40 Most Anticipated TV Shows of 2019

This British teen comedy has a clever premise — the awkward, virginal son of a sex therapist decides to provide a similar type of counseling to his horny but dysfunctional high school classmates — and boasts the always-wonderful Gillian Anderson in the mom role. But perhaps the biggest thing in its favor is the company behind it. If Netflix’s stellar, growing stable of filthy-yet-sweet comedies about lustful adolescents (Big Mouth, American Vandal) is any indication, Sex Education should fast become one of the best shows on TV. AS

Two of the best actors working today, Don Cheadle and Regina Hall, are dropped into mid-Eighties Wall Street for this dark comedy about the events leading up to the stock market crash of October 1987. Cheadle and Hall chew up the trailer scenery as fast-talking traders, while Andrew Rannells tags along as a wide-eyed but ambitious newbie. There will be bad suits (of the track- and three-piece variety), cocaine, Lamborghinis, duffel bags full of cash and… y’know, suicides. Count us in. MF

Ciao, Abbi and Ilana. Broad City aims to go out on top in its fifth season, with Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer as the BFFs who carry each other through the haze of their twenties, from the highs (pegging, going to Whole Foods on drugs) to the lows (most everything else). Season Four got dark and political, with a whole episode dedicated to post-election sexual dysfunction. Glazer and Jacobson began this story as their homemade series of YouTube shorts before they had any idea how big it would blow up; it will be a pleasure to see them ride it all the way to the finale. RS

Comedy Central is pairing the final season of Broad City with one of the shows the network hopes might help fill that Ilana-and-Abbi-shaped hole in our hearts. Drew Tarver (Bajillion Dollar Propertie$) and Heléne Yorke (Masters of Sex) play young adult siblings whose lives have never gone anywhere, even as their 13-year-old brother ChaseDreams (Case Walker) becomes a massive pop star overnight. Former SNL head writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider have penned the new buddy comedy, with some complicated family dynamics thrown in for fun. AS

Tina Fey and Robert Carlock close out the story of their plucky heroine Kimmy (Ellie Kemper), in the final season (technically the second half of Season Four) of a groundbreaking show that delicately balanced horrific trauma with comedy. (Always a strange fit on NBC, it looks more at home on Netflix.) There’s an episode with a Sliding Doors-style timeline looking at how everyone’s life would be if Kimmy had never been kidnapped. Kemper heads the returning cast, along with Jane Krakowski, Carol Kane and Tituss Burgess. RS

Wonder Woman star Chris Pine and director Patty Jenkins re-team for this six-part miniseries that evokes the stylized noir of L.A. Confidential. Based on a memoir (whose co-author, Fauna Hodel, also contributed to the script), it boasts true-crime bona fides that tie a young woman’s search for her birth family to a notorious Hollywood gynecologist who may or may not have been the Black Dahlia killer. Jenkins knows how to bring out the best in Pine, tapping into the squirrelly energy that lurks beneath his ordinary leading-man looks. Whatever road she wants to lead him down, we’ll follow. MF

Orange Is the New Black‘s Natasha Lyonne co-created (with Amy Poehler and director Leslye Headland) this Groundhog Day-meets-quirky-indie set in New York. She plays a video game designer who keeps dying after her 36th birthday party, then resurrecting in the same spot earlier in the same evening. It’s been a while since Lyonne had a great showcase of her own; looks like she just went out and wrote herself one. AS

Welcome to middle school circa Y2K: Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle play two friends coping with adolescence in the era of NSync, AIM and “Teenage Dirtbag.” They’re adult comedians playing themselves as 13-year-olds, surrounded by a cast of actual kids, in a cross between Big Mouth, Eighth Grade and Freaks and Geeks. Both alumnae of Man Seeking Woman, Erskine and Konkle will get a chance to shine in this 10-episode Hulu comedy produced by the Lonely Island team, suffering through crushes, cliques, chat rooms and leg-shaving as a lovable pair of all-American rejects. RS

