15 New TV Shows to Help Get You through the Long Cold Winter
Fill the gap between football and Winter Olympics with these 15 new TV show snacks!!
It’s mid-January, there are only three football games left, and the Winter Olympics are still three weeks away. It’s colder than Cersei Lannister’s heart and you need something, anything to fill your glowing television screen as you sip piping hot chocolate on your overstuffed couch and try to stay warm.
Fear not: weird winter TV is here!! It’s not fall pilot season, and we’re not quite to spring either, but there’s a sprinkling of new January shows so let’s dive in. This year is especially weird since the Olympics will grab all the February ratings, causing many of these shows to be short 6- to 8-episode snacks to hold us over until Olympics before a bigger spring TV season.
The pitch: Okay so it’s not actually that exciting, regular TV isn’t very good anymore, and 90% of these shows will get cancelled. But who cares!! It’s freezing outside, so let’s look around and see what’s new on TV this winter.
Read if you like: TV… Humor… Finding something warm to do in the long cold winter… Being too cheap to pay for your own Hulu account to binge old ER episodes… Biding your time before the Winter Olympics… Finding the new The Good Doctor
Shows are rated from 1 to 5 stars (★). All times Eastern.
Mondays
★★★ The Resident
9–10pm, FOX, January 22
The pitch: Logan from Gilmore Girls is the new medical resident for that Revenge girl, Raj from 90210, and a full doctoral staff that tiptoe the dangerous line between saving lives and covering up mistakes!!
Watch if you like: ER… House… Grey’s Anatomy… M*A*S*H… complex medical dramas that handle ethics and morality
Skip if you: Just have too many medical shows on your DVR queue and have to pick between this one and The Good Doctor on Monday nights
★★ The Alienist
9–10pm, TNT, January 22
The pitch: New York City police chief Teddy Roosevelt tries to help solve a series of gruesome murders of boy prostitutes in 1896!!
Watch if you like: The eponymous novel by Caleb Carr… Sherlock Holmes… period piece drama… Dakota Fanning… boy prostitute serial killer mystery dramas from the 1890s
Skip if you: Think this has anything even remotely to do with aliens
★★★★★ The Good Doctor (season 1)
10–11pm, ABC, ongoing
The pitch: House meets ER, with Freddie Highmore as a likable young surgical resident with savant syndrome finding his way in this crazy world!!
Watch if you like: House… medical procedural dramas… emotional stories about young people with autism… interesting surgical staffs with as much drama between the characters as in the emergency room
Skip if you: Don’t like watching this year’s breakout network hit show — you probably hated This Is Us anyway…
Tuesdays
★★ Ellen’s Game of Games
8–9pm, NBC, already started January 2
The pitch: Hey, everyone likes Ellen DeGeneres right? Let’s just have her do ridiculous things with random people and laugh at them!!
Watch if you like: Ellen… Ellen doing silly things… Ellen making strangers do silly things… Ellen openly mocking strangers while they play crazy party games and do silly things desperate for her approval and moneys
Skip if you: Don’t completely adore Ellen and can find literally any other game show on TV
★★★ L.A. to Vegas
9–9:30pm, FOX, already started January 2
The pitch: The flight crew of a discount airline flies from L.A. to Vegas and back every weekend with passenger regulars. Hijinks ensue!!
Watch if you like: Bottle episodes every week… Will Ferrell, executive producer… good looking men on an airplane… Dylan McDermott’s fantastic mustache… Kim Matula making the leap from Bold and the Beautiful to Lifetime to prime time
Skip if you: Can never remember if that one dude is Dylan McDermott or Dermot Mulroney
★★★ Black Lightning
9–10pm, CW, January 16
The pitch: An outdated and possibly stereotyped black superhero from Suicide Slum (see??) unretires so he can use his elite athleticism (see?!) and electric field manipulation (ok, not everything) for good!!
Watch if you like: DC Comics… Finally seeing a black superhero on TV… A socially-conscious superhero drama… The Flash and Supergirl and Arrow but just think CW needs more comic shows
Skip if you: Figure we probably could have stopped after the first 419 comic book shows and movies
★★★★ The Detour (season 3)
9:30–10pm, TBS, January 23
The pitch: Samantha Bee presents National Lampoon’s Family Vacation but as an R-rated TV show that pushes the line of humor as close to the line as possible and then bounds past it gleefully!!
Watch if you like: Hilarious people doing outrageously inappropriate cover-your-mouth things… Samantha Bee… Kids named Delilah and Jareb… Laughing harder and more consistently than any show on television
Skip if you: Actually have humor boundaries and a conscience
Wednesdays
★★★★ Grown-ish
8–8:30pm, Freeform, already started January 3
The pitch: Black-ish, but at college! Black-ish’s Zoey heads off to college to deal with sex and drugs and rock & roll!!
