Credit...Kelsey McClellan for The New York Times

The 50 TV Shows You Need to Watch This Winter

Just kidding. There are actually a lot more.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

Every season we say it, and every season it’s true: There’s more intriguing television on the way than ever. The pressure to binge feels particularly intense this winter — the 50 highlights below (ordered by their premiere dates) were drawn from a much longer list of new and returning shows arriving in the next three months.

The analysts say that the 10-figure budgets currently being thrown around are unsustainable, so enjoy the great bingeing bubble of the early 21st century while you can. It’s too early for reviews of these shows, and many of them weren’t available to preview. But you probably couldn’t go too far wrong devoting some time to “Everything’s Gonna Be Okay,” “Better Call Saul,” “Little Fires Everywhere” and “Self-Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker.”

All dates are subject to change.

Want more? Here are our lists of the best TV shows on Netflix, the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video and the best of everything on Disney Plus.

Eugene and Daniel Levy’s comedy, beloved by critics, about a formerly wealthy Canadian family now living in the sticks returns for a sixth and final season. (Pop, Jan. 7)

The 1990s drama about the five orphaned Salinger children gets a topical reboot: The five Acosta siblings must fend for themselves when their parents are deported to Mexico. (Freeform, Jan. 8)

RuPaul collaborated with Michael Patrick King of “Sex and the City” on this comedy about a drag queen (RuPaul) and a wised-up 11-year-old (Izzy G.) who tour the country in a beat-up R.V., “Paper Moon”-style. (Netflix, Jan. 10)

Russell Hornsby of “Grimm” plays a brilliant detective chasing the serial killer who put him in a wheelchair. Arielle Kebbel and Michael Imperioli also star in a series that needs to overcome the most ponderous title of the season. (NBC, Jan. 10)

Richard Price adapts a Stephen King novel that starts as a crime story about the murder of a young boy and segues into something more supernatural. Ben Mendelsohn plays the police detective who brings in an unorthodox private investigator (Cynthia Erivo) when the case starts to get strange. (HBO, Jan. 12)

Image
Leo Suter and Rose Williams in “Sanditon.”Credit...Simon Ridgway/Red Planet Pictures

Andrew Davies, the indefatigable overachiever of British literary adapters, expands on the novel Jane Austen abandoned before her death. Rose Williams plays the young heroine embroiled in the sketchy society of a nascent seaside resort. (PBS, Jan. 12)

With the young Pope Pius XIII (Jude Law) still in a coma, John Malkovich takes on the role of the new pope in Paolo Sorrentino’s Vatican phantasmagoria. (HBO, Jan. 13)

A girl raised underground finds herself on the surface amid hungry, but really cute, beasts in a new post-apocalyptic adventure from DreamWorks Animation. (Netflix, Jan. 14)

Apparently it’s not too early to take a “M*A*S*H” approach to Afghanistan. A rowdy group of Army medics saves lives amid the usual craziness: carpet smuggling, hot sex in the supply tent. Michael Lehmann directs the pilot. (Paramount Network, Jan. 15)

Josh Thomas, creator of the sweet, funny-sad Australian series “Please Like Me,” has created an American show. Once again he plays a young, gay, slightly feckless Australian with father issues; this time, though, his character has to step up to be a surrogate father to his two teenage American half sisters (Kayla Cromer and Maeve Press). (Freeform, Jan. 16)

Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani, the “Big Sick” team, are among the people behind this half-hour anthology series that dramatizes true stories of immigrant life. (Apple Plus, Jan. 17)

Gillian Anderson returns as the world’s most embarrassing mom (an oversharing sex therapist) in this healthily lustful comedy about a British teenager who discovers he shares the family talent for dispensing relationship advice. (Netflix, Jan. 17)

Image
A colony of penguin chicks in the South Atlantic near Antarctica as seen in “Seven Worlds, One Planet.”Credit...Fredi Devas/BBC America

After a detour to Netflix for the cautionary “Our Planet,” David Attenborough is back in business with the BBC Studios Natural History Unit, narrating a series that devotes an episode each to the wildlife of the seven continents. In Africa, he appears onscreen to stand beside the world’s last two northern white rhinoceroses — both female. (AMC, BBC America, IFC, Sundance TV, Jan. 18)

Like “9-1-1,” the series from which it was spun off, this new series from the Ryan Murphy production factory centers on a relocated firefighter. Rob Lowe stars as a former member of New York’s bravest who takes a new job in Texas. (Fox, Jan. 19)

Armando Iannucci follows “Veep” with a cruise-ship comedy set in space, where an interstellar luxury liner’s eight-week tour runs into complications. The crew on the fateful trip includes characters played by Hugh Laurie, Suzy Nakamura, Josh Gad, Lenora Crichlow and Zach Woods (Jared from “Silicon Valley”). (HBO, Jan. 19)

