Detecting a New Season: Winter's New Shows
The winter television season brings more significant new shows than ever this year, starting this weekend with HBO’s “True Detective” and including that network’s “Looking”; Fox’s Greg Kinnear vehicle, “Rake”; Sundance’s “Red Road”; and USA’s “Sirens,” from Denis Leary. But the big news is likely to be made by the shows that are coming back: “The Following” on Fox, “The Americans” on FX, Netflix’s “House of Cards” and, perhaps best of all, the long-awaited third season of “Sherlock” on PBS.
BEAVER BROTHERS (Animal Planet, Sunday) They’re three oddball Canadian brothers who wrangle beavers and other pests, including skunks, raccoons and moose. Any similarities to Larry, Darryl and Darryl from “Newhart” are probably strictly intentional.
GIRLS (HBO, Sunday) Season 3 begins with a surefire viral clip: Natalia and Angie (Shiri Appleby and Amy Schumer) confronting Adam (Adam Driver) about his less than gentlemanly behavior, with Hannah (the show’s creator, Lena Dunham) as collateral roadkill.
TRUE DETECTIVE (HBO, Sunday) Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson play Louisiana cops on the trail of a serial killer in this new anthology crime series created by Nic Pizzolatto, a literature professor and novelist who’s essentially new to television (his previous credits being two scripts for “The Killing”).
BITTEN (Syfy, Monday) Laura Vandervoort, who played Supergirl on “Smallville” and alien royalty on “V,” goes supernatural again as the world’s only female werewolf. A series of gory murders draws her away from her human life in Toronto and back to her pack.
CHOZEN (FX, Monday) A decidedly adult animated comedy about a gay rapper trying to restart his career after a stretch in prison, this new show turns hip-hop homophobia on its head. Sample lyric: “Redemption, the game is mine, gunnin’ for a brother with a tight behind.”
FRIDAY NIGHT TYKES (Esquire, Tuesday) As with “Sharknado,” it’s all about the title. This new documentary series is, like “Friday Night Lights,” about the rigors of Texas youth football, but the players are 8 and 9 years old.
DUCK DYNASTY (A-and-E, Wednesday) America’s most divisive TV show begins its fifth season.
FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC (Lifetime, Jan. 18) Heather Graham is the neglectful mother and Kiernan Shipka of “Mad Men” the forgotten daughter in this TV-movie adaptation of V. C. Andrews’s best seller about the romantic side of incest.
THE FOLLOWING (Fox, next Sunday) It’s not enough that the F.B.I. agent Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) ended the first season of this gruesome serial-killer drama with a knife in his gut, but as the second season begins someone is committing murders that look like homages to Joe Carroll (James Purefoy), the allegedly dead serial killer.
LOOKING (HBO, next Sunday) Jonathan Groff, Frankie J. Alvarez and Murray Bartlett star as close friends in San Francisco and Oakland negotiating sex, love and middle age. “Looking” has been called the gay “Girls” but couldn’t be more different in tone and texture; what is does have in common with that show is the chance to define its moment and develop a fanatical following.
SHERLOCK (PBS, next Sunday) Benedict Cumberbatch (as Holmes) and Martin Freeman (Watson) return after nearly two years in this witty and propulsive British crime drama. The three-episode season opens after Holmes’s showdown with Moriarty, during which he was forced to fake his own death. (No spoiler complaints — you knew that if you watched Season 2.)
KLONDIKE (Discovery, Jan. 20) Gold is an important element on the Discovery schedule (“Gold Rush,” “Bering Sea Gold,” “Jungle Gold”), so it makes sense that the channel’s first scripted drama is about a Northern gold rush. The cast includes Abbie Cornish, Tim Roth and Sam Shepard.
THE POWERPUFF GIRLS: DANCE PANTSED (Cartoon, Jan. 20) The first new “Powerpuff” episode since 2009 is the first made without the involvement of the show’s creator, Craig McCracken. Most of the original voice cast returns and Ringo Starr sings an original song, “I Wish I Was a Powerpuff Girl.”
BROAD CITY (Comedy Central, Jan. 22) Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer follow the trail from improv (Upright Citizens Brigade) to Web series to television in this scripted comedy about 20-something B.F.F.’s in New York — two broke, toking girls. Amy Poehler, also of Upright Citizens, is an executive producer.
WAHLBURGERS (A-and-E, Jan. 22) The Wahlbergs (Mark, Donnie and Paul) open a burger joint in their old Boston neighborhood in this new reality series.
RAKE (Fox, Jan. 23) Greg Kinnear’s first television series (not counting the 2011 “Kennedys” mini-series) is an adaptation of an excellent Australian show about a boozing, debt-ridden — but charming! — lawyer. Sam Raimi directed the pilot.
BLACK SAILS (Starz, Jan. 25) For his first TV series, the producer Michael Bay chose this jaunty pirate adventure from Jonathan Steinberg, creator of “Jericho” and “Human Target.” The British TV veteran Toby Stephens plays a captain based on a fictional island that the promos promise will be “a debauched paradise.”
FLEMING: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE BOND (BBC America, Jan. 29) Ian Fleming and James Bond: compare and contrast! Dominic Cooper (Howard Stark in the “Captain America” films) plays a Bond-like Fleming in this glossy mini-series that begins with a spear gun scene closely followed by downhill skiing.
TONIGHT SHOW (NBC, Feb. 6) We’re only going to say this once, so listen closely: Jay Leno’s last shift in the top job in late night is Feb. 6; Jimmy Fallon takes over the show on Feb. 17; and Seth Meyers takes over Mr. Fallon’s former show, “Late Night,” on Feb. 24.
THE WALKING DEAD (AMC, Feb. 9) Television’s highest-rated show among people who count (those over 17 and under 50) resumes its fourth season minus some major characters, including Judith, the miracle baby, who has disappeared.
HOUSE OF CARDS (Netflix, Feb. 14) The show that started it all for Netflix (just a year ago!) enters its second season with Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) installed as vice president and all 13 new episodes posting at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time.
STAR-CROSSED (CW, Feb. 17) A little bit “E. T.,” a little bit “District 9” and all CW: A group of good-looking alien teenagers tries to adjust to life in a suburban human high school.
THE AMERICANS (FX, Feb. 26) It was no sure thing that a story about K.G.B. spies sham-married with children in 1980s Washington would be one of the most entertaining new shows of 2013. Now the question is whether it can maintain its tricky balancing act of Le Carré-style spycraft, brutal violence, family melodrama and Harlequin-romance sex.
LEGIT (FXX, Feb. 26) Jim Jeffries’s foul-mouthed but tender comedy, one of last season’s pleasant surprises, returns.
MIXOLOGY (ABC, Feb. 26) ABC’s latest attempt at a young-people-in-love-in-the-city comedy follows 10 characters through one very long night at a bar in Manhattan’s meatpacking district.
RED ROAD (Sundance, Feb. 27) Aaron Guzikowski, who wrote the revenge movie “Prisoners,” created this series — another dark, twisty, atmospheric crime drama — set in northern New Jersey and involving friction between whites and Native Americans. The cast includes Jason Momoa (the mountainous Khal Drogo from “Game of Thrones”), Tamara Tunie (“Law and Order: SVU”) and Julianne Nicholson.
THOSE WHO KILL (A-and-E, March 3) Having gone to Britain to play a transsexual contract killer in Paul Abbott’s “Hit and Miss,” Chloë Sevigny comes home to play a detective, alongside James D’Arcy as a psychiatrist, in a moody serial-killer drama based on a Danish original.
SIRENS (USA, March 6) Denis Leary stays behind the camera, as a writer and executive producer, in this new series about a trio of Chicago paramedics (Michael Mosley of “Pan Am”; Kevin Daniels, the gay friend Longines in “Modern Family”; and Kevin Bigley) and their cop buddy (Jessica McNamee).
RESURRECTION (ABC, March 9) Dead people start showing up in a Missouri town, looking as good as new, in a show that sounds an awful lot like the French series “The Returned.” The cast includes Omar Epps, Kurtwood Smith and Frances Fisher.
MIND GAMES (ABC, March 11) Steve Zahn, done with “Treme,” stars with Christian Slater in a show about two brothers, an academic and a con man, who use their knowledge of psychology to help paying clients. The series was created by Kyle Killen (“Lone Star,” “Awake”).