These days, it feels like everything old is new again – especially on television.
Regardless of industry gripes about slowing production, there is still a lot of TV on deck – and a look at the flood of new series coming in early 2025 reveals a return to the stuff that has formed the backbone of old school television.
Medical dramas. Westerns. Cop shows. Documentaries. It's all on offer in early 2025, rendered in a way that feels modern, but still hearkens back to old thrills that have made these genres so indispensable.
At the start of a year promising a lot of change, it makes a certain kind of sense that television is soothing viewers with a pivot back to the tried and true. Here's my list of new shows to watch for in the new year.
Doc (Fox TV)
Debuts Jan. 7
There's a lot of Regarding Henry going on here – House of Cards alum Molly Parker is Dr. Amy Larsen, an arrogant, acerbic doctor injured in a car accident, suffering amnesia which wipes out the last eight years of her memory. But even as Larsen predictably emerges as a nicer person rethinking some of her more selfish choices, Parker makes sure we never forget the driven, impatient person her character has always been. Based on an Italian TV show, it's not a bad setting for a medical 'case of the week' series, balancing Larsen's ongoing personal struggles with House-style healthcare mysteries.
Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action (Netflix)
Debuts Jan. 7
In this two-part series, filmmakers recount how Jerry Springer came to lead a blockbuster talk show focused on guests' worst behavior, encouraging the audience to egg on people who knew they were expected to brawl on camera. The docuseries leans heavily on accounts from the show's former staffers, especially executive producer Richard Dominick, telling their story of how Springer's show became the most successful version of the "trash TV" talk show genre. So we mostly get a workers-eye-view, treading lightly on producers' culpability for the show's most damaging outcomes for its guests with surprisingly little insight into Springer, who died in 2023 – a former mayor of Cincinnati and aspiring news anchor/commentator who wound up leading the biggest circus in talk show history.
The Pitt (Max)
Debuts Jan. 9
This medical drama stands out for its setting (an emergency room in urban Pittsburgh) and its format: the series' 15 episodes outline, in real time, one long shift for a harried doctor running the department. Noah Wyle plays that doctor, and because he's on the show – and working with executive producer John Wells, who also was a producer on ER – this series faces lots of comparisons to NBC's groundbreaking hit. (In fact, the estate of ER creator Michael Crichton has filed a lawsuit alleging The Pitt is a thinly-veiled copy that started when a revival of the NBC series fell apart). Because the show is focused on the emergency room, they don't much bother capturing the vibe of Pittsburgh – nobody, including Wyle, even attempts the city's unique "yinz"-er accent. But this series succeeds by focusing more on cases than the lives of its doctors, offering an authentic, bracing look at the horrors of our modern health care system.
On Call (Prime Video)
Debuts Jan. 9
Given its pedigree as the first scripted streaming series produced by Law & Order mogul Dick Wolf's company, you might expect this drama about patrol officers in Long Beach, Calif. to feel like an SVU episode set on the beach. But this eight-episode series harkens more to the gritty cop film drama End of Watch, highlighting a patrolman training officer gutted by the murder of a former trainee. Yes, there's a bit of copaganda here. But the show's authentic feel and visceral, sophisticated storytelling elevates it above more formulaic Wolf titles like Chicago Med or FBI, offering a serious look at a seriously dangerous job.
American Primeval (Netflix)
Debuts Jan. 9
Set in 1857 Utah, this explicitly violent limited series strips away the righteous romanticism of so many westerns to depict a ruthless era when those crazy or desperate enough to venture into America's not-yet-settled frontier could quickly become victims or victimizers. Mrs. Davis alum Betty Gilpin continues her thrilling streak of challenging roles as a mom fleeing terrible circumstances in the east, forced to trust a damaged loner played by Friday Night Lights' Taylor Kitsch. Toss in Boardwalk Empire co-star Shea Whigham as the weary, brutally practical owner of the area's only fort and a story that places Native American tribes squarely between rapacious settlers and fanatical Mormons, and you have the makings of a particularly subversive western story.
Severance Season 2 (Apple TV+)
Debuts Jan. 17
It's been nearly three years since director/executive producer Ben Stiller blew our minds with the story of office workers who have their memories "severed" between work life and home. The show's second season leans into the implications of a mysteriously powerful corporation creating people with two consciousnesses – one of which is only aware of what happens from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in a windowless cubicle farm. New episodes continue the show's commentary on capitalism and society with a surreal storytelling style that sometimes feels cribbed directly from a painting by Salvador Dali, peppered by ace performances from Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette, John Turturro and Christopher Walken. (Pro tip: make sure you watch/rewatch at least the last episode of the first season if you truly want to understand what is going on as the second season picks up.)
Star Trek: Section 31 (Paramount+)
Debuts Jan. 24
Long on the drawing board as a series, this project about the Trek universe's version of the CIA likely became a film the second star Michelle Yeoh won an Oscar and became one of the most in-demand actresses in Hollywood. Now it's a 90-minute movie with a weighty premise: Yeoh is playing an evil version of Capt. Philippa Georgiou, a character from the series Star Trek: Discovery yanked from an alternate universe where Trek's beloved Federation of Planets is a brutally authoritarian, human-first Terran Empire. She's now a member of an organization which is pretty much the antithesis of the utopian future Trek has always espoused – a covert, black ops agency called Section 31, which does all the dirty, immoral work The Federation is too high-minded to handle openly. If this sounds like a lot of ground to cover in an hour-and-a-half, you've hit on the film's biggest challenge.
Watson (CBS)
Debuts Jan. 26
The network's latest take on a medical procedural drama wisely focuses on chiseled hunk Morris Chestnut – yes, there is a scene in the pilot episode with his shirt off – as a new school version of Sherlock Holmes' devoted pal and backup, Dr. John Watson. In this story, Holmes is presumed dead, bequeathing Watson a cutting-edge clinic where he serves as medical director. With this setup, as the show explores the mystery behind Holmes' death – and the question of what happened to his nemesis Moriarty – it can also tackle a medical mystery-of-the-week at Watson's clinic. But the show's biggest mystery may be whether all that plot will add up to a successful genre reinvention at the level of Elsbeth or Matlock.
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