The curmudgeon’s curmudgeon, Larry David, returns for a 10th season after a more than three-year gap. (HBO, Jan. 19)

The 12th season of the public-television film series focused on voices from the African diaspora begins with “My Friend Fela,” a documentary portrait of the Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti. (World, Jan. 20)

Other British mysteries have higher profiles in the United States, but Brenda Blethyn’s Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope has grumbled her way to a 10th season (and the show has become one of the highest-rated dramas on British TV). (BritBox, Jan. 21)

Awkwafina’s contribution to the small but growing category of Asian-American sitcoms (“Fresh Off the Boat,” “Master of None”) finds her playing a vaguely striving, mostly stoned 27-year-old who lives with her NSFW grandmother (Lori Tan Chinn) and low-energy father (BD Wong). (Comedy Central, Jan. 22)

Image
Patrick Stewart, right, with Evan Evagora and Alison Pill, is back in the captain’s chair.Credit...Trae Patton/CBS

Patrick Stewart returns as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, 26 years after “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and 18 years after Picard’s last appearance, in the film “Star Trek: Nemesis.” Little is known about the story, but cameos have been written for Stewart’s “Next Generation” colleagues Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis. (CBS All Access, Jan. 23)

Season 2 of Aidy Bryant’s comic paean to self-esteem and body positivity picks up right where the first season left off, with her character, the Portland writer Annie, still high after trashing her internet troll’s SUV. (Hulu, Jan. 24)

We’ll see if change is good: Simon Rich takes the actors from “Miracle Workers,” his comedy about the inner workings of heaven, and recasts them in an entirely different story about life in a particularly backward medieval village. Steve Buscemi, who played God in Season 1, is now the proud shoveler of the town’s excrement, reciting the shoveler’s pledge: “Anytime, anywhere, even if it’s big.” (TBS, Jan. 28)

The animated tale of a self-absorbed, self-destructive Hollywood horse reaches its final eight episodes. (Netflix, Jan. 31)

On the heels of a feature film (“Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile”) and a Netflix series (“Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes”), this five-part documentary retells the story of the serial killer Ted Bundy from the perspective of women who were connected to him or his crimes. (Amazon Prime Video, Jan. 31)

Kristofer Hivju, everyone’s favorite wildling in “Game of Thrones,” plays Erik, a vagabond who rents surfboards from a shipping container on a Norwegian beach. The Nordic noir twist: When his more successful identical twin brother dies, Erik takes his place. Wins the best-landscape award hands down. (MHz Choice, Feb. 4)

Rosario Dawson plays a woman who returns to her Texas hometown to snoop around after her sister, a cop, is murdered. The real mystery is why this appears to be only the second time, after the film “St. Ives” in 1976, that a Ross Thomas novel has been adapted for the screen. (USA, Feb. 6)

A new wrinkle in true crime: nine episodes based on interrogations in an actual (so far unidentified) murder case can be watched in any order before the Episode 10 finale. Peter Sarsgaard and David Strathairn star, and there’s a smaller role for an actor who knows from interrogations, Vincent D’Onofrio (“Law & Order: Criminal Intent”). (CBS All Access, Feb. 6)

Image
Lucy Hale, right, stars as the title character in “Katy Keene.” Ashleigh Murray, left, and Julia Chan are also featured in the series.Credit...David Giesbrecht/CW

Joining “Riverdale” and “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” in the TV Archieverse is a cotton-candy creative-kids-in-New York fantasy starring Lucy Hale (“Pretty Little Liars”) as the title character, an aspiring fashion designer who toils at Lacy’s department store. (The CW, Feb. 6)

Bill Pullman returns for a third season as the world’s most tortured detective, joined this time by Matt Bomer as a tortured prep-school teacher involved in a fatal accident. (USA, Feb. 6)

It’s an inspirational broadcast-network crime drama about the first female chief of police in Los Angeles. But Edie Falco is playing the chief, so attention must be paid. (CBS, Feb. 6)

Some sort of urban-anthropology critical mass is achieved in the Season 4 premiere of this picaresque pot-dealing comedy, when the Guy (Ben Sinclair) crosses paths with a producer for “This American Life.” (HBO, Feb. 7)

How is F. Murray Abraham employing his sonorous voice and hypnotic presence now that “Homeland” is in the can? As an unctuous, has-been science-fiction writer in a sendup of a video-game company produced by several veterans of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” of course. Rob McElhenney, Danny Pudi and Imani Hakim also star. (Apple Plus, Feb. 7)

Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) answers the bell one last time. After addressing Russian interference in American affairs in Season 7, the espionage-and-antipsychotics series returns to the Middle East for its eighth and final season, with Saul (Mandy Patinkin) summoning Carrie to Afghanistan. (Showtime, Feb. 9)

Will Mr. Pickles get his show back on the air? We’ll find out in Season 2 of this oddly moving dramedy starring Jim Carrey as the emotionally and artistically struggling host of a children’s TV show. (Showtime, Feb. 9)

