From the return of True Detective to the final season of Game of Thrones, these shows will have you glued to the small screen next year.

The bad news about television in 2019 is that you’re about to wave goodbye to the best in small-screen action when Game of Thrones’ final season airs in the spring. The upshot is that there is plenty more to keep you square-eyed this coming year. From a horror anthology with major Get Out vibes to the return of television’s most cutting comedy, next year is rich in new, returning and departing shows. Here are our favourites.

The anthology series is contemporary television’s version of dating apps. Don’t like what you’ve just seen? No matter, just stick with it, move onto the next one, because something potentially great is up next. So it is with gnarly cop drama True Detective, which took an almighty dip in season two but is back with a brand new, time-hopping tale starring the mighty Mr Mahershala Ali as lead in a 1980 case of two missing kids. This could be the one…

Sky Atlantic / HBO, 13 January

Just as The Handmaid’s Tale dovetailed neatly with the #MeToo movement, so too might Mr Joseph Heller’s vintage novel chime with the tumultuous contemporary political climate. A savagely funny satire on war, power and propaganda, this TV adaptation of Catch-22, with Mr George Clooney in the executive producer’s chair, feels very 2019 already.

Channel 4 / Hulu

Mr Jim Henson’s 1982 movie was the puppeteer’s favourite work but The Dark Crystal didn’t take off until the advent of home video, where the strange animatronic world of Thra earned itself a dedicated fan base. So it is apt that this 10-episode prequel is a small-screen presentation from Netflix. In keeping with the spirit of the original, the show uses puppets – no CGI or cutesy green frogs included.

Netflix

The TV event of the year? It’s eyes down for the Iron Throne, if those blue-eyed White Walkers don’t do their worst first. Fans have expounded as many theories as the internet can hold as to how Game Of Thrones plays out in its eighth and final season, though all we know for certain is that several main characters will not survive to its end. The Red Wedding’s got nothing on this.

Sky Atlantic / HBO, April

Mr Alex Garland builds on the tech paranoia of 2014’s Ex Machina in this eight-part series about a young computer engineer who suspects the Silicon Valley company she works for murdered her boyfriend. Mr Garland has written the entire thing, directs the first two episodes and cast Ms Sonoya Mizuno, the excellent robo dancer in Ex Machina’s much-memed dance sequence, as the lead. Alexa, play “very spooked out indeed.”

BBC / FX

British showrunner Mr Russell T Davies, who hit the sweet spot this year with his delicious period piece A Very English Scandal, tackles the near future in this one, a drama charting the fortunes of one British family over 15 years. The twist? The six-episode drama envisions a post-Brexit Britain, stars Dame Emma Thompson and Mr Rory Kinnear, and begins in the turbulent climate of 2019.

BBC One / HBO

Television is full to the brim with messy characters but none are quite as smutty, surreal or anguished as Fleabag, the titular lead in Ms Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s breakout comedy. Series two picks up the story in the aftermath of a devastating personal revelation, though presumably that won’t stop Ms Waller-Bridge pursuing the darkest, dirtiest comedy on the box.

BBC Three / Amazon Prime

Ms Lena Waithe, the first black woman to win the comedy writing awards at the Emmys (this year, for Master Of None), slides effortlessly into the genre of the moment for her next project. And there’s good reason why Them, an anthology about a black family moving into an all-white LA neighbourhood in the 1950s, is a horror. In the show, the Emory clan have to deal with malevolent forces that have terrifying contemporary resonance. Expect to be haunted by the results.

Amazon Prime

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