SAS: Rogue Heroes
The Italian Job
Streaming: TVNZ+
The second series offering a high-action, loose history of the early WWII days of the Special Air Service written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight leaves the desert sands of the North African campaign for the 1943 invasion of Italy. That’s with their original commanding officer David Stirling (Conor Swindells) now in an Italian prisoner of war camp and his loose cannon offsider Paddy Mayne (Jack O’Connell) now in charge – at least until the arrival of Stirling’s mild-mannered Lieutenant-Colonel brother Bill Stirling (Gwilym Lee).
American Primeval
The Utah War
Streaming: Netflix
Set in 1887, this six-part American frontier drama has a historic backdrop of the real-life clashes between the US Army, Utah Native American tribes and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which had laid claim to the territory. The first episode depicts the Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which a Mormon militia slaughtered about 120 members of a wagon train bound for California. The story’s main focus is on a guide (Taylor Kitsch), leading a woman (Betty Gilpin) and her family through the dangerous region. Directed by Peter Berg and written by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant), it’s one for those who like their Westerns served with plenty of blood and grit.
The Pitt
New emergencies
Streaming: Neon, from January 11
Noah Wyle returns to his true calling, as a doctor on television. It’s 15 years since ER bowed out and Wyle, cast in that show in 1994 as a fresh-faced medical student, now has the face of a man who has seen some things – which turns out to be a significant part of his character as Dr Michael “Robby” Robinovitch, chief attendant in Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital’s emergency room. Each episode created by former ER executive producer R Scott Gemmill – and originally envisaged as an ER sequel – focuses on a single hour of a 15-hour shift at the overstretched hospital.
The Hardacres
Upwardly mobile in the 1890s
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.30pm, from January 14
Streaming: TVNZ+
A good deal has been made of this series as a “working-class Downton Abbey” and writers Amy Roberts and Loren McLaughlan (Call the Midwife) have been clear that they took on the project because “more working-class people watch telly than any other demographic, but they don’t feel like they are represented on the screen”. Based on the novels by CL Skelton, it follows the fortunes of the Hardacre family as they move from working at a grubby fish dock to a country estate in 1890s Yorkshire.
The Traitors US
Scheming celebrities
Streaming: ThreeNow, from January 17
The American iteration of the global hit franchise returns for a third season. Host Alan Cumming directs a new crop of contestants, including Bob The Drag Queen (RuPaul’s Drag Race), Zac Efron’s hunky brother Dylan and, weirdly, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, who was last in the news for his connections to Cambridge Analytica.
Severance
Weirder work stories
Streaming: Apple TV+, from January 17
It’s been three whole years since the end of the first season of Severance and the delay was, creator Dan Erickson and director Ben Stiller told Vanity Fair recently, a matter of both external factors (the screen writers’ strike) and the intricate nature of the drama, where work-life balance is achieved by everyone having two separate personalities. In season two, Mark Scout (Adam Scott) discovers the consequences of messing with the severance barrier.
Grace
Simm’s sleuthing superintendent
Screening: BBC First, 8.30pm, January 19
Streaming: Neon
Screenwriter Russell Lewis originally wrote his adaptation from the crime novel series by Peter James as two films. The first, 2021′s Dead Simple, was enough of a hit that three more episodes were commissioned to extend this second season to four parts (third and fourth seasons have aired in the UK since, and a fifth is set for this year). John Simm (Life on Mars) plays Brighton-based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, who dives into a succession of unsolved murder cases. But Grace’s own professional standing is clouded by questions around the disappearance of his wife.
Piglets
Irresponsible comedy
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.55pm, from January 20
Streaming: TVNZ+
This ITV comedy about new police recruits and their long-suffering superiors arrived on British screens with controversy built in. The Police Federation of England and Wales slammed the name Piglets as “a disgusting choice of language to use for the title of a TV programme.” It was perhaps an overreaction to what is by most accounts a fairly slight and silly offering from the producers of Smack the Pony and the hospital comedy Green Wing. Some reviewers liked it (the Times deemed it “clever, rude, decidedly weird and sharply funny”), but others thought it was undercooked.
