Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of January’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)
New to Amazon Prime Video
‘The Night Manager’ Season 2 Starts streaming: Jan. 11
In 2016, the BBC aired an acclaimed adaptation of the John le Carré novel “The Night Manager,” with Tom Hiddleston playing Jonathan Pine, a Cairo hotelier who gets drafted into working undercover with an arms dealer. Although Le Carré never wrote a sequel, the core cast of the TV series has returned nine years later for another case. This time, Pine and Angela Burr (Olivia Colman), his liaison with an international law enforcement agency, are chasing Colombian gangsters who may have ties to British intelligence. As was the case with Season 1, the emphasis here is less on gunslinging action and more on the psychological toll it takes on conscientious people like Pine and Burr when they try to outthink some of the world’s worst criminals.
‘Steal’ Starts streaming: Jan. 21
In the opening minutes of this heist thriller, a team of high-tech thieves barge into a London financial firm that handles pension funds. By the end of the first episode, the criminals have violently terrorized the employees — including the close friends Zara (Sophie Turner) and Luke (Archie Madekwe) — and have stolen billions. “Steal” though is mostly concerned with the aftermath of the crime, as a police inspector (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) with a shady past tries to get to the bottom of who would rob pensioners and why, and whether anyone from within the company might be secretly involved. This is a twisty story about money and power, and about how the good guys and the bad guys can both make life miserable for anyone caught between them.
Also arriving:
Jan. 2 “The Tank”
Jan. 5 “Spring Fever” Season 1
Jan. 7 “Beast Games” Season 2
Jan. 19 “Judy Justice” Season 4
Jan. 28 “The Wrecking Crew”
New to AMC+
‘Chain Reactions’ Starts streaming: Jan. 9
The 1974 horror classic “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” achieved near-instant notoriety upon its initial release, grabbing attention for its provocative title and for a marketing campaign that insisted the movie was art, not trash. (“After you stop screaming, you’ll start talking about it,” an early trailer boasted.) Alexandre O. Philippe’s documentary “Chain Reactions” takes a unique approach to the film’s legacy, by presenting interviews with five of its most eloquent fans: the comedian Patton Oswalt, the Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike, the Australian critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, the novelist Stephen King and the American director Karyn Kusama. They all offer a mix of keen analysis and personal memories, describing their unshakable experiences with a motion picture that has excited and revolted audiences for more than 50 years.
Also arriving:
Jan. 1 “Marshmallow”
Jan. 2 “The Murder of Joanna Yeates”
Jan. 5 “My Life Is Murder” Season 5
Jan. 15 “Gangs of London” Season 3
Jan. 16 “Beast of War”
Jan. 15 “Hidden Assets” Season 3
Jan. 22 “London’s Gangsters”
Jan. 23 “Mother of Flies”
Jan. 24 “Planet Earth: Kingdom”
Jan. 30 “Muzzle: City of Wolves”
New to Apple TV
‘Shrinking’ Season 3 Starts streaming: Jan. 28
One of TV’s sweetest comedies returns for a third season, facing an unusual problem. What does a show about profound trauma and deep emotional problems do when most of its characters are … happy? By the end of Season 2, the main characters of “Shrinking” — the colleagues and psychotherapists Jimmy (Jason Segal), Gaby (Jessica Williams) and Paul (Harrison Ford) — had achieved states of relative stability and positivity in their romantic and family lives. There are still lingering challenges as Season 3 begins. Paul’s Parkinson’s symptoms have begun getting worse, and the widowed Jimmy is worried about his daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell), graduating from high school and moving away. But even at their most anxious and angry, these friends tend to face every predicament with dry humor and genuine compassion — which is a big part of why this sitcom feels so life-affirming.
Also arriving:
Jan. 9 “Tehran” Season 4
Jan. 14“Hijack” Season 2
Jan. 21 “Drops of God” Season 2
New to Disney+
‘Wonder Man’ Starts streaming: Jan. 27
The Marvel Comics character known as Wonder Man (alias Simon Williams) has been around since the 1960s, and over the years has cycled through multiple incarnations: as a villain, an Avenger, an anti-superhero activist and more. The Disney+ “Wonder Man” mini-series draws on one of the character’s most popular eras, when he was using his extraordinary strength for good, while also moonlighting as a Hollywood stuntman and actor. In this very meta TV adaptation, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays Simon, who is trying to land a job in a movie called “Wonder Man.” Ben Kingsley reprises his “Iron Man 3” role as Trevor Slattery, a struggling actor who in the past has put his thespian skills to work for supervillains.
