10. “The Alienist” (TNT)
Synopsis: In New York in 1896, a gruesome series of murders of young male sex workers causes police commissioner Teddy Roosevelt to consult a criminal psychologist and a newspaper illustrator to secretly investigate the crimes.
What You Need To Know: After “True Detective” proved a massive hit a few years back, Cary Fukunaga looked to be sticking with crime territory, developing a miniseries adaptation of Caleb Carr’s much-acclaimed 1994 novel “The Alienist” with “Drive” screenwriter Hossein Amini, again planning to direct every episode. It wasn’t to be, with Fukunaga ultimately leaving for another series (see above), though he’s still executive producer on the series. But with “London Spy” and “Black Mirror” director Jakob Vebruggen at the helm, this still looks eminently promising, with the production value very much on screen, and the vibe of a more murdery version of “The Knick.” Daniel Bruhl, Luke Evans, Dakota Fanning and Brian Geraghty headline the cast, and this could well be your next serial killer obsession if you’re missing “Mindhunter” and the like.
Airdate: Kicks off January 21st on TNT.
9. “Westworld” Season 2 (HBO)
Synopsis: More cowboys and robots and stuff, potentially with more samurai too.
What You Need To Know: Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s show got off to a rocky start at HBO, had to start over and was delayed by a year to overhaul before season one aired. But instead of a turkey, “Westworld” was a huge hit consuming the Internet and media with theories upon theories. But season one not only revealed its many mysteries by the end, it blew up its own narrative. Where season two goes without one of its major lead characters — unless they show him in flashback — in unclear, but “Westworld” absorbed the pop culture zeitgeist in 2016 and will likely do the same this year.
Release Date: Expected to arrive in the spring on HBO, but no date has been given.
8. “Sharp Objects” (HBO)
Synopsis: A journalist must confront past demons when she returns to her hometown to investigate a series of murders.
What You Need To Know: If the peak TV era has been largely male-driven, last year’s “Big Little Lies” proved a welcome corrective to that: a pleasingly testosterone-free drama that could fuel big viewership and water-cooler chatter just as much as a “Breaking Bad” or a “Sopranos.” The show will return in 2019 (with, excitingly, Andrea Arnold at the helm), but “Sharp Objects” seems like it’s very much HBO’s spiritual sequel to that show, not least because it’s again directed in its entirety by BLL helmer Jean-Marc Vallee. This time, it’s an adaptation of a novel by “Gone Girl” author Gillian Flynn (once actually targeted for adaptation by Arnold, coincidentally enough), brought to the screen by “UnREAL” co-creator and “Mad Men” vet Marti Noxon, and starring Amy Adams, Patricia Clarkson and Chris Messina. I mean, you might as well just start throwing Emmys at the thing now.
Airdate: Flynn tweeted last year that it would air in June, though HBO haven’t confirmed that yet.
7 “.True Detective” Season 3 (HBO)
Synopsis: Season 3 of this American crime anthology tells the story of a macabre crime in the heart of the Ozarks, and a mystery that deepens over decades and plays out in three separate time periods.
What You Need To Know: Creator/showrunner/writer Nic Pizzolatto‘s acclaimed show took the PeakTV world by storm in 2014 but stumbled rather hard with the critically maligned second season that Pizzolatto and HBO admitted was rushed. With some time off, season 3 sounds like it will be mammoth and extremely ambitious as it juggles three time periods. Pizzolatto is writing nearly episode with some spiritual guidance from legendary TV writer David Milch (“Deadwood“). Plus, the writer will graduate to director along with celebrated indie helmer Jeremy Saulnier (“Green Room“). Mahershala Ali stars as a state police detective from Northwest Arkansas, Carmen Ejogo plays an Arkansas school teacher with a connection to two missing children and Stephen Dorff plays an investigator haunted by a baffling crime.
Release Date: TBD, but shooting starts in February and TV turn around is rather fast, so HBO can likely turn it around for the fall or late winter.
6. “Mindhunter” (Netflix)
Synopsis: Holden Ford, Bill Tench and Dr. Wendy Carr continue their investigations into the mind of the serial killer.
What You Need To Know: We needed another serial killer show like we needed another decomposing body under our porc- oh, uh, pretend we didn’t say that. Anyway, even in a saturated genre, David Fincher and Joe Penhall’s tremendous “Mindhunter” stood out with its psychological realism and filmmaking craft, and its good notices meant that a second season, already a likelihood, became a certainty. The BTK Killer teased across Season 1 likely won’t move to the fore yet unless Penhall and his writing team depart massively from history, but we’re likely to see some other real-life killers turning up, including the Atlanta child murders between 1979 and 1981, and potentially Charles Manson and David Berkowitz. But assuming the writing, acting and direction remain as strong as they’ve been, we won’t need any big name subjects to take the day off work when this arrives.
Airdate: Not 100% guaranteed to arrive in 2018, admittedly, but if shooting gets underway soon it’s entirely possible (and it was originally ordered for two seasons so scripts are likely done)
5. “Too Old To Die Young” (Amazon)
Synopsis: A grieving police officer crosses paths with the man who killed his partner, finding himself in an LA underworld of hit men, Yakuza soldiers, cartel assassins, Russian mafia and teen killers.
What You Need To Know: After “Drive” became an instant cult hit, Nicolas Winding Refn seemed primed to be a cine-bro favorite in a way that few filmmakers since Tarantino have managed. But his provocative nature instead led to “Only God Forgives” and “The Neon Demon,” films that at best were divisive and at worst actively audience-repelling. Nevertheless, mainstream success might well come calling again with his Amazon show, another sure-to-be-stylish crime drama that reteams him happily with DP Darius Khondji and composer Cliff Martinez. Miles Teller, John Hawkes and “Neon Demon” standout Jena Malone lead the cast, but perhaps the most reassuring team member is co-creator Ed Brubaker, maybe the best writer of crime comics (like “Criminal,” “Fatale” and “The Fade Out”) today, and someone who might give a little more narrative rigor than Refn’s last couple of movies.
Airdate: Probably the fall.
4. “The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 2 (Hulu)
Synopsis: A return to the theocratic dystopia of Gilead, as Offred is transported away by men who may be about to take her into a much worse situation, or possibly a better one.
What You Need To Know: Having spent years in development, “The Handmaid’s Tale” became one of the most talked-about TV series of 2017 almost as soon as it aired: ropey musical choices aside, it was hard to imagine a TV version of Margaret Atwood’s novel working better than the one that Hulu, showrunner Bruce Miller and director Reed Morano put together, and landing during the Trump administration made it feel utterly relevant. Renewed for a second season after just a month on air, and now carrying various awards, it’ll be interesting to see if Miller & co can keep up the quality now that they’ve burned through most of the plot of the novel, but we certainly have faith that they can. Little’s known about Season 2 beyond that right now, beyond that it’s a longer 13-episode run, and that Alexis Bledel will be returning as a series regular after departing midway through the first batch.
Airdate: Filming didn’t begin until the fall, so expect it a little later than last year’s April airdate.
3. “Maniac” (Netflix)
Synopsis: Two patients in a mental institution disappear into a fantasy world.
What You Need To Know: Though he became one of the hottest directors in town after “True Detective” blew up four years ago, Cary Fukunaga’s only work since was “Beasts Of No Nation,” with the helmer ultimately parting ways with projects like “It” and “The Alienist” as director. But he’s back in force in 2018 with another high-profile TV star headlined by a pair of Oscar nominees, though “Maniac” looks to be quite different from the HBO crime show. It’s a remake of a Norwegian show, penned by novelist Patrick Somerville and with all ten episodes helmed by Fukunaga, with what seem to be slight “Fisher King” overtones in terms of a mix of fantasy and mental illness as subject matters. Unsurprisingly, Fukunaga’s assembled a killer cast: Jonah Hill and Emma Stone play the lead roles, with “Ex Machina” actress Sonoya Mizuno, Justin Theroux, Julia Garner, Jemima Kirke and Sally Field in support.
Airdate: Filming wrapped in November, so we could see it by the summer, though Fukunaga helming all the episodes means the fall’s probably more likely.
2. “Atlanta Robbin’ Season” (FX)
Synopsis: Two cousins work through the Atlanta’s hip hop scene in order to better their lives and the lives of their families.
