TV Shows

The first two episodes of Halo season 2 are now live on Paramount Plus. This season will cover the events of the fall of the planet Reach, one of the major events in the Halo universe responsible for the best book in the series, the best game in the series, and the best trailer. (Argue with Cortana.)

Episode one starts the season off strong as a warthog, so if you were previously on the fence about the show, now’s the time to tune in.

When I was still watching reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation twice a week on UPN in high school and listening to Creed’s Human Clay album on repeat (to my shame), I never saw those two things colliding.

But here we are, and as conflicted as I feel about this Paramount Plus Super Bowl ad’s mash-up, I’m calling it a net good.

The streamer is planning to debut a new docuseries in 2025 that features “unprecedented access to Red Sox players, coaches, and executives” during the 2024 season. Later this year, Netflix will also release a documentary about the Red Sox’s 2004 season, which led to the team’s historic World Series win.

The streamer has been slowly revealing its slate of streaming TV and films, and now the focus is on Korea — a market where Netflix is investing quite a bit. Among this year’s Korean originals are new seasons of Squid Game, Sweet Home, and Hellbound; the historical drama Uprising, co-written by Oldboy’s Park Chan-wook; and a reality show where influencers compete “to find the one true content creator who generates the biggest buzz — by any means necessary.”

Because Super Bowl LVIII is going to have more than a few TV watchers occupied this upcoming Sunday evening, the next episode of True Detective: Night Country will now debut on Friday February 9th at 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT.

The company just released its streaming lineup for the year, and it includes the haunting astronaut thriller Constellation (February 21st), a second season of The Big Door Prize (April 24th), and an adaptation of Dark Matter (May 8th). Unfortunately it looks like fans of Silo, Severance, and Hello Tomorrow will have to be patient.

The company confirmed the change in a reply on Reddit, saying it’s rolling out the enhanced bitrate option for “updated 4K-compatible streaming devices.” It doesn’t mention which channels support the new picture quality, so you might have to do a little channel surfing to find out.

YouTube Premium subscribers can already watch videos in 1080p enhanced on web, mobile, and TVs.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s season one finale absolutely leaves open the possibility for more installments down the line.

But in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Francesca Sloane says that while the show’s creative team has plenty of ideas what they might want to do next, “we would never want to make a season two if we couldn’t kick our own asses, in terms of taking down season one.”

As big a deal as it was when Franklin became the first Black Peanuts character (in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination, mind you), it’s been rare to see him really meaningfully involved in the lives of Charlie Brown and his other friends.

But after years of being a essentially background character, Franklin’s about to get his due in an all-new Apple TV Plus animated special out February 16th.

Netflix just revealed its upcoming slate for both TV shows and movies, and arguably the biggest reveal was that season two of Squid Game would premiere later in 2024. As part of the announcement, we got a handful of images from the new season — though there are still no real details on what the story will entail.

It feels like it’s only a matter of time until Amazon really starts pushing itself as a full-on healthcare provider for its millions of Prime subscribers.

In the meantime, though, the mega store / streaming platform’s gearing up for the February 23rd launch of The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy, which feels a lot like the kind of show you’d check out while waiting in a doctor’s office.

I’m thoroughly enjoying watching people solve True Detective: Night Country’s pettiest mysteries online, so congrats to Redditor Artie-Fufkin for asking the right question about last week’s episode: did Clark pay way too much for his ominous tattoo?

Obviously, Netflix’s new live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender is going to be one of the streamer’s bigger releases folks are talking about next month. But along with all the elemental bending, with movies like Ready Player One and Everything Everywhere All at Once are also headed to the platform.

Well, everyone of a certain age, anyway.

Over at Polygon, they’ve surveyed more than 4,000 Americans over 18 to find out the truth of anime’s reach in popular culture. Netflix’s number one spot on the “Where are you watching anime?” list explains its sudden One Piece obsession, and the survey has even more results about who is watching and why they watch.

Or at least it’s supposed to look like one, and it’s a metacommentary on ChatGPT? Showrunner Issa López explained on X/Twitter:

The idea is that it’s so sad up there that some kid with AI made the posters for a loser Metal festival for boomers.