Watch if you like: Black-ish… A realistic look at college life in 2018… Mature, thoughtful conversations about topics that matter in a funny and nuanced way… Talking about frat parties, Adderall addictions, and “U up?” texts
Skip if you: Don’t think you need to have important conversations about race, gender, and growing up in 2018
★★ Alone Together
8:30–9pm, Freeform, already started January 10
The pitch: Two completely unlikable teens? college students? question mark? are like totally bff’s but definitely not dating even though they should be dating because no one else would ever date either one of them!!
Watch if you like: Totally ordinary people that got to be on TV for some reason… Forgetting to change the channel after Grown-ish
Skip if you: Already know what it feels like to be ordinary and alone in a glamorous world… Are uncomfortable watching Jerry Gergich date what appears to be a 12-year-old escort girl
★★★★★ 9–1–1
9–10pm, FOX, already started January 3
The pitch: Mrs. Coach from Friday Night Lights, the dad from Parenthood, and Tina Turner save lives as 9–1–1 emergency responders, but the real lives that need saving are their own!!
Watch if you like: Saving newborns from apartment sewage systems and teenagers from suffocating snakes… Good looking fire- and policemen and women… Intense nonstop drama… 90s Rescue 911 reruns… Ryan Murphy
Skip if you: Have any sort of heart condition
★★★★ The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story
10–11pm, FX, January 17
The pitch: The Emmy-winning O.J. Simpson crew is back with a loaded cast for another American Crime Story, this one about the 1997 serial killing of openly gay fashionista and celebrity designer Gianni Versace!!
Watch if you like: The People v. O.J. Simpson… High fashion murder mystery manhunts… Penelope Cruz, Carlos the Jackal, and Glee’s Blaine with support from New Girl’s Schmidt and Ricky “Yes That Ricky” Martin…
Skip if you: Think this has even a remote chance of living up to the People v. O.J. hype — or thinking that it needs to
★★ Corporate
10–11pm, Comedy Central, January 17
The pitch: Hey what if we reboot Office Space as a TV show but with less funny writers and dark deadpan humor!!
Watch if you like: Horrible soulless multinational corporations… Cedric from The Wire as a terrible boss… cameos from funny people you wish were on the show more regularly… a terrible knockoff version of The Office
Skip if you: Discover Better Off Ted on Netflix instead
★★★★ Waco
10–11pm, Paramount, January 24
The pitch: A look back 25 years after the 51-day standoff between the FBI and fanatical cult leader David Koresh’s compound in Waco, Texas!!
Watch if you like: Continuing the recent television trend of looking back at the weird 90s… Friday Night Lights’ Tim Riggins as David Koresh pitted against FBI negotiator Michael Shannon
Skip if you: Can’t find the Paramount channel on your TV and still don’t know how to stream things online (it also airs on CMT and Spike in some regions)
Thursdays
★ The Four: Battle for Stardom
8–10pm, FOX, already started January 4
The pitch: Quick, we need a cheap six-week reality show with B-list celebrities to fill the gap between Christmas and the Winter Olympics!!
Watch if you like: Slightly tweaked formats of the same old music competition… Discovering and forgetting new musical talents… Finding out what name Sean Combs goes by these days… Fergie still, for some reason
Skip if you: Still haven’t caught up on last year’s American Idol or The X Factor or The Glee Project or Star Search or…
★★★★★ The Good Place (season 2)
8:30–9pm, NBC, ongoing
The pitch: The funniest, most creative show on TV got even funnier in season two, so hop in then go back and start watching from the beginning!!
Watch if you like: Laughing… human ethics… Blake Bortles… creatively-named froyo places… Evil Ted Danson… forking fake shirthole curse words… The Office or Parks and Recreation or Brooklyn Nine-Nine… Kristen Bell
Skip if you: Seriously, how many times do I have to tell you to watch this??
Weekends
★★ Child Support
Fridays 8–9pm, ABC, already started January 5
The pitch: Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader meets Kids Say the Darndest Things with funny guy Ricky Gervais and a bunch of kiddos. Hijinks ensue!!
Watch if you like: The Wonder Years narrator… precocious children saying adorable things while getting fed trivia answers
Skip if you: Think there just had to be a better name for this show and can’t watch it without wondering if Ricky Gervais will be Bill Cosby someday
★★★★ Planet Earth: Blue Planet II
Saturdays 9–10pm, BBC America, January 20
The pitch: Remember Planet Earth II with Sir David Attenborough and Hans Zimmer? It’s back, with 6,000 hours of new underwater footage!!
Watch if you like: Deep sea diving in the Earth’s beautiful oceans but don’t have the money or time to do it on your own
Skip if you: Hate the Earth
★ Celebrity Big Brother
Sundays 8–9pm, CBS, February 7
The pitch: Guys, NBC has the Winter Olympics all month, what if we throw a bunch of D-list celebrities in a mansion and make them do silly competitions!!
Watch if you like: Smarmy Julie Chen… 13 episodes in 19 days… Ariana Grande’s brother and other non-celebrity celebrities like Blac Chyna and Mark Long… Names like Scaramucci and Sean Spicer possibly back in your life
Skip if you: Are too busy watching the Winter Olympics, or if you have any personal dignity whatsoever
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