Harlan Coben’s Run AwayFrom Thursday, January 1st, Netflix
James Nesbitt has already starred in two Harlan Coben adaptations on Netflix, with Stay Close and Missing You. He’s going for the hat-trick with this six-part psychological thriller from the pen of the prolific crime writer. Nesbitt plays Simon, whose seemingly perfect family life with his wife, Ingrid (Minnie Driver) begins to disintegrate after their teenage daughter, Paige (Ellie de Lange), inexplicably runs away from home. Simon is determined to track down his missing daughter, but when he finds her in a public park strung out on drugs, he’s confronted by a young man who seemingly has Paige under his control. That’s when things go really pear-shaped. Soon Simon is the main suspect in a murder investigation, and he has to go deep into a deadly underworld if he want to get his daughter back alive. Ruth Jones co-stars as Det Insp Elena Ravenscroft.
Beast Games From Wednesday, January 7th, Prime Video
The Beast is back with a new series of his global gameshow, which broke records for the number of contestants (1,000) and size of the cash prize ($5 million). MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, is a household name to millennials and Gen Zers thanks to his viral YouTube videos, in which he sets challenges such as filling a friend’s house with 10 million Lego bricks, playing Battleship with real ships, and going up to the same fast-food drive-through 1,000 times. The first series of Beast Games, based loosely on Squid Game, was not exactly highly acclaimed, but it proved a huge hit. The second series sees brains pitted against brute force, with 100 of the world’s strongest people facing off against 100 of the smartest. For all of them, going hell for leather to win that $5 million is a no-brainer.
His & HersFrom Thursday, January 8th, Netflix
“There are two sides to every story … which means someone is always lying,” goes the intriguing tagline of this six-episode thriller starring Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal, based on the novel by Alice Feeney. Thompson plays Anna Andrews, a broadcast journalist whose career as a news anchor in Atlanta, Georgia, is going down the tubes. Bernthal plays her separated husband, Jack Harper, a detective in the sheriff’s office in the small town of Dahlonega. When a woman is found murdered, Jack is assigned to the case, and Anna, suspecting there’s more to the case than meets the eye, persuades her boss to send her to cover the story. It soon becomes clear that everyone has a different story to tell, and believing the wrong one might get you killed.
Tehran, season threeFrom Friday, January 9th, Apple TV+
Niv Sultan returns as the Mossad hacker and agent Tamar in the third season of the Israeli political-espionage thriller. The world has changed utterly since the second series aired, in 2022, but the propulsive storyline of this acclaimed drama, a sort of Israeli take on Homeland, drives ahead regardless. The tension and suspense are ramped up as Tamar, working undercover in the Iranian capital to sabotage the regime’s nuclear-weapons programme, finds herself on her own after losing her closest allies and the support of her Mossad bosses. Season two featured Glenn Close as the formidable Marjan Montazeri. This series features Hugh Laurie as a nuclear inspector who seeks Tamar’s help. A fourth series of Tehran is in production despite the ever-present danger of it being overshadowed by real-world events.
A Thousand Blows, season twoFrom Friday, January 9th, Disney+
Seconds out … Stephen Knight, the Peaky Blinders writer, is back for another round of the series set in the cut-throat world of bare-knuckle boxing in Victorian London. Erin Doherty returns as the gangster godmother Mary Carr, leader of the notorious Forty Elephants all-woman crime gang. Stephen Graham is back as shady impresario “Sugar” Goodson, and Malachi Kirby reprises his role of Jamaican immigrant and fighter Hezekiah Moscow. It’s a year after the events in series one, and Hezekiah has had all the fight knocked out of him, while Sugar is knocking back the booze to beat the band. When Mary reappears in Wapping and announces that she’s reassembling the Forty Elephants, it’s the signal for another bout of heists, fights, double-dealing and double-crossing.
