The last week of January brings a bevy of a new TV and streaming shows to become obssessed with, Hannah Collins finds – from the Martin Freeman-starring The Responder, to Downton Abbey (sort of) spinoff The Gilded Age, and another likely Netflix hit from South Korea, All Of Us Are Dead. Here’s what you should be watching, Mon 24 – Sun 28 of January.
The Responder, Series Premiere
The police procedural genre gets a major shake-up this week courtesy of the BBC and everyone’s favourite affable Hobbit and Sherlock sidekick, Martin Freeman. Written by ex-copper Tony Schumacher (Shameless)- so you know it’s going to be no holds barred -, The Responder sees a shaven-headed Freeman play the titular first responder, Chris, during night shifts in lively Liverpool. As is to always be expected in these types of dramas, the crises he faces are both internal and external: in the first episode, which aired last night, both his marriage and mental health are clearly both as frayed as the people on the verge of Im and explosion he’s called upon to help – including a young drug addict, within whom a path to salvation opens up to Chris. Setting a relentless pace from the outset that has entranced most critics but split audiences down the middle, if Google reviews are anything to go by, water cooler TV like The Responder might just be worth paying that endangered licence fee for.
Begins Mon 24 Jan on BBC One and available to stream from BBC iPlayer thereafter.
The Gilded Age, Series Premiere
From Julian Fellowes, of Downton Abbey creator fame, The Gilded Age is a new, lavishly-styled period drama that takes Fellowes’ writing from the stuffy British Isles to the late 19th-century in New York – a period known as the city’s ‘boom years.’ The show itself has an unusually long history of its own. Originally conceived as a Downton prequel as far back as 2012 that would focus on the Lord Grantham/Cora romance, The Gilded Age didn’t go into production until around 2018, with a series order finally coming from HBO (having been at NBC, previously) a year later. The delays were, it seems, due to Fellowes being “up to [his] neck in research“, which implies sticklers for historical accuracy may be in luck here. So will Downton fans – or even Gosford Park fans – who enjoy Fellowes’ preoccupation with the rich and powerful of ye olde times and the upstairs/downstairs of it all. Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon and Nathan Lane are among the top-billed cast, with the former two playing a pair of Dutch ‘old money’ socialite sisters.
Begins airing on Wens 25 at 9 pm from Sky Atlantic.
The Sinner, Season 4 (Final)
Based on the 1999 novel by Petra Hammesfahr, crime anthology The Sinner was envisioned as a one-off miniseries by USA Network but has been going strong for three seasons now, with its fourth and final instalment arriving this week on Netflix for UK viewers. Jessica Biel both starred in the first season and produces the series, which – aside from recurring lead Bill Pullman as detective Harry Ambrose – features a revolving door of characters per season, each of which involve Ambrose tackling a different case: the mysterious stabbing of a man by Biel’s Cora Tannetti in Season 1; the poisoning of a couple by, seemingly, a boy in Ambrose’s hometown in Season 2; an unwinding conspiracy behind a deadly car crash in Season 3 (featuring Matt Bomer), and now, the death of a wealthy Maine family’s daughter pulling a mentally battered Ambrose out of retirement in Season 4. From something that was never intended to be repeated, The Sinner has done well to keep its formula fresh and its twists extra twisty, setting a high bar for itself to clear as its exits the TV landscape.
Available to stream from Thurs 26 Jan from Netflix.
Marvel’s Hit-Monkey, Series Premiere
If you’re fatigued by the idea of superhero fatigue, Marvel’s Hit-Monkey is here to remind you that even over a decade into the big, Hollywood superhero boom, we’ve still only scratched the surface of the weird and wonderful world of comic books. In fact, the existence of a Hit-Monkey adaptation reminds us we’ve only scratched the surface on these very specific types of characters: both Marvel and DC – the Big Two of the industry – have a historic fixation on intelligent primates, from Gorilla Grodd to Detective Chimp to, perhaps my favourite of all, Lex Lumur, a Lex Luthor parody, in case it wasn’t obvious. The character of Hit-Monkey began life in 2010, the brainchild of Daniel Way (Wolverine: Origins, Deadpool) and Dalibor Talajic (Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe), who, after becoming known as an assassin of assassins, finds himself crossing paths with the likes of Spider-Man and Deadpool. Though once planned to lead into a shared Offenders show, along with the animated M.O.D.O.K series, the Hit-Monkey cartoon is now standalone, with 10 episodes comprising Season 1. Low commitment, maximum effort, as the Merc With a Mouth would say.
Avaliable to stream from Thurs 26 Jan from STAR on Disney+.
All Of Us Are Dead, Series Premiere
Though K-Pop, K-Dramas and webtoons have been on young Millenial and Gen Z radars for some years now, the rest of the world is only just starting to catch up to the fact that South Korea has become a globalised, cultural hotspot. After the outrageously successful Squid Game, Netflix is doubtless keen to not only capitalise on that but other facets of South East Asian media. Enter All Of Us Dead, which ticks many desierable marketing boxes: Korean, based on a webcomic, and has a high school setting with a survivalist twist – the twist here being a zombie apocalypse as opposed to a Hunger Games/Battle Royale-style death game. The premise might ring a bell with anyone who watched gratuitous schlock-fest Highschool of the Dead in the 2010s, a Japanese anime in which students and teachers found themselves fighting their way out of a zombie-infested school. But more recently, and specifically, All Of Us Are Dead comes limping on the undead heels of a steadily rising trend of ‘K-Zombie’ media, after popular films Train to Busan and the Kingdom series, putting it in good company.
Avaliable to stream on Sun 28 Jan from Netflix.
words HANNAH COLLINS