It was discussed. Ad nauseam.

Apparently the K-pop poster on the left has a cut backstory too.

López doesn’t confirm whether the poster is completely AI-created, and some of the text is more coherent than I’d expect from the average image generator. That’s True Detective, I guess — gotta leave some mysteries hanging.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the eighth season isn’t scheduled to premiere until 2024 .

But in the meantime, it seems that all of the show’s previous seasons are now on Max to stream, and this new clip from Rick and Morty: The Anime make it seem like it might be worth a watch when it debuts sometime this year.

Is apparently a question Marvel’s What If...? is going to ask when its third season hits Disney Plus at some point in the future.

Disney’s Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire was a gorgeous example what kind of magic the entertainment giant could work by collaborating with African animation studios.

And Disney Plus’ upcoming series Iwájú from Ziki Nelson, Hamid Ibrahi, and Toluwalakin Olowofoyeko looks like it’s going to have the same spirit judging from these newly-released images. The show drops on February 28th.

Folks were very quick to complain last November about Invincible’s second season dropping in two separate batches. But those same folks are probably going to be overjoyed to hear the show’s returning on March 14th.

Now let’s see if anyone starts appreciating how making shows takes time.

With the next season of Halo is just around the corner on February 8th, Paramount Plus has released a new, more compact trailer than the one we got earlier this month.

In a brief series of action shots, things feel desperate for humanity and no better for Master Chief, who, as the trailer says, everyone needs.

Schmigadoon, Apple TV Plus’ musical comedy about a couple who wander into a magical town inspired by classic musicals like Brigadoon, has been cancelled after its Chicago style second season.

People will compete in “supersized arcade games” on the in-development show, according to a description in The Hollywood Reporter. This is a truly cursed idea, but I have to imagine it’s somewhat cashing in on the popularity of the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie.

Let’s just hope the show doesn’t run on floppy disks.

Vince Staples is something of a renaissance man. He’s a rapper, an actor, and a lowkey, funny-ass comedian, but in the first trailer for Netflix’s The Vince Staples Show from executive producer Kenya Barris, Vince is really …just a dude trying to live, and get a little more culture in people’s diets.

The new project seems a bit like Staples’ old YouTube series, which you should probably check out before the new shop drops on February 15th.

We’re still very much living through an age of there being almost too much good TV to watch.

But considering the way The Bear, Succession, and Beef dominated at this year’s Primetime Emmy Awards, it kinda seemed like the Television Academy might need to start watching outside its comfort zone a bit more.

When season four of Netflix’s The Witcher drops, folks are going to be tuning in to see what’s what about Geralt of Rivia’s new face.

But as curious as everyone is about the pseudo-new witcher, it feels safe to assume that Laurence Fishburne’s turn as the (presumably vampiric) barber surgeon Regis might be what keeps people watching.

Netflix’s last He-Man animated series from Powerhouse and producer Kevin Smith was more of a sword and sorcery sort of situation.

But everything about Masters of the Universe: Revolution’s new trailer from the arrival of Hordak (Keith David) to Skeletor’s (Mark Hamill) cybernetic body makes it look like the new show’s going center a war between magic and technology when it drops on January 25th.

Isabela Merced will be playing the role, Warner Bros. Discovery confirmed, joining new cast members Kaitlyn Dever as Abby and Young Mazino as Jesse. The show’s second season is set to debut in 2025.

Apple’s partnership with MLS — and, in turn, Lionel Messi — continues with the announcement of a new docuseries about the league, helmed by some of the minds behind Netflix’s hit Formula 1: Drive to Survive. The show will be coming to Apple TV Plus, where there’s already a series on Messi himself, though no word yet on when it’ll start streaming. If nothing else, it’s a smart way to help boost those MLS Season Pass subscriptions.

Netflix’s adaptation of 3 Body Problem from David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo is going to feature more than a few major differences from Cixin Liu’s original sci-fi novel.

But in a new piece from The Hollywood Reporter, Woo says he and his collaborators received Liu’s blessing to adapt the show for an international audience “in the way that we saw fit,” which could be a sign of interesting things to come.