Hijack, season twoFrom Wednesday, January 14th, Apple TV+
It’s getting a bit Die Hard around here, as Idris Elba, fresh from foiling an airline hijack in season one, finds himself at the centre of another high-octane hostage situation, this time in Berlin. When one of the city’s underground trains, carrying more than 200 commuters, is hijacked, Sam Nelson, Elba’s corporate negotiator, is uniquely placed to help the passengers get out of this alive. But the authorities start to wonder why, out of all the trains in all the towns in all the world, Nelson just happens to be aboard this one.
Agatha Christie’s Seven DialsFrom Thursday, January 15th, Netflix
Helena Bonham Carter and Martin Freeman star in this new three-part Agatha Christie adaptation by Chris Chibnall, the Broadchurch creator and Doctor Who writer. But where’s Poirot – or Miss Marple, even? Seven Dials introduces one of Christie’s lesser-known sleuths, Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent, a bright young aristo who makes up with enthusiasm and determination what she lacks in experience. The crime scene is, unsurprisingly, a grand country house, where a lavish party has ended in murder. The ever-sharp and inquisitive Bundle takes it on herself to solve the mystery and unmask the murderer, but she’ll be working against the clock – several clocks, actually – to crack this case. Mia McKenna-Bruce stars as Bundle, with Bonham-Carter as Lady Caterham and Freeman as favourite recurring Christie character Supt Battle.
StealFrom Wednesday, January 21st, Prime Video
Sophie Turner plays Zara in the heist thriller Steal. Photograph: Ludovic Robert/Prime Video
Sophie Turner, from Game of Thrones, heads the cast of this high-stakes heist thriller, but we’re not in a bank or a Las Vegas casino vault. Turner plays Zara, who works in the office of a pension-fund investment company – not the sort of place that would keep bundles of cash in the stationery cupboard. But when an armed gang bursts into the office, it becomes clear that their target is the billions of pounds sitting in the pension accounts of the company’s customers. The gang force Zara and her colleague and best friend Luke (Archie Madekwe) to help them access the funds. DCI Rhys (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) tries to uncover who’s behind the heist while battling his own gambling addiction.
Marvel’s Wonder ManFrom January 28th, Disney+
Simon Williams is a young actor with big Hollywood dreams – just like most everyone else in Los Angeles – but can’t seem to land any plum roles. Then he bumps in to a fading actor, Trevor Slattery, who reveals that he’s auditioning for a new movie by the legendary auteur Von Kovak, a remake of the classic superhero film Wonder Man. Simon decides he’s going to land the lead and see his career really take off. But he’s going to be up against stiff competition. Incredibly, he gets a callback, and soon he and Trevor are summoned to Kovak’s mansion to discuss the director’s radical plan to “blur the lines between fact and fiction”. As we’re in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you can be sure that this series, starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Simon and Ben Kingsley as Trevor, will smash the lines between screen and real superheroes.
BridgertonFrom Thursday, January 29th, and Thursday, February 26th, Netflix
It’s the new year, and Lady Whistledown invites you for another social whirl around the Ton in the fourth series of the drama set in an alternative regency London in the early 19th century, where diversity and equality reign and no one bats an eyelid at obvious anachronisms. Each series focuses on one member of the aristocratic Bridgerton family; this time it’s the turn of the dashing Benedict (Luke Thompson), who’s determined to discover the identity of the beautiful and mysterious Lady in Silver (Yerin Ha) at his mother’s masquerade ball. What he doesn’t know is that she’s right under his nose: a maid named Sophie, who works for Lady Araminta Gun (Katie Leung). Benedict is torn between his attraction to Sophie and his fascination with the Lady in Silver, not realising they’re the same person. But Lady Araminta plans to marry off one of her daughters to a Bridgerton, and she’s not going to let a lowly maid sabotage her plans. Nicola Coughlan returns as Penelope, whose alter-ego as the gossip columnist Lady Whistledown is now public knowledge. Clearly, using Julie Andrews’s voiceover as camouflage didn’t work.