Prime Target
A thriller that counts
Streaming: Apple TV+, from January 22
Prime numbers play a special role in all our lives as the basis of modern cryptography: the phone calls we make are encrypted, as are our banking transactions. The discovery of an underlying pattern to the distribution of primes – a concern of mathematicians since Euclid – would undermine encryption and rock our digital world. That’s the set-up for the eight episodes of conspiracy thriller Prime Target. A brilliant young maths postgraduate, Edward Brooks (Leo Woodall, White Lotus) is on the verge of that breakthrough, but realises that someone is trying to destroy his work. That brings him into the orbit of NSA agent Taylah Sanders (Quintessa Swindell, Black Adam), whose job is to keep an eye on mathematicians. Together, they begin to perceive the conspiracy that has been marshalled against his work. Also starring Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) and David Morrissey (Sherwood).
High Potential
Single mum savant cracks cases
Streaming: Disney+, from January 22
The set-up is familiar enough – an oddball outsider turns out to have the knack of solving crimes that stump the professionals and starts to do so on the regular – but American reviewers have hailed High Potential as a particularly good instance of that procedural trope. Kaitlin Olson (Hacks) stars as Morgan, a single mum with an amazing brain, who partners up with Karadec, an initially sceptical by-the-book LAPD detective (Daniel Sunjata, Graceland). Written by Drew Goddard (The Good Place), it’s based on the successful French series Haut Potentiel Intellectuel (HPI) which is now available on streamer Acorn TV.
The Night Agent
Mole hunter
Streaming: Netflix, from January 23
The first season of The Night Agent about a low-level FBI guy who defeats a White House conspiracy and saves the President proved a hit on Netflix when it debuted in 2023. Season two has our hero Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basson) now recruited into a secret outfit, Night Action, dealing with stuff the other spy agencies find too tricky, like leaks from within their ranks. The first season won comparisons to early 2000s spy thriller 24 and a third season is already in the works.
Abbot Elementary
Fourth season at the school
Streaming: Disney+, from January 24
Fans of the Emmy-winning public-school mockumentary felt that letting the romantic tension between Janine and Gregory remain unresolved for the whole of season three was a bit much. But they kissed in the season finale, and everyone can now move on with season four, where the immediate news is a crossover with the gang from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (the shows air on different US TV networks, but they’re set in the same state). Early press indicates the writers have managed to squeeze even more jokes in alongside the character development.
Thank God You’re Here
Revived improv show still doing the business
Screening: Three, 8pm, from January 24
Streaming: ThreeNow
There was a 14-year hiatus between the fourth season of the Aussie improv show and this fifth season, but it’s been a hit all over again. Panel show veteran Celia Pacquola (seen here in the local feature film The Breaker Upperers) takes over from Shane Bourne as host, but the format remains the same: comedians are kitted up in costume, invited to walk through a door into a world they know nothing about and greeted with the line “Thank God you’re here.” From there, it’s all about their ability to improvise. Contestants this time around include Guy Montgomery, Urzila Carlson, Melanie Bracewell, Ray O’Leary, Kitty Flanagan, Ross Noble and Rhys Nicholson.
The Recruit
Legal action
Streaming: Netflix, from January 30
The first season of this light-hearted thriller series about a newbie CIA lawyer (Noah Centineo) getting in over his head in the agency’s dealings with an asset threatening to reveal classified information, didn’t exactly set the world on fire. But it seems to have entertained enough people to have earned a second, especially after its series one cliffhanger ending. This time, the young counsel finds himself in Seoul where he teams up with a local intelligence agent Teo Yoo (Past Lives) in much high-action shenanigans which has possibly something to do with stopping another Korean War.