Also arriving:
Jan. 2
“The Big Year” “Cheetahs Up Close with Bertie Gregory” “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”
Jan. 4 “Incredible Northern Vets” Season 2
Jan. 7 “Made in Korea” “Tron: Ares”
Jan. 9 “The Tale of Silyan” “Theme Song Takeover” Season 5
Jan. 10 “Marvel’s Spidey and His Amazing Friends” Season 4
Jan. 14 “Hey A.J.!” “Pole to Pole With Will Smith”
Jan. 16 “Agent P, Under C: Shorts”
Jan. 18 “Playdate With Winnie the Pooh: Shorts” Season 3
Jan. 28 “Disney Jr. Ariel – The Little Mermaid” Season 2
Jan. 30 “Pupstruction Construction”
New to HBO Max
‘The Pitt’ Season 2 Starts streaming: Jan. 8
The second season of HBO’s Emmy-winning hospital drama is set 10 months after Season 1, and catches up with the staff members of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center’s emergency room on a typically hectic July 4 shift. As was the case with the first run of “The Pitt,” this season follows various stories off-and-on throughout one whole day, the biggest of which involves the arrival of a new attending physician — the hyper-efficient Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) — whose style clashes with the Pitt’s more soulful Dr. Michael Robinavitch, known as Robby (Noah Wyle). Just like in a real ER, this fictional one also has patients who come and go, and crises that emerge suddenly and then resolve just as quickly. What makes the show so effective is its mix of the familiarly mundane and the nerve-rackingly dramatic.
‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Season 1 Starts streaming: Jan. 18
The third television show set in the novelist George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” universe is decidedly different from “Game of Thrones” and “House of the Dragon.” Based on a series of novellas, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” tells smaller-scale stories, with a somewhat lighter tone. Peter Claffey plays Ser Duncan the Tall, a.k.a. Dunk, a hulking “hedge knight” (a traveling swordsman, unaffiliated with any particular lord) still trying to make a name for himself in Westeros after his former master’s death. Dexter Sol Ansell plays Egg, a knowledgeable young child who volunteers to be Dunk’s squire, to help him navigate the world of nobility. The six-episode Season 1 is set at a jousting tournament, where — despite Egg’s best efforts — Dunk keeps stumbling into trouble with the seven kingdoms’ powerful families.
Also arriving:
Jan. 6 “The Cult Behind the Killer: The Andrea Yates Story”
Jan. 11 “Industry” Season 4
Jan. 12 “Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal” Season 3
Jan. 22 “Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!”
Jan. 23 “The Smashing Machine”
Jan. 27 “33 Photos From the Ghetto”
Jan. 30 “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”
New to Hulu
‘The Beauty’ Season 1 Starts streaming: Jan. 21
The producer Ryan Murphy and the “Glee” writer Matthew Hodgson are the co-creators of this horror-tinged conspiracy thriller, based on a comic book series by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley. Evan Peters plays Cooper Madsen, an F.B.I. agent who alongside his partner, Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall), is looking into a string of gruesome, seemingly inexplicable supermodel deaths. The trail leads to Paris, where they find a mysterious billionaire (Ashton Kutcher), a one-eyed assassin (Anthony Ramos) and a designer virus that transforms the people who contract it into idealized physical specimens … until the illness consumes them, that is. The star-studded cast also includes Bella Hadid, Jeremy Pope, Isabella Rossellini, Ben Platt and Vincent D’Onofrio, all populating a story about how far people will go to look attractive.
Also arriving:
Jan. 1 “Red Eye” Season 2
Jan. 2 “2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony”
Jan. 3 “Tell Me Lies” Season 3
Jan. 7 “Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska Live”
Jan. 9 “A Thousand Blows” Season 2
Jan. 10 “The Artful Dodger” Season 1
Jan. 16 “Twinless”
Jan. 19 “Hoops, Hopes & Dreams”
Jan. 27 “Wicked Little Letters”
New to Paramount+
‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Season 1 Starts streaming: Jan. 15
The newest “Star Trek” series is set in the far future, in the 32nd century, roughly a hundred years after a catastrophic event devastated the United Federation of Planets. As Starfleet slowly regroups, a group of young cadets boards the U.S.S. Athena — captained by Nahla Ake (Holly Hunter) — to learn, to bond, and to become the next generation of galactic explorers. One of those newcomers is Caleb Mir (Sandro Rosta), a reluctant recruit who has spent much of his life on the run from the law after Ake sent his mother (Tatiana Maslany) to prison. “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” has the basic format of a campus melodrama, with an eclectic cohort of students coping with rivalries, romances and academic pressure. But it’s also a science-fiction adventure, as the Athena’s residents get called into action to defend a still-rebuilding Federation.
Also arriving:
Jan. 1 “Barron’s Cove”
Jan. 8 “Girl Taken”
Jan. 9 “Coldwater”
Jan. 20 “Handsome Devil: The Charming Killer”
Jan. 22 “Canada Shore” Season 1
Jan. 28 “School Spirits” Season 3
New to Peacock
‘Ponies’ Season 1 Starts streaming: Jan. 15
The title of this action-comedy series refers to the term “persons of no interest” (or “ponies”), a descriptor in the world of espionage for people who are not the subjects of any investigation. The ponies in this show are Bea (Haley Lu Richardson) and Twila (Emilia Clarke) — two Americans in Moscow in 1977 — whose learn that their C.I.A. agent husbands have been killed on a mission. Unsure what to do next, they volunteer to work for the agency, under the guidance of a handler (Adrian Lester) who installs them as secretaries at the U.S. embassy. The brash Bea and the much more cultured Twila become unlikely friends, as they work together to gather intelligence, all while relying on the sexism of the times to keep the K.G.B. from realizing who they really work for.
Also arriving:
Jan. 8 “The Traitors” Season 4
The post The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Disney+, Amazon, HBO Max, Peacock and More in January appeared first on New York Times.
