From the return of HBO's award-winning medical drama to a new Game of Thrones prequel and the latest Harlan Coben mystery on Netflix.

1. The Night Manager

It has been nearly a decade since the dynamic adaptation of John le Carré's 1993 novel became a huge critical and popular success. At last, a second season continues the story of Jonathan Pine, the efficient hotel night manager who became an even more efficient spy. But that first run took the story to the end of the novel, and le Carré died in 2020 – so its adapter David Farr had to start from scratch for this one. Tom Hiddleston once again stars as Pine, whose looks, charm and quick wit enabled him to take down an arms dealer. He is now entrenched at MI6, working quietly in a London office, when he goes rogue and follows yet another arms dealer all the way to Colombia. Olivia Colman returns in a supporting role as Angela Burr, who recruited Pine to the agency last time. Among the new characters, Diego Calva plays Teddy Dos Santos, the season's wily villain, Camila Morrone is his glamorous cohort and Hayley Squires is an MI6 agent working with Pine. Le Carré may be gone, but his novel's DNA remains, and a third series has already been ordered.

The Night Manager premieres 1 January on BBC One in the UK and 11 January on Prime Video internationally

2. Run Away

The latest of many Netflix adaptations of Harlan Coben novels stars James Nesbitt as Simon, whose college-age daughter, Paige (Ellie de Lange), runs off. His search for her takes him to an underworld of drugs and, when Paige's controlling boyfriend is murdered, into the kind of cloak-and-dagger mystery Coben is known for. Minnie Driver plays Simon's wife, Ingrid. Alfred Enoch is Detective Isaac Fagbenle. And Ruth Jones (co-creator and star of Gavin & Stacey) plays Elena, a private investigator who is also searching for Paige, although Simon didn't ask her to. They form a team with its own energy. "It's a really lovely onscreen relationship because, well, spoiler alert, it's not a romance," Jones said at the series' London premiere. "It's refreshing to see that male-female friendship."

Run Away premieres 1 January on Netflix internationally

3. The Pitt

On paper, The Pitt might have sounded like just another medical drama, but its first season proved to be one of the year's best shows, full of realism, with lives lost and saved, as doctors, nurses, medical students and patients endlessly grappled with stress. The second season is once again built around Noah Wyle's character, Dr Robby, whose PTSD is leading him to take a sabbatical. The series' setting isn't called the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center for nothing. The new season – and its 15 episodes following a single working day in real time – takes place on his last shift before that break, and the show's creators have added more peril by setting it on the Fourth of July. Wyle tells EW that the holiday will bring "fireworks, alcohol-related accidents, bad judgments [and] celebrations gone awry" as patients stream into the hospital. The new season is set 10 months after the last, which means that most of the previous cast are still around, including Katherine LaNasa as Nurse Dana Evans, Taylor Dearden as empathetic Dr Mel King, Fiona Dourif as Dr Cassie McKay and Patrick Ball as Dr Frank Langdon, just back from rehab.

The Pitt premieres 8 January on HBO Max in the US

4. His & Hers

Small-town murder investigations don't get more closed-circle than this. Tessa Thompson plays Anna Andrews, a television anchor who leaves Atlanta to report on a killing in her hometown of Dahlonega, Georgia. Jon Bernthal is Jack Harper, an investigator in Dahlonega's sheriff’s department, who is tackling the murder case there after being forced out of a big city job. Each suspects the other of being the killer, and because they are married to each other (it is fiction) but estranged, each probably has a good instinct about what the other is capable of. Or maybe suspecting an estranged spouse of murder is the ultimate revenge. William Oldroyd, director of the terrific 2016 film Lady Macbeth, with Florence Pugh – not based on Shakespeare, it's another fraught story of marriage and murder – directed the first episode and is a writer on the show, based on the 2020 novel by Alice Feeney.

His & Hers premieres 8 January on Netflix internationally

5. Industry

This intense, compulsively watchable series dared to blow itself up at the end of last season. The ambitious, sexually voracious, ruthless young friends and rivals at the London investment bank Pierpoint scattered when the firm was taken over by another company, leaving the show to reconstruct itself in this fourth season. Most of the familiar cast returns, including Marisa Abela as Yasmin, last seen getting engaged to the wealthy and wonderfully named Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington). Her true love, Robert, played by Harry Lawtey, is the one main character not in the new season. Harper (Myha'la) sets out on a business venture of her own. And Max Minghella joins the cast as a tech mogul, creator of a payment processing company called Tender (think PayPal if that helps). Kiernan Shipka plays his executive assistant and Kal Penn the company's CEO. The show's creators, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, have said that this season was influenced by "conspiracy and erotic thrillers", which should ramp up the enjoyable tension even more.

Industry premieres 11 January on HBO and HBO Max in the US and January on BBC One in the UK

6. Hijack

If you happen to be on a hijacked anything – plane, train, whatever – just hope that Idris Elba is there too. In season two of this taut thriller, he returns as Sam Nelson, the business negotiator who talked and stormed his way into saving a hijacked plane full of passengers last time. Now he is in Berlin, searching for the fugitive he holds responsible for that hijacking, when he steps onto an underground train with a bomb attached to it. There are plenty of twists and questions, as the German police and British security services suspect Sam himself is part of the plot. New cast addition Toby Jones and a returning Archie Panjabi play British officials who have their own agenda. Elba is, as always, a charismatic hero, who is savvy enough to manipulate anyone with schemes that aren't always obvious. "This is a game of poker," Sam says. "You don't have to have the best hand to win, you just have to have the best bluff."

Hijack premieres 12 January on Apple TV internationally

7. Agatha Christie's Seven Dials

Agatha Christie is always in fashion and her novels always seem to draw superb casts to their screen adaptations. This three-part series, based on The Seven Dials Mysteries, is set in 1925 at that most reliable and cinematic of murder-mystery settings, a large country house. A prank gone wrong at a house party leads to death, and Lady Eileen Brent, known as Bundle, sets out to discover who did it. Mia McKenna-Bruce (who made her breakthrough in the 2023 film How to Have Sex) plays Bundle, whom James Prichard, Christie's great-grandson and an executive producer of the series, has described as "one of my great-grandmother's raft of interesting, humorous, and sharp young female characters". Helena Bonham Carter plays Lady Caterham and Martin Freeman is Superintendent Battle in the show, which was written by Chris Chibnall, the creator of a great, darker television mystery series, Broadchurch. "Someone in this room knows more than they are telling us," one character says in the trailer to the gathered guests. Of course they do. That cosy familiarity is what makes Christie such fun.

Agatha Christie's Seven Dials premieres 15 January on Netflix internationally

8. Ponies

Emilia Clarke (forever the Mother of Dragons on Game of Thrones) is Bea and Haley Lu Richardson (from The White Lotus's Sicily season) is Twila in this mismatched-buddy spy thriller set in Moscow in 1977, a year that explains Twila's giant mop of curly hair.  Bea is a reserved, educated Russian speaker, daughter of Soviet émigrés to the US, and Twila is a brash rebel from a working-class background. Both are now living in the USSR because their husbands are undercover CIA operatives, but when the men are killed in a suspicious plane crash, Bea and Twila go undercover themselves to find out what happened. They are Persons of No Interest, PONIs in spy-talk, whose low profiles as US embassy secretaries, a job they both hate, makes them the perfect underestimated people to infiltrate the KGB. Adrian Lester plays the CIA's head of the Moscow station and their handler, who figures that together they might make one good agent. There is a dash of wit that comes from Bea and Twila's contrasting personalities, but the espionage drama dominates as they tangle with some nasty Soviets.