Image
Nicholas Pinnock in “For Life.”Credit...Giovanni Rufino/ABC

Nicholas Pinnock of “Counterpart” plays an inmate who becomes a lawyer while serving a life sentence. The legal drama was created by Hank Steinberg, previously responsible for “Without a Trace” and “The Last Ship.” (ABC, Feb. 11)

This latest adaptation of the Nick Hornby novel, following the movie and the Broadway musical, gender-switches the record-store-owning, Top-5-list-making protagonist, who’s now played by Zoë Kravitz. The creators, Sarah Kucserka and Veronica West, are broadcast drama veterans (“Bull,” “Chicago Fire”). (Hulu, Feb. 14)

Amy Poehler, working with Julie and Mike Scully, developed this animated comedy and voices both of the central characters, 15-year-old Duncan and his mom. (Fox, Feb. 16)

Ethan Hawke goes all in on TV, creating this mini-series based on the National Book Award-winning novel by James McBride and starring in it as the zealous abolitionist John Brown. Joshua Caleb Johnson plays Onion, the young slave who narrates the story. (Showtime, Feb. 16)

Everyone’s favorite sexy historical time-traveling romance enters its fifth season with the American Revolution approaching. (Starz, Feb. 16)

Howard Overman, a British writer and producer with an eclectic and entertaining résumé — “Vexed,” “Misfits,” “Future Man” — goes heavy with this contemporary version of the H.G. Wells story. Gabriel Byrne, Elizabeth McGovern, Léa Drucker and Adel Bencherif play survivors of a very sudden alien attack. (Epix, Feb. 16)

Image
Susan Wokoma and Matt Berry in “Year of the Rabbit.”Credit...IFC

Matt Berry (“What We Do in the Shadows”) and the invaluable Susan Wokoma (“Chewing Gum”) star in a British comedy that’s like a much more foul-mouthed “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” set in Victorian London. (IFC, Feb. 19)

In the second season of Facebook’s crime-horror anthology, Ryan Kwanten (“True Blood”) plays the jailed father of an abandoned girl (Jordan Alexander), and Juliette Lewis plays an armchair detective. (Facebook Watch, Feb. 20)

As Season 5 begins, Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) completes his transformation to Saul Goodman, and Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) is asking uncomfortable questions about concrete and a mysterious figure named Michael. (AMC, Feb. 23)

TV’s orneriest sitcom makes a hard right turn in its fourth and final season, jumping ahead to a dystopian, climate-changed 2030 when Jim Brockmire (Hank Azaria) — clean-and-sober but still eloquently nasty — is named commissioner of baseball. (IFC, March)

Jason Segel pushes the envelope, in possibly twee directions, with this series of interconnected stories inspired by the alternate-reality-gaming, public-performance-art project called the Jejune Institute. Richard E. Grant narrates in Alastair Cooke-as-your-scary-uncle fashion. (AMC, March 1)

A four-part documentary profile of Hillary Clinton, directed by Nanette Burstein (“The Kid Stays in the Picture”) with “unprecedented personal access.” (Hulu, March 6)

Image
John Turturro in “The Plot Against America.” Credit...Michele K. Short/HBO

A Jewish family goes about life in 1940s Newark while Charles Lindbergh, a pop-culture hero with anti-Semitic, white-supremacist and authoritarian tendencies, becomes president. David Simon and Ed Burns (“The Wire”) created this adaptation of the novel by Philip Roth, alternate history when it was published in 2004. (HBO, March 16)

Reese Witherspoon continues her conquest of TV, bringing to the screen this adaptation of the best seller by Celeste Ng — a multifamily drama set in 1990s suburban Ohio — and starring in it with Kerry Washington, Rosemarie DeWitt and Joshua Jackson. Liz Tigelaar of “Casual” is the creator and showrunner. (Hulu, March 18)

Octavia Spencer plays the hair-care entrepreneur who, in the early 20th century, became America’s richest self-made woman. (Netflix, March 20)

The nuns and other caregivers of the East End nursing convent Nonnatus House — not always popular in their London neighborhood, but deeply loved by their PBS audience — embark on a ninth season of midwifery and melodrama. (PBS, March 29)

A correction was made on 
Jan. 4, 2020

An earlier version of this article misstated the director of the "68 Whiskey" pilot. It is Michael Lehmann, not Ron Howard; Howard is an executive producer.

A correction was made on 
Jan. 8, 2020

An earlier version of this article, using information from Showtime, misidentified an actor in "The Good Lord Bird." He is Joshua Caleb Johnson, not Joshua Johnson-Lionel.

How we handle corrections

Mike Hale is a television critic. He also writes about online video, film and media. He came to The Times in 1995 and worked as an editor in Sports, Arts & Leisure and Weekend Arts before becoming a critic in 2009. More about Mike Hale

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: 50 TV Shows To Watch This Winter. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT