Our most anticipated TV shows of 2024 are already coming in thick and fast. Baby Reindeer sent the discourse machine into overdrive, while Amazon's Fallout series became TV's next great video-game-inspired series (and made the long wait for The Last of Us season 2 a little bit more bearable.)
But there's still much more to look forward to as the year rolls on—from more Star Wars spin-offs to long-awaited returning seasons of shows like The Diplomat, The Bear and Squid Game, plus new gems like Jake Gyllenhaal's first foray into the small screen, Presumed Innocent.
Whether you're someone who likes to fill out their calendar with shows to keep track of or you simply need some light at the end of the tunnel to get you over the finish line of spring, here are all the most anticipated TV shows of 2024.
The Acolyte
Release date: June 4
Here comes another one of those Star Wars spin-offs on Disney+, then, ready to transport us to a world beyond the stars, in a galaxy far, far away. We're yet to see whether The Acolyte will be more Andor (brilliant) or The Book of Boba Fett (peak doomscrolling background TV), but with a cast boasting the likes of Industry's Amandla Stenberg, Squid Game's Lee Jung-jae and The Good Place's Manny Jacinto, they certainly have our attention.
Queenie
Release date: June 7
After a messy break-up with her long-term boyfriend Tom (Jon Pointing), Queenie (Dionne Brown), a 25-year-old living in South London, “seeks comfort in all the wrong places” AKA has several ill-advised flings with men who all exist somewhere on the “not good” to “bad” spectrum. Based on the smart, funny 2019 novel by Candice Carty-Williams of the same name, Queenie essentially looks like a quarter-life crisis bottled in TV form. And, as with the upcoming Supacell and last year's Rye Lane, it's always fun to see South London depicted on screen.
Presumed Innocent
Release date: June 14
Our expectations are high for Presumed Innocent, as it finally managed to lure Jake Gyllenhaal to the small screen. Yep, that's right, Hollywood's premiere purveyor of weird hunk roles has never been charmed into the world of prestige TV—until now. The 8-part limited series is based on the 1987 novel of the same name, which was also adapted into a film in the 90s starring Harrison Ford. Gyllenhaal will play Rusty Sabich, a prosecutor accused of killing his colleague. The spin is that he was the one who was investigating the murder in the first place. If you can't wait until June, you can find out the ending in multiple ways already.
House of the Dragon season 2
Release date: June 16
Perhaps the most welcome surprise of 2022 was a return to form for Game of Thrones apropos of Matt Smith, Emma D'Arcy and Paddy Considine's delightful scenery chewing – the latter putting in the single most under-appreciated TV shift of the year as the waning King Viserys. (That final monologue!! Chalk it up as one of the greatest Emmy snubs of all time.) Whether they can keep it up for a second, Considine-less season is an open question, but all signs point to continued dominance on the fantasy front.
Hotel Cocaine
Release date: June 16
Anyone who's watched Scarface, Narcos or / and Griselda should be at least faintly familiar with The Mutiny, a real-life nightclub in the basement of a Miami hotel which wound up being a notorious hangout for musicians, CIA affiliates and (of course) drug kingpins throughout the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Now, the hotel—which still exists, by the way, but is no longer a mobster hangout— is getting the television treatment.
Heartstopper season 3
Release date: June 16
Maybe Heartstopper is a little sickly sweet for you. Or maybe you're of the mindset that the world's bleak and cynical enough and it's heartening to watch some little angels experience queer love for the first time. If you're in the second camp then fear not, for the wait for Heartstopper season 3 will finally be over in June. Last season ended with Charlie (Joe Locke) and Nick (Kit Connor) further solidifying their feelings for each other in a heartfelt convo in which Nick nearly told Charlie he loves him. According to series creator and writer Alice Oseman, this new season will veer away slightly from its saccharine tone: “While Heartstopper will always celebrate the joyful and point towards hope, I’m really excited that we are allowing the tone of the show to mature alongside our beloved characters growing up. Mental health, sex, university ambitions, and more.”
Supacell
Release date: June 27
What at first looks like a nice, good vibes