A new month and new year have begun for the streaming TV industry, with some major upcoming releases slated for services like Apple TV+ (Masters of the Air) and Netflix (Griselda, Lift) in the coming days and weeks. As it does each month, the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes has sifted through user data to identify which of January’s upcoming titles users are the most excited for — and, based on social media responses to its latest polling, the two most-anticipated TV shows of the month are new titles coming to Disney+ and HBO that you can read more about below.
The two TV shows actually represent a tie for January’s most-anticipated show: They are Echo on Disney+, and True Detective: Night Country, coming to HBO.
Echo (Jan. 9)
First up is a show that I’m hopeful can make up for some of the excesses and mistakes of Marvel’s glut of TV shows — most of which are bland at best.
The five-episode Echo on Disney+ is all about the character Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) as she’s pursued by Wilson Fisk’s (Vincent D’Onofrio) criminal empire. In addition to Cox and D’Onofrio, Echo also stars Chaske Spencer (Wild Indian, The English), Graham Greene (1883, Goliath), Tantoo Cardinal (Killers of the Flower Moon, Stumptown), Devery Jacobs (Reservation Dogs, American Gods), Zahn McClarnon (Dark Winds, Reservation Dogs), Cody Lightning (Hey, Viktor!, Four Sheets to the Wind).
The character of Maya Lopez previously appeared in the Hawkeye series, but we haven’t seen the character since then. Will people tune in to a show where a character is relatively new in the MCU — even if they have the benefit of the Daredevil universe that they already know? This will be interesting to get an answer to.
One perhaps ominous detail about Echo is that no reviews from critics were allowed ahead of the show’s debut. An assumption, of course, is that such a move is because a deluge of early bad reviews would depress viewership — which hopefully isn’t the case here. We’ll know soon enough.
True Detective: Night Country (Jan. 14)
Meanwhile, HBO took home four Golden Globe awards over the weekend for the final season of its hit series Succession that we were all glued to — and its next must-watch TV show is just around the corner.
The networks’s ratings magnet True Detective is set to release its highly anticipated fourth season next week, with detectives played by Jodie Foster and Kali Reis attempting to solve the mystery of eight men who disappear in Alaska. “When the long winter night falls in Ennis, Alaska, the eight men who operate the Tsalal Arctic Research Station vanish without a trace,” WarnerMedia explains about the six-episode True Detective: Night Country, from showrunner Issa Lopez.
“To solve the case, Detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) will have to confront the darkness they carry in themselves, and dig into the haunted truths that lie buried under the eternal ice.”
Episode 1 of the show kicks off with the disappearance of the eight researchers at Tsalal Station who suddenly disappear. Foster’s Danvers orders a search but isn’t very hopeful of finding the men. After handling a workplace dispute and checking-in on her sister, meanwhile, Reis’ Navarro tries to convince a skeptical Danvers that the men’s disappearance is connected to a cold case: The murder of local activist Annie Kowtok.
Ahead of its debut on Sunday, the series already has a perfect 100% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes.
