Missing You

From Wednesday, January 1st, Netflix

It’s a match made in mystery heaven: Netflix and Harlan Coben continue to mine a rich seam of psychological thrillers based on Coben’s bestselling novels, in a collaboration that has already yielded such hits as Stay Close and Fool Me Once. Missing You was originally set in New York, but for this series the action moves to Manchester, England, where detective Kat Donovan (Rosalind Eleazar) is rebuilding her life following the unexplained disappearance of her fiance, Josh (Ashley Walters), 11 years ago. When she swipes a dating app, guess whose face appears on her screen. As she sets out to learn what really happened, Kat is plunged into a world of violence and betrayal. Richard Armitage, Lenny Henry, James Nesbitt, Steve Pemberton and Jessica Plummer costar.

The Rig

From Thursday, January 2nd, Prime Video

Iain Glen, Martin Compston and Emily Hampshire return for a second series of the eco-horror thriller, and this time they’re embedded in an Arctic glacier as they delve deeper into the mystery of the deadly parasites that terrorised the crew of the Kinloch Bravo in series one. Having been evacuated from the rig just before it was hit by a huge tsunami, the crew are on another, top-secret facility known as the Stac, but what new threat lies underneath the glacier? We’re about to find out.

Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action

From Tuesday, January 7th, Netflix

In the 1990s The Jerry Springer Show pioneered a new genre of “trash TV”, where guests hurled insults and punches at each other while the audience gleefully egged them on. Springer was the anti-Oprah, presiding over a chaotic mix of relationship squabbles, infidelities and petty feuds, and pouring oil on the fire at every opportunity. This two-part series looks under the bonnet of the tabloid TV behemoth, which ran for 27 years, and uncovers some uncomfortable stories about how it may have destroyed lives and reputations in the pursuit of ratings.

American Primeval

From Thursday, January 9th, Netflix

Danger waits at every turn in the Wild West in the 1850s: you might be ambushed by another western cliche at any moment. American Primeval director Peter Berg wants to tread a different trail, however: this ensemble piece promises to be a raw and violent dissection of the pioneer spirit as well as a story of survival in an ultrahostile environment. Taylor Kitsch stars as Isaac, a deeply troubled soul charged with guiding a young mother, Sara Rowell (Betty Gilpin), and her son Devin across a lawless frontier. As one character observes, “‘Civilisation’ and ‘civilised’ are two different words entirely.”

On Call

From Thursday, January 9th, Prime Video

Here’s something you don’t see very often in cop shows: a veteran officer teaming up with a rookie to go on patrol. This most unusual law-enforcement pairing is at the centre of this new police procedural series created by Tim Walsh and Elliot Wolf. Officer Traci Harmon (Troian Bellisario) is training a new generation of cops in Long Beach, California, and trying not to let cynicism set in; Alex Diaz (Brandon Larracuente) is her ambitious younger partner who is trying to stay optimistic despite the challenges of fighting crime in the mean streets of the city. Each episode is only a half an hour, but we’re promised it’ll be full of adrenaline-charged action.

Goosebumps: The Vanishing

From Friday, January 10th, Disney+

Twins Devin and Cece have moved back in with their divorced dad, Anthony, who is played by Ross from Friends, and given to telling terrible dad jokes. He’s got just one rigid house rule: no going into the basement. That just makes the kids want to go straight down there, of course, to find out what lies beneath. But when things start going bump in the house, they and their friends Alex, CJ and Frankie find themselves investigating the mysterious disappearance of four teenagers 30 years ago, and dealing with a nasty invasive plant species that burrows its way into its victims. David Schwimmer stars in this latest series based on the hugely successful teen horror novels by RL Stine.

Severance

From Friday, January 17th, Apple TV+

So ye seek the holy grail of work-life balance. In the first season of this workplace sci-fi thriller, it became pretty clear that work-life balance is a myth, and that the dice is always loaded in favour of the company. Adam Scott stars as Lumon Industries employee Mark Scout, who signs up for an experiment in surgically separating the work side of the memory from the personal side. So when you’re at work you have no memories of home, and vice versa. In series two, Mark and his colleagues continue their descent down the corporate rabbit hole, and learn just what can happen if they dare to tamper with the severance programme or attempt to find out what’s really going on.

Prime Target

From Wednesday, January 22nd, Apple TV+

If you’re studying hard to improve your maths grades, don’t bother: it might get you killed. Leo Woodall stars in this brainy conspiracy thriller series as the brilliant young mathematician Edward Brooks, who is on the verge of a huge breakthrough in his search for a pattern in prime numbers. If he finds this magic formula, there’d be no computer system on earth he couldn’t hack into. But someone doesn’t want him doing the sums, and they’ll stop at nothing to delete the data – and delete Edward too. It’s like Good Will Hunting meets The Bourne Identity, with added decimal points.

Whiskey on the Rocks

From Wednesday, January 22nd, Disney+

In October 1981 the world teetered on the brink of Armageddon after a Russian whiskey class nuclear submarine ran aground in a restricted military zone on the Swedish coast. With the world’s superpowers on high alert, tensions ramped up between US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, and it was left to the Swedish prime minister, a laid-back former sheep farmer, to keep the two sides from making any rash decisions that could spark a third World War. So an obvious candidate for a screwball comedy in the vein of The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. This cold war satire may be played for laughs, with Reagan (Mark Noble) sporting a big Stetson and Brezhnev (Kęstutis Stasys Jakštas) in full military regalia as they rattle their respective sabres, but the show’s director says he won’t lose sight of the “frighteningly topical” nature of the story.

High Potential

From Thursday, January 23rd, Disney+

Morgan is a single mom who is a high-potential intellectual, ie she’s pretty damn good at solving crimes. She’s working at the LAPD, but she’s not a cop – just a cleaner. It’s not long, though, before her singular talent is spotted and she’s recruited to help the police track down a fiendishly clever killer. Cue a clash of cultures as Morgan arrives at crime scenes with a baby buggy, and generally drives her policing partner – hardboiled detective Karadec – to distraction with her irritating irrepressibility. Kaitlin Olson from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia stars as Morgan, with Daniel Sunjata as Karadec in a series based on the hit French police drama Haut Potentiel Intellectuel, or HPI.