What You Need To Know: The innovative, sometimes surreal and experimental “Atlanta” from comedian Donald Glover is genius and perhaps unlike anything on television. Vignette-driven, “Atlanta” had a loose, if non-existent plot, following characters more than story and not unlike the structure of “Louie” only set in the South following a much, much different urban experience of hustling to get by, survive and feed families. Apparently, season 2 will be less experimental, follow a more cohesive story and believe it or not, was heavily influenced by “Tiny Toons.” “Are you gonna eat or are you gonna be eaten?” Glover said recently. “I think that’s something people don’t realize. Black people have to make a choice. That choice defines who you are. It’s hard.” Brian Tyree Henry, Lakeith Stanfield, Zazie Beetz are all back, and if the show is half as brilliant as season one (which we named the best show of 2016), ‘Robbin’ Season’ will still be one of the best shows on Television.
Airdate: March 1st on FX.
1. “The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs” (Netflix)
Synopsis:The miniseries will be an anthology western following six different storylines (you can read more about each here).
What You Need To Know: A collaboration with Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Television division, it appears no one in cinema is immune to TV’s seductive charms (and big budgets). Not even the Coen Brothers. But it’s also described as a “feature-length omnibus” and separate stories, so perhaps each story is a movie’s length each? It’s definitely unclear, but the idea of the Coen brothers making six different Westerns with the sprawl, time and budget afforded by a mammoth company like Netflix is exciting, to say the least. Actors featured in these six storylines include James Franco, Zoe Kazan, Tyne Daly, Willie Watson, Ralph Ineson. Tim Blake Nelson and Stephen Root.
Airdate: TBD via Netflix
You’d think there aren’t any more TV series to highlight at this point, but there are: 450 other scripted shows set to air across 2018 to be frank, and we’re sure that some of them will turn out to be better than many of the above — shows like “American Vandal” weren’t anywhere near our radar this time last year. We should also note that Steven Soderbergh‘s “Mosaic” is brilliant, but we’ve already watched the app version and put it on our Best TV of 2017 list.
Editor’s note: “Mindhunter” and “True Detective” were originally on this list, but once word came that the latter wasn’t coming this year (plus a source that told us the same about the former), we decided to pull them from this list. We’re bummed cause we were looking forward to them both.
Among the ones that nearly made the cut are Benedict Cumberbatch in Showtime’s “Patrick Melrose,” Alan Ball’s return to HBO with the Holly Hunter-starring “Here & Now,” Ellen Page in Netflix superhero series “Umbrella Academy,” Starz restaurant comedy “Sweetbitter” from “Girls” director Richard Shephard, the return of spy literature’s most bafflingly enduring bureaucrat with Amazon’s” “Jack Ryan,” the Netflix remake of “Lost In Space,” comic book shows “Cloak & Dagger” and “Titans,” the return of our beloved “Billions,” Matt Groening going to Netflix with fantasy-themed animation “Disenchantment,” Tom Tykwer’s Weimar noir “Babylon Berlin” also on Netflix, the pretty-good Amazon answer to “Black MIrror” with”Phillip K. DIck’s Electric Dreams,”globetrotting AMC crime series “McMafia,” Ryan Murphy’s ball drama “Pose” (and, for the completionists, the not-well-received “Versace” season of “American Crime Story”), Paddy Considine and Bel Powley in Amazon terrorism drama “Informer,” Netflix’s animated remake of “Watership Down” with John Boyega, the series version of “Picnic At Hanging Rock” with Natalie Dormer, and a new take on “Vanity Fair” for Amazon starring Olivia Cooke and from the director of Netflix’s excellent “The End Of The F***ing World” (which has already debuted, but is well worth a watch.
Netflix hows that would certainly be here if they were ready for 2018, which they likely won’t be, include Sarah Paulson in “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” prequel “Ratched,” the “Dark Crystal” sequel “Age Of Resistance” and Damien Chazelle and Jack Thorne teaming for musical “The Eddy.” Amazon’s 2019 will have fantasy “Carnival Row” with Orlando Bloom, Neil Gaiman adaptation “Good Omens” starring Michael Sheen, David Tennant and Jon Hamm, the remake of Joe Wright’s “Hanna,” Wong Kar Wai’s “Tong Wars” and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Oliver North starring Colin Farrell, while HBO have Craig Mazin’s “Chernobyl” and Julia Roberts in “Today Will Be Different” coming further off.
And big-name shows that are probably or definitely not back until 2019 include “Game Of Thrones,’ “Stranger Things” and “The Crown,” while “I Love Dick” and “Search Party” haven’t yet been formally renewed.
Anything else we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments.