Ponies premieres 15 January on Peacock in the US

9. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

This Game of Thrones prequel is set 100 years before the events of that series, and about a century after House of the Dragon, but don't expect the same palace intrigue. Based on George RR Martin's novellas Tales of Dunk and Egg, the show follows Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey), known as Dunk, and his squire, called Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell). Egg is, by contrast, extremely short, because he is still a child, and readers of the novellas will know that he has a secret connection to the Targaryens, who sit on the Iron Throne. The series puts us in the point of view of Dunk, who has a relatively low status as a hedge knight, unattached to any household. Ira Parker, the series' showrunner, has described him as "somebody who grew up in the slums of King's Landing as an orphan". And unlike the other GOT dramas, this one is quite short, with six half-hour episodes. "It's not the big, sprawling Game of Thrones that we've come to know and love," Parker said. "This is close and this is intimate." Still, there is a big jousting tournament as an action centrepiece, and some familiar names, with Bertie Carvel playing Baelor Targaryen, heir to the throne, and Daniel Ings as Ser Lyonel Baratheon.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premieres 18 January on HBO and HBO Max in the US and 19 January on Sky Atlantic in the UK

10. The Beauty

He's back. And so soon! Producer Ryan Murphy's most recent series, the campy legal drama All's Fair, dropped in November and was widely reviled by critics with descriptions such as "the worst TV drama ever". It quickly became a hit. Here he is with another buzzy series, this time set in the high-fashion world, where a sexually-transmitted virus turns people into examples of physical beauty and perfection. Of course, there's a deadly catch, reminiscent of last year's film The Substance. Evan Peters and Rebecca Hall play FBI agents looking into what nefarious plot might be behind it all. Ashton Kutcher is a villainous tech billionaire (is there any other kind on screen?), creator of a drug called The Beauty, and Anthony Ramos is his employee, known as The Assassin. Guest stars include Isabella Rossellini, Bella Hadid and Ben Platt. Set in Paris, Venice, Rome and New York, the show is based on a graphic novel series by Jeremy Haun and Jason A Hurley, and considering how often Murphy's over-the-top characters are deliberately cartoonish, that sounds about right.

The Beauty premieres 21 January on Hulu in the US and 22 January on Disney+ in the UK

11. Shrinking

With Harrison Ford as its droll standout, this sophisticated comedy has one of the best ensemble casts on television, along with the rare ability to be funny and touching while avoiding any sappiness. The plot has grown from its early focus on Jimmy (Jason Segel) and his unconventional psychiatric methods as he spirals after his wife's death.  In this third season, Paul (Ford), Jimmy's friend and mentor, deals with the increasing symptoms of Parkinson's, while Jimmy seems ready to move into a relationship. Jeff Daniels guest stars as Jimmy's dad and Michael J Fox plays a Parkinson's patient, a role tailored to his own well-known experience living with that condition. But it's the regular cast that shines. Jessica Williams, Luke Tennie, Michael Urie, Christa Miller and Ted McGinley are more comfortable than ever as the friends and neighbours who are endlessly, comically, meddling in each other's lives. As Bill Lawrence, the show's co-creator, told TV Insider: "This is a show about a tiny found family that built a nuclear safety bubble around themselves" – and that continues to evolve.

Shrinking premieres 28 January on Apple TV internationally

12. Bridgerton

Season four belongs to the second Bridgerton son, the licentious, artistically-minded  Benedict (Luke Thompson). According to the rules of his society (and of historical romances on TV) it is time for him to grow up and settle down. At a masked ball, he spies a young woman he calls The Lady in Silver, and is instantly taken with her. We soon know, and Netflix has revealed, what he doesn't: Cinderella-style, she has made her way into the ball but is actually a lowly maid. How will he ever find her unless she loses a shoe? Yerin Ha plays the mysterious love interest, Sophie Baek. She works for another new character, the harsh Lady Araminta Gun (Katie Leung, Cho Chang in the Harry Potter films), who has two daughters to marry off. The regular cast returns, including (for at least a bit) Jonathan Bailey as Anthony Bridgerton, along with Claudia Jessie as the spirited Eloise and Nicola Coughlan as Penelope, now married to Colin Bridgerton and having admitted that she has been the gossiping Lady Whistledown all along. Half of the season premieres this month, and the remaining four episodes on 26 February.

Bridgerton premieres 29 January on Netflix internationally