Netflix’s history with comic-book properties is shaky (sorry, Daredevil, Iron Fist and Luke Cage), but we’re cautiously (very) optimistic for this new series about a family of misfit superheroes — all orphans born by different mothers and then adopted by a billionaire — who have to get their shit together in time to stop the end of the world. The cast includes Ellen Page, Mary J. Blige, Black Sails‘ Tom Hopper and Mindhunter standout Cameron Britton, among others. If that’s still not enough to whet your appetite, consider that the show is based on the comic book by My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, who serves as a producer and had a strong hand in putting together the soundtrack. MF

You will notice precious few shows, new or old, from the traditional broadcast networks on this list. That’s because the Big Four have mostly retrenched from trying anything bold or stylish, particularly on the drama side, in favor of police procedurals, Chicago shows and whatever else they believe won’t scare away what’s left of their dwindling audience share. Occasionally, though, the networks still try to have fun, and we’re hopeful this spy series starring Scott Foley and The Walking Dead’s Lauren Cohan is both fun and well-executed enough to remind us of the better days for ABC and friends. AS

Pamela Adlon’s heavily autobiographical series was one of TV’s very best and most emotionally rich shows in both of its first two seasons. It returns for a third with Adlon and most of her friends, but without the show’s disgraced co-creator Louis C.K. — and we’re guessing that’s for the best. If there was any question who was the driving creative force on the series, the new episodes should handily put it to rest. AS

Aidy Bryant has been poised for a while to be the next SNL regular to break out. This comedy based on the memoir of journalist/comedian Lindy West could be her chance. Co-written by West, Bryant and Love alum Ali Rushfield, it features Bryant playing a plus-sized woman who wants to improve her life — and doesn’t give a damn about losing weight. AS

Idris Elba is serious about his side gig as a DJ — he was just announced as part of this year’s Coachella lineup. In Turn Up Charlie, Stringer Bell takes to the wheels of steel as a London DJ who gets a new job as a manny helping to raise his best friend’s daughter. Elba himself created (with Gary Reich) and executive-produced the eight-episode Netflix comedy, also starring Piper Perabo. It shines a light on his music vocation (he just DJed a royal wedding and spoke out about his craving to do a collabo with his Cats co-star, Taylor Swift), but it’s yet another chapter in Elba’s quest to prove himself the coolest man alive. RS

Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer return for a second season as, respectively, a messy but clever spy and a childlike but ruthless assassin, who compete to see who’s more obsessed with the other. The first season, created by Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller Bridge, was one of 2018’s most exciting surprises, alternately hilarious and terrifying. And Oh landed both an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe statuette for her work. What will this group do for an encore? AS

What do you get when the creative teams of Hamilton and The Americans join forces? Not a hip-hop Cold War spy thriller, but a star-studded miniseries about the decades-spanning collaboration (professional and romantic) between director and choreographer Bob Fosse (Sam Rockwell) and Broadway dance legend Gwen Verdon (Michelle Williams). As if that description didn’t offer enough excitement, the teaser that aired during the Golden Globes was pretty thrilling, too. AS

Bow down to TV’s last great water-cooler show. We’ve only got six more episodes of the HBO fantasy epic to marvel at and argue over, as David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will present a conclusion to George R.R. Martin’s sprawling story (while Martin himself still struggles to finish the penultimate book in the series, let alone start writing his own version of the ending). Will the Night King overrun Westeros? Will Jon Snow and Daenerys ever figure out they’re kissing cousins (and will they care if they do)? And are six episodes — even movie-length ones — enough to adequately say goodbye to Tyrion, Arya, Sansa, Brienne of Tarth, Bronn and the rest of the gang? Let the spectacle — and endless debates — begin. AS

Bill Hader is back as Barry, the angst-ridden hitman who decides he wants to turn over a new leaf, end his life of crime and take acting classes in L.A. Except over the course of the excellent Season One, Barry learned he can’t quite leave the murder racket behind. Hader was superbly dark and poignant the first time around, in the role of his life (so far). Also returning: his acting teacher Henry Winkler, who keeps the Fonzarellissance going. RS

The profanely poetic Western has long been TV’s great unfinished masterpiece, even though HBO promised not one, but two reunion movies to conclude the story when they abruptly canceled the series in 2006. Thirteen years later, we’re lucky enough to get one. Creator David Milch has brought back most of the surviving cast, led by Timothy Olyphant and Ian McShane, for a story that will hopefully provide a more fitting end for all the hoopleheads and cocksuckers we’ve waited so long to see return to the thoroughfare. AS

Take the animator from BoJack Horseman (cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt), add two of the biggest comedic talents to emerge in the last few years (Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong), apply them all to a winningly goofy premise — two thirtysomething “bird-women” who live in the same apartment building strike up a friendship and have adventures in the big city — and you have a no-fail recipe for a weirdly wonderful new series. Haddish voices Tuca, described by Netflix as a “carefree toucan,” while Wong takes the role of Bertie, an “anxious songbird.” (Note to BoJack fanatics: Raphael Bob-Waksberg is an executive producer alongside Hanawalt.) Come this spring, we’ll be watching like. . . hawks. (Sorry.) MF

The end of Veep? How are we supposed to function without Jonah, a.k.a. the Jolly Green Jizz-Face, One Erection, Benedict Come-In-His-Own-Hand or Tall McCartney? Veep signs off with a Season Seven campaign where Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Selina Meyer makes one more run for the White House, surrounded by her deep bench of D.C. cranks, from Kevin Dunn’s Ben to Anna Chlumsky’s Amy to Timothy Simons’ Jonah. Veep’s bleak vision of politics might have gotten out-bleaked by reality — if the previous season felt out of sorts, that might have been because it was filmed right as the 2016 election was going down. But count on Louis-Dreyfus and her crew to rise to the occasion. RS

Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s mockumentary about inept vampire roommates was one of 2014’s funniest and most surprising films. Now they’ve reunited for this spinoff about another trio of bumbling members of the undead, this time living in Staten Island and struggling to get along with each other or fit into the modern world. We’re placing our bets now: The “energy vampire” played by Mark Proksch will be everyone’s favorite ridiculous character of 2019. AS

The Eighties kiddie sci-fi caper seemed like a delightful one-off at first, yet the second season lived up to it, with Millie Bobby Brown expanding her role as Eleven, the alien girl who fell to earth. Season Three returns to the kids of Hawkins, Indiana, in the summer of 1985. Winona Ryder (who at this point in the timeline is about to see herself onscreen in Lucas) is joined by Cary Elwes and a couple of celebrity legacies, Jake Busey and Maya Thurman-Hawke. Look forward to hijinks at the town’s brand-new Starcourt Mall. And we already know there will be a Fletch-themed episode, so order up a Bloody Mary and a steak sandwich. RS

Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City novels have come to the screen before, in the 1993 PBS miniseries and the lesser Showtime sequels. The 10-episode revival — dubbed the “next chapter” — picks up with Laura Linney and Olympia Dukakis reprising their Nineties roles. Linney’s Mary Ann returns to San Francisco, 20 years after she left, to reunite with daughter Ellen Page and ex-husband Paul Gross, not to mention her zany landlady (Dukakis). Tales has an all-queer writing room and overlapping stories set in the LBTGQ community. Keep an eye out for High Maintenance’s May Hong, Looking’s Murray Bartlett, Zosia Mamet and Molly Ringwald — along with RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Bob the Drag Queen. RS

The HBO combo of murder, revenge and posh Monterey real estate became a phenomenon in its first season, based on Liane Moriarty’s novel. The new season (with new input from Moriarty) gets the gang back together — the first peek reveals them in a police lineup, suggesting Big Little Lies might pick up right where the Season One cliffhanger left us. Joining the all-star team of Nicole Kidman, Zoe Kravitz, Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley and Laura Dern is Meryl Streep, playing the mom of the murdered (or is he?) Alexander Skarsgård. RS

Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney’s comedy about a trans-Atlantic couple who fall in love only after he’s gotten her pregnant has been away for nearly two years now. That’s far too long to go without Horgan and Delaney’s jaw-droppingly filthy jokes about the many things that can come out of (or go into) the human body, and without the show’s inescapable sense of melancholy as these two keep hurting themselves and each other. It will be a relief to have it back. AS

Though he hasn’t acted on TV in the decade since he returned briefly to ER in the final season, George Clooney’s always remained warm toward the medium that made him a star. And the miniseries format seems a good one for the latest attempt to adapt Joseph Heller’s seminal antiwar satire novel. Clooney directs and has a small role as the oft-promoted Scheiesskopf, with a cast that also includes Hugh Laurie, Kyle Chandler and Christopher Abbott from Girls in the lead role as the bewildered Yossarian. AS

Ava DuVernay is behind this limited series about a group of young black and Hispanic men wrongfully convicted in the April 1989 rape of a white jogger in New York’s Central Park. The brutality of the attack — the victim was beaten so badly she remained in a coma for two weeks — attracted national headlines, and the boys came to be known as the Central Park Five. When DNA evidence overturned their convictions years later, a tale of corrupt policing, reckless journalism and insidious racism was exposed. With DuVernay at the helm as writer, producer and director, look for this dramatization (also covered in a 2012 documentary by Ken Burns and his daughter Sarah) to be delivered with deep empathy and moral authority. MF

Mindy Kaling made her romantic comedy obsession a core part of the character she played on The Mindy Project. Now she gets to put her own spin on one of the movies that so transfixed Mindy Lahiri, with this miniseries about four American friends who reunite in London for a wedding, then undergo tremendous personal tumult across the following year. The Mindy Project was always half-having fun at the expense of classic rom-com conventions. Will she and partner Matt Warburton play things straighter here? We can’t wait to find out. AS

Good Omens dives into the apocalyptic imagination of Neil Gaiman, in the aftermath of American Gods. The Amazon miniseries is based on Gaiman’s 1990 graphic novel with Terry Pratchett, with a host of supernatural forces topped by Dr. Who’s David Tennant as a demon in black and Michael Sheen as an angel in white. Although they’ve been on opposite sides since the Garden of Eden, they team up to prevent the end of Planet Earth, along with quite a cast: Jon Hamm as the archangel Gabriel, Michael McKean as a witch-hunting human and Frances McDormand as the voice of God. RS

Is there a performer alive with more charm and bonhomie than Paul Rudd? Go on, we’ll wait. All the better, then, that this new comedy series features him in not one but two roles. From directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Battle of the Sexes, Little Miss Sunshine), it centers on a man who undergoes an experimental treatment to become a better person only to be replaced by his improved 2.0 self. If Rudd gets the chance to tap into his gifts for both physical humor and pathos, Living With Yourself could join The Good Place in the pantheon of laugh-out-loud surreal philosophical comedies. MF

This Seventies period drama about two FBI agents (Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallanny) and a psychiatrist (Anna Torv) who literally wrote the book on profiling serial killers arrived in 2017 to a marketplace that needed another serial killer show like a fish needs a bicycle. But its cerebral, talky approach — along with sharp direction by David Fincher and strong performances from the cast (including Cameron Britton as one of the terrifyingly calm monsters they interviewed) — made everything old seem new again. Hopefully, Mindhunter can stay that fresh in Season Two. AS

Little to no information has been released about this extremely belated sequel to Star Trek: The Next Generation, save that it will bring back Patrick Stewart as former Enterprise captain Jean-Luc Picard, navigating life after the end of the Romulan Empire. Star Trek: Discovery has been uneven enough that another Trek series doesn’t automatically get a season pass. But when it features the greatest actor in the history of the franchise returning to the role that made him famous, what more do you need to know to tune in? AS

As we have been tirelessly reminded over the past few months, British actress (and probable Oscar nominee) Olivia Colman is no stranger to playing queens. But the Favourite star is indeed the single best choice to take over for Claire Foy and portray Queen Elizabeth in her fifties, as Netflix’s historical drama jumps ahead to the 1970s and finds the royal family once again in a state of stiff-upper-lipped turmoil. Helena Bonham Carter plays the older Princess Margaret; Tobias Menzies is Prince Philip; and Josh O’Connor and Call the Midwife‘s Emerald Fennell are on board as Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, respectively. DF

