawkins’ new mall.
Also coming later in the year:
Star Wars: The Mandalorian
Set in between the events of 1983’s Return of the Jedi and 2015’s The Force Awakens, this new stand-alone series follows the adventures of a lone gunfighter played by Narcos star Pedro Pascal.
The Mandalorian is set after the fall of the Empire and before the emergence of the First Order
The Twilight Zone
Get Out director Jordan Peele is set to reboot the paranormal anthology series from creator Rod Serling. In addition to Greg Kinnear, Steven Yeun and Adam Scott, The Big Sick’s Kumail Nanjiani will star in his own episode.
Twitter: @markhdaniell
mdaniell@postmedia.com
