49 New TV Shows We're Excited to Watch in 2020 - Thrillist

In terms of sheer number of scripted television shows produced, 2019 will be hard to top, with a whopping 532 series airing across all networks, cable, and streaming services, according to the man who coined the term Peak TV. It's easy to argue that, while the percentage of quality shows has gone down over the past decade, there's never been more to love or a wider variety of programming to watch. We're into it.

What new shows will kick off the decade and eventually be written about as being essential to understanding the 2020s? Chances are you'll find at least a few of them on this curated list of TV series making their debut this year.
Also read: Netflix originals we're excited to see in 2020

AJ and the Queen

Netflix, Jan. 10
RuPaul's a reality TV fixture thanks to Drag Race, but he takes a swerve into scripted fare with this 10-episode Netflix road-trip comedy. Ru plays a drag queen named Ruby Red, who, after losing all of his money, has to go on a cross-country tour. His traveling companion? A troubled 10-year-old with attitude. Tia Carrere of Wayne's World fame is also there! -- Esther Zuckerman
(Watch the trailer)

The Outsider

HBO, Jan. 12
Adapted by Richard Price from the 2018 Stephen King novel, this 10-episode supernatural mystery stars Ben Mendelsohn as a Georgia cop investigating a grisly murder of a boy. The seeming culprit? Jason Bateman's Jason Bateman-y family man character, who swears he didn't do it, despite video and forensic evidence to the contrary. Things get confusing enough that they have to call in Cynthia Erivo's weird and weirdly intuitive investigator to help solve the crime. -- John Sellers
(Watch the trailer)

Little America

Apple TV+, Jan. 17
The Big Sick co-writers Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon created this earnest-looking anthology series for Apple's new streaming service about immigrants in America. Nanjiani told the crowd at last March's Apple event that this show will tell human stories about immigrants, which could mean just about anything. Hopefully there will be fewer medical quandaries than in The Big Sick, because our country is not exactly known for its kind treatment of immigrants with medical quandaries. -- Anthony Schneck
(Watch the trailer)

Avenue 5

HBO, Jan. 19
For his TV follow-up to the political satire Veep, which he left behind after the fourth season, writer Armando Iannucci looks for laughs in space. House's Hugh Laurie plays the captain of the titular luxury space cruiser and Josh Gad plays its mercurial owner in this series that explores all the cruel, verbose, and funny ways leaders bicker with each other and support staffers. Zach Woods and Suzy Nakamura from Silicon Valley steal many scenes, as does Rebecca Front, who appeared in Iannucci's classic BBC series The Thick of It. -- Dan Jackson
(Watch the trailer)

Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens

Comedy Central, Jan. 22
Awkwafina -- real name: Nora Lum -- created and stars in this series loosely based on her own life. Basically, the premise is "what if the Crazy Rich Asians actress hadn't become a major celebrity and was still living with her family in Queens?" Hence the title. Bown Yang, the breakout star of this season of Saturday Night Live, plays her cousin, while BD Wong is her dad. There are shades of Broad City, but it's all filtered through Awkwafina's incredible timing. -- EZ
(Watch the trailer)

Star Trek: Picard

CBS All-Access, Jan. 23
At last, we have a reason to say "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot." on a weekly basis again. Master thespian and tweeter Stewart returns to the role that made him famous: Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation and its many spin-off feature films. Little is known about the series so far, but based on the trailer, it appears Picard is in semi-retirement, painting in vineyards, and just generallly chilling, until a crisis occurs that sends him on a quest. Familiar faces, like those of Data (Brent Spiner), Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes), and others, indicate that this will have a healthy heaping of fan service involved. But this is clearly Stewart's show, and the only thing we have to say about watching an entire series built around arguably the greatest Star Trek character ever is an unqualified "engage." -- JS
(Watch the trailer)

Locke & Key

Netflix, Feb. 7
Locke & Key, the fantasy-horror comic written by novelist Joe Hill and illustrated by artist Gabriel Rodriguez, hasn't had an easy development journey since its initial publication in 2008. After multiple adaptation attempts, including a pilot for Fox shot by filmmaker Mark Romanek in 2011 and a possible film trilogy from Universal announced in 2013, the story of three demon-battling siblings is finally arriving on Netflix from Carlton Cuse (Lost) and Meredith Averill (The Haunting of Hill House). Expect lots of supernatural shenanigans, key-based intrigue, and coming-of-age drama. -- DJ
(Watch the trailer)

Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet

Apple TV+, Feb. 7
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia veterans Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, and Megan Ganz created this video game comedy that's co-produced with Ubisoft. Spon-con wins again! The series follows a group of devs working on the eponymous game, a wildly successful MMORPG on the cusp of releasing its first major expansion. McElhenney stars as Ian Grimm, a gifted creative director with "an ego the size of a bus," alongside F. Murray Abraham, David Hornsby, Charlotte Nicdao, Ashly Burch, Danny Pudi, Jessie Ennis, and Imani Hakim. Think Silicon Valley meets It's Always Sunny...'s Mac. -- AS
(Watch the trailer)

High Fidelity

Hulu, Feb. 14
Happy Valentine's Day! You shall receive this new Hulu series based on Nick Hornby's 1995 novel, from which the iconic and quite dated 2000 movie starring John Cusack was also based. (Somehow the story of a self-centered, pretentious dude record-store owner mourning relationships lost doesn't play as well in 2020.) This TV adaptation gender-flips the narrative with Zoë Kravitz as the lead character Rob, aka Robyn. (Adding a layer of metaness: Kravitz is the daughter of Lisa Bonet, who co-starred in the movie.) New Rob is sort of like Old Rob except she lives in Brooklyn, and is a woman. Once again, she embarks on a quest to figure out where it all went wrong as she deals with massive heartbreak. -- EZ
(Watch the teaser)

The Good Lord Bird

Showtime, Feb. 19
Expect star Ethan Hawke at his self-righteous best as militant abolitionist John Brown in this limited series based on the 2013 novel by James McBride. The book is told from the perspective of a teenage slave (played here by Joshua Caleb Johnson) who joins Brown and his supporters in the bloody, tense period leading up to the American Civil War. Daveed Diggs, as Frederick Douglass, and Lodge 49's Wyatt Russell, as future Confederate general and Robert E. Lee confidante J. E. B. Stuart, also star. -- AS

Twenties

BET, Feb. 19
Before Lena Waithe was writing screenplays like Queen & Slim or had won an Emmy for a Masters of None episode, she created a buzz-bin YouTube pilot presentation Twenties -- which is finally getting the official show treatment on BET. Like the title suggests, the comedy focuses on a group of 20-somethings coming of age, in particular a queer woman named Hattie (Jonica T. Gibbs) and her two straight best friends, focusing on her ambition to make it as a black TV writer. -- Sadie Bell

Year of the Rabbit

IFC, Feb. 19
The Brits have already seen Matt Berry's latest comedy series when it aired on Channel 4 last summer, but now the rest of us will see what this Sherlock Holmes-inspired detective spoof is all about. Berry stars as the titular and constantly drunk Detective Inspector Rabbit solving crimes in a Victorian-era London, and the show features cameo from comedy bigwigs like Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. -- Leanne Butkovic
(Watch the trailer)

Hunters

Amazon Prime, Feb. 21
Here's an easy sell: Al Pacino and Jordan Peele team up to kill some Nazis. The Get Out director executive-produces this Amazon show in which Pacino plays a Jewish man leading a team of people tracking down Nazis living in America in the late 1970s. Logan Lerman, Carol Kane, Josh Radnor, Dylan Baker and Lena Olin also star. -- EZ
(Watch the trailer)

Dispatches From Elsewhere

AMC, Mar. 1
Series creator and star Jason Segel plays a sadsack in need of a purpose who stumbles upon a mysterious puzzle that sends him down a figurative rabbit hole that simultaneously makes him question his sanity. He meets other solvers along the way. Think The OA meets Lodge 49 -- in other words, compelling TV. -- JS

The Plot Against America

HBO, Mar. 16
The Wire and The Deuce creator David Simon will adapt, with co-creator Ed Burns, the late novelist Philip Roth's book of the same name, which imagines what would happen if noted Hitler supporter Charles Lindbergh became president and turned America toward fascism. Who knows what that would look like! The six-episode miniseries will star Winona Ryder, Zoe Kazan, and John Turturro. -- AS

Little Fires Everywhere

Hulu, Mar. 18
Celeste Ng's '90s-set novel about class and race conflicts in the ostensibly pristine community of Shaker Heights, Ohio, comes to Hulu courtesy of Reese Witherspoon's production company. Witherspoon plays yet another overbearing, all-too-perfect mother coming apart at the seams, while Kerry Washington plays an artist who moves to the town with her daughter in tow. Over the course of the limited series, their lives intertwine as their children bond. -- EZ

Devs

Hulu, Mar. 5
After her boyfriend disappears, a computer engineer (Sonoya Mizuno) investigates a strange quantum computing company called Amaya, run by a mysterious engineer (Nick Offerman). That's pretty much all we know about the plot of Devs, though it seems to have some flavors of Maniac, the 2018 genre-bending Netflix miniseries about a group of people in a pharmaceutical trial (in which Mizuno also stars). Creator Alex Garland, fresh from his sci-fi psychothriller Annihilation, turns from film to TV for this miniseries, inspired in part by the director's obsessions with determinism and free will. -- Emma Stefansky

Hollywood

Netflix, May
Ryan Murphy again taps Darren Criss (Glee, American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace), this time not just for a role in front of the camera, but behind it as well. (Criss is an executive producer.) Hollywood has yet to get an exact premiere date and not much is known about the show yet, but it's set in the 1940s and will tell a variety of stories about people working in the film and sex industries in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Other alums of Murphy projects also turn up, notably Patti LuPone, Jim Parsons and Dylan McDermott also star, as will Samara Weaving (Ready or Not). -- SB

Quiz

AMC, May
No need to phone a friend: A bizarre scandal involving coughing in the audience on the original British version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? has been turned into a must-watch miniseries starring Michael Sheen, Fleabag costar Sian Clifford and Succession scene-stealer Matthew Macfadyen. -- JS

Mrs. America

Hulu, Spring
This sprawling series looks at women's rights in America and stars Cate Blanchett as Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative who brought down the Equal Rights Amendment. Originally an FX project that Disney's now moving to Hulu, Mrs. America comes from former Mad Men and Halt and Catch Fire writer Dahvi Waller. The cast has other big stars playing historical figures: Rose Byrne is Gloria Steinem, Uzo Aduba is Shirley Chisholm, Margo Martindale is Bella Abzug, and Tracey Ullman is Betty Friedan. -- EZ

Normal People

Hulu, Spring
Based on the book of the same name by the queen of the millennial narrative, Sally Rooney (who adapted the book for Hulu with the playwright Alice Birch), this miniseries captures the intense intimacy that develops between Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal), which twists and shatters as their social standings change. -- EZ

Snowpiercer

TNT, Spring TBA
Bong Joon-ho's post-apocalyptic thriller, based on a French graphic novel about an endlessly moving mega-train that's divided by class, gets adapted for television, and we will be there for it, at least until we decide whether it's even remotely as mind-blowing as that 2013 movie was. Jennifer Connelly and Daveed Diggs star. -- JS

The Walking Dead: The World Beyond

AMC, Spring TBA
Just when you thought there couldn't possibly be more Walking Dead, AMC brings you: more Walking Dead. This series is set 10 years after the apocalypse and will feature -- gasp! -- female protagonists. -- AS

Impeachment: American Crime Story

FX, Sept. 27
If you can't get enough impeachment drama from your Twitter feed, this Ryan Murphy-produced FX mini-series about President Bill Clinton's 1998 impeachment should at least provide some historical perspective. Like the previous two American Crime Story seasons, the casting alone should make this an event: Clive Owen will play Clinton, Sarah Paulson will play Linda Tripp, and Booksmart break-out Beanie Feldstein will play Monica Lewinsky, who has signed on as a producer for the series. -- DJ

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

Disney+, Fall TBA
Finally, a scripted Marvel series that actually sounds essential: a team-up between Anthony Mackie's MCU character and Sebastian Stan's, both still reeling from the events of Avengers: Endgame. -- JS

Untitled Tina Fey/Robert Carlock Sitcom

NBC, Fall TBA
Good news, The Good Place fans. (Or Cheers fans, we guess. Or Becker fans.) Ted Danson will not be leaving your TV screens for every long. He's back on NBC later this year in a new sitcom from 30 Rock creators Tina Fey and Robert Carlock. The familiar-sounding storyline as a billionaire who gets elected as Los Angeles mayor. It's not at all about Schmichael Schloomberg.

UNSCHEDULED 2020 SHOWS

Alice in Borderland

Netflix
Netflix has dabbled in live-action anime and manga movies, but never a season of television. An adaptation of a manga series written by Haro Asō that ran in Weekly Shonen Sunday between 2010 and 2016 will be the streamer's first. Think of the premise as Sword Art Online, except for adults: Some salty high school boys get transported to the Borderlands, where they have to play survival video games to stay alive. Notably, Alice in Borderland is directed by Shinsuke Satō, who made Netflix's actually pretty good live adaptation of Bleach, so we expect it to deliver. -- LB

Belgravia

ITV
Created and produced by the same folks who brought us Downton Abbey, Belgravia won't be too much of a departure from Julian Fellowes and co.'s comfort zone: Belgravia is a period drama set among the 19th-century societal power struggles in London immediately before and 25 years after the Battle of Waterloo. The original story, penned by Fellowes, was published in 2016 as an experimental serialized novel in a standalone app. -- LB

The Boondocks

HBO Max
Aaron MacGruder's hilarious Adult Swim anime-inspired staple is getting rebooted for HBO's streaming service on a two-season order and a 50-minute special. Details are light, but we do know that Granddad and his grandsons, Riley and Huey, will have to deal with the neo-Nazis that have established a tyrannical regime in their comfortable suburb. The Boondocks never tiptoed around its bold leftist and racial politics, and we can't wait to see what's in store with MacGruder back as showrunner after stepping away from Season 4. -- LB

Brave New World

USA Network
We all read it in that one class in school, or maybe you skimmed it instead, or maybe you didn't read it and were just lucky with your guesses on all the pop quizzes. But now it's about to be even easier to experience Aldous Huxley's groundbreaking sci-fi dystopia of Brave New World, thanks to a new 10-part miniseries starring Demi Moore and Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story, Hail Caesar!) coming later this year. Set in a future where monogamy, money, and history are outlawed and everyone gets all the drugs and sex they need to stay happy, Brave New World swiftly reveals its aspirational utopia to be anything but. -- ES

Bridgerton

Netflix
It's a big year on Netflix for Shondaland! An Anna Delvey series, an adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the Great Migration, former CEO of Reddit Ellen Pao's Silicon Valley memoir -- and this, Bridgerton. Based on the historical romance book series (eight novels and three novellas) written by Julia Quinn, Bridgerton the Netflix TV show will center on debutante Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) hitting the marriage circuit in early 1800s England and her whirlwind romance with bad boy duke Simon Basset (Regé-Jean Page). Plus, Dame Julie Andrews plays a high society gossip columnist. -- LB

Cursed

Netflix
Based on the comic series by Thomas Wheeler and legendary illustrator Frank Miller (300, Sin City, Batman: Year One), Cursed turns the King Arthur legend on its head, positing that maybe it was Nimue, the fabled Lady of the Lake, who wielded the mythic sword Excalibur. When her dark magic abilities force her to leave her Druid village, young Nimue (Katherine Langford) teams up with a mercenary named Arthur (Devon Terrell) to fight against the Red Paladins and their ruthless leader Uther Pendragon. -- ES

Madam C.J. Walker

Netflix
Octavia Spencer stars as the title character in a biopic miniseries about the hair care pioneer and philanthropist, the wealthiest self-made woman in America at the time of her death in 1919. Tiffany Haddish co-stars as Walker's daughter and president of the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company. -- AS

Maniac Cop

HBO
Nicolas Winding Refn, fresh off the visually stunning and wildly overlooked 2019 Amazon Prime crime thriller Too Old to Die Young, adapts William Lustig's gory 1988 slasher cult classic as a (no doubt) visually stunning miniseries. -- JS

McMillions

HBO
In 2018, The Daily Beast published an instantly viral true crime feature about Jerome Jacobson, an ex-cop who rigged the McDonald's Monopoly promotional game and got away with millions in the process. If you didn't read the story, someone at least emailed it to you. Now, the wild tale is getting the six-part HBO documentary treatment, which has the benefit of arriving before a possible big screen version from Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's production company. -- DJ

Nine Perfect Strangers

Hulu
If Big Little Lies Season 2 didn't hit like you wanted it to, Nine Perfect Strangers might just fill that void. Not only is it another adaptation of a book by BLL author Liane Moriarty, it brings back BLL showrunner David E. Kelley and Nicole Kidman. Kidman stars as the director of a wellness resort where nine strangers check in for a 10-day retreat that doesn't turn out to be like what any of them expected. -- SB

The Old Man

Hulu
Jeff Bridges, a major movie star who has yet to make a play for prestige TV glory, stars in this thriller series about a retired CIA officer who wants to live "off the grid." But -- you guessed it -- he keeps getting pulled back into the shady world he thought he left behind. It's adapted from a novel by veteran genre writer Thomas Perry, and also features John Lithgow, Amy Brenneman, and Alia Shawkat in supporting roles. Think True Grit meets The Americans. -- DJ

Ratched

Netflix
Nurse Mildred Ratched, the terrifying, tyrannical head nurse of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, will go down in history as one of pop culture's greatest villains. And what's a villain without a compelling origin story? The Ryan Murphy-produced Ratched, which stars Sarah Paulson, naturally, will chart the titular nurse's beginnings and rise to power, starting in 1947 and following her on her journey through the mental healthcare system. -- ES

The Right Stuff

Nat Geo
This isn't the first time that Tom Wolfe's novel about the first Americans in space, known as the Mercury Seven, has been adapted for the screen, but it is the first miniseries based on the work. The Right Stuff takes an exhaustive, anti-nostalgic look at what was the country's first reality show, as the seven astronauts and their families were made into instant celebs because of the insane, amazing things they were about to do. The series will follow the crew from their spacecraft tests in the Mojave Desert all the way to orbiting around our planet. -- ES

Run

HBO
Created by Fleabag's Phoebe Waller-Bridge and written by frequent PWB collaborator Vicky Jones, the comedic thriller Run pairs Ruby (Merritt Wever, fresh off her scene-stealing turn in Netflix's Marriage Story) and Billy (Domhnall Gleason) as old flames who follow through on a years-old pact together and hit the road. -- LB

Selena: The Series

Netflix
A biographic series about the life and rise to superstardom of legendary Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla. Christian Serratos of The Walking Dead fame will take on the tragic titular role in this miniseries, which is produced in part by the late singer's family to offer a more well-rounded telling of her life, as opposed to the recent Telemondo series El Secreto de Selena, which focused largely on her 1995 murder. -- SB

Space Force

Netflix
In summer 2018, President Trump announced that he was creating a sixth branch of the military: the space force for… "space-related tasks." Because of how absurd that sounds, showrunner Greg Daniels (The Office, Parks and Recreation) and Steve Carell teamed up to write and produce a workplace comedy imagining what the hell the government staffers went through trying to put that galactic team together. Carell also stars, with John Malkovich and Ben Schwartz in other leading roles. -- SB

Solar Opposites

Hulu
Justin Roiland, co-creator of Rick & Morty, has another animated space-adjacent comedy in the works that Hulu has already greenlit for two 16-episode seasons. In Solar Opposites, an alien family plants themselves in flyover country after escaping an asteroid crash on their home planet. Is it our modern Third Rock from the Sun? The Simpsons with aliens? Who knows! Like Rick and Morty and Meeseeks and etc., Roiland will voice two of the main characters and presumably tons of randos the aliens encounter. -- LB

The Stand

CBS All Access
Perhaps no Stephen King book has been called "unadaptable" more than his cinderblock The Stand, and considering how well it went the first time, that may very well be true. That doesn't mean we'll stop trying, and, with the world looking more apocalyptic by the day, maybe there's no better time than now. King himself is directly involved in this adaptation, which will star James Marsden, Amber Heard, Whoopi Goldberg, and Alexander Skarsgård as the villainous Randall Flagg, who plots a hellish takeover of a world ravaged by a catastrophic plague. -- ES

The Third Day

HBO
Jude Law leads the cast of this mysterious six-part limited series from Dennis Kelly (Utopia). Blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, the adventure tale finds Law's character Sam traveling to a strange island off the British coast where he comes into contact with its unique inhabitants, eventually clashing with them as he begins to lose his sanity. -- SB

The Undoing

HBO
Nicole Kidman re-teams with Big Little Lies writer David E. Kelly for this miniseries adaptation of a novel about a successful marriage therapist whose life unravels after a murder. Hugh Grant plays the missing husband -- there's always a missing husband! -- and each episode will be directed by Bird Box filmmaker Susanne Bier, so expect plenty of twists and suspense from this one. -- DJ

Uptown

BET
This three-part miniseries documents the story of the iconic Uptown Records, which helped launch the career of huge names in R&B and hip-hop like Mary J. Blige, Notorious B.I.G., Sean "Diddy" Combs, and others. Casting has been kept under wraps, so it's unclear which label signees will be portrayed, but founder Andre Harrell is on as executive producer so this will offer up an insider's look. -- SB

Utopia

Amazon Prime
While this project, an adaptation of a 2013 British series about a group of young adults who come into contact with a potentially world-altering graphic novel, was originally ordered to series by HBO back in 2014 but eventually fell apart over budget issues. It's since found its home at Amazon with Gone Girl and Sharp Objects writer Gillian Flynn still at the helm. Sasha Lane, Rainn Wilson and John Cusack will play some of the individuals who get pulled into the larger conspiracy that surrounds the comic. -- DJ

Y

FX
This troubled adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's Eisner Award-winning comic-book series Y: The Last Man follows Yorick Brown (Barry Keoghan) and his pet monkey, Ampersand, the only males left on Earth after a mysterious event causes all mammals with a Y chromosome to suddenly perish. Yorick travels this strange new reality and survives multiple assassination and kidnapping attempts, thanks to a group of fierce women trying to figure out why he survived and whether they can save their species. Despite a change in showrunners, Vaughan says the series will still debut this year. -- ES

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