Disney is breaking out the big guns — and an even bigger checkbook — for the launch of its standalone streaming service, with several new Marvel series (featuring characters and creators from the MCU films rather than the mostly-canceled Netflix shows) along with the first of what will probably be many Star Wars TV spinoffs. This one, at a reported cost of more than $100 million, comes from Jon Favreau (another MCU vet), with Game of Thrones‘ Pedro Pascal in the title role as a gunslinger who hails from Boba Fett’s home world. Set a few years after Return of the Jedi, it features a loaded cast that includes Carl Weathers (!), Nick Nolte (!!) and Werner Herzog (!!!!!!!!!!). Complain all you want about how paying for all the new streaming services is about to cost as much as your old cable bundle did; you know you’ll be watching this. AS

Ryan Murphy begins his long-awaited Netflix period with (who saw this coming?) a satirical comedy that sends up American hypocrisies. Broadway star Ben Platt, still glowing from Dear Evan Hansen, plays an aspiring politician from Santa Barbara; each season will document one of his campaigns. The cast includes Murphy veterans like Jessica Lange (in a role originally announced for Barbra Streisand), Gwyneth Paltrow (who was great in her one scene on The New Normal), Dylan McDermott and Mad Men’s January Jones. RS

You’re traveling through another dimension — one in which the man behind the most groundbreaking horror movie of the past few years revamps and reboots a popular 1960s sci-fi anthology show for modern audiences. How producer/host Jordan Peele will leave his stamp on Rod Serling’s legendary series remains to be seen. But we know that at least two classic episodes (“Rewind” and “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet”) will be getting updated for the first season; that no one is better suited to deliver us a Twilight Zone for our current moment; and that we may finally be forced to subscribe to the Tiffany Network’s streaming service once and for all. DF

The last time Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon appeared in a TV show together, Bill Clinton was president and the only thing Apple made was computers. Yes, Friends fanatics will recall that Witherspoon did a two-episode guest stint as Rachel Green’s little sister, Jill, in Season Six. Then she rose to the top of the A-list while Aniston became a capital-C celebrity. Now, the two megastars are teaming up for Apple’s first-ever scripted show, Top of the Morning, loosely based on the 2013 book of the same name that charted the network news morning-show wars. Originally conceived as a comedy, the series — which received a two-season, 20-episode order out of the gate — has been reframed as a drama, so gear up for subterfuge, backstabbing and plenty of catfights between two perfectly-coiffed, tightly-wound, fake-smiling anchors. MF

Talk about pedigree: For this miniseries, Erin Brockovich writer Susannah Grant, along with novelists Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, adapts a Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica article about a young woman charged with lying about being raped, and the years-long police investigation to uncover the truth. Grant also hops behind the camera to direct a standout cast that includes Toni Collette and two-time Emmy winner Merritt Wever (Godless, Nurse Jackie) as the female detectives who won’t let the case go, as well as young breakouts Kaitlyn Dever (Last Man Standing, Justified) and Danielle Macdonald (PattiCake$). MF

The broadcast network (kind of; it was UPN) TV show that became a Kickstarter-funded movie is now a streaming series. Kristen Bell reprises her title role as a pint-sized gumshoe who’s quick with a quip and quicker to solve dangerous cases. The movie at times felt like an extended, if understandable, bit of fan service, but Mars creator Rob Thomas promises the Hulu show will, in addition to bringing back many other familiar faces, return the show to its film noir roots. AS

For years, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal graphic novel was considered unfilmable. Zack Snyder’s 2009 film proved you really could adapt the plot of Watchmen, but that merely doing so missed the entire point of Watchmen. A decade later, Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof is taking a very big swing at the material. We know little about his approach, save that it’s set in the Watchmen universe and has a cast including Regina King, Jeremy Irons and Don Johnson. This could be another adaptation miracle like Lindelof’s The Leftovers, or another mess, but there’s no way it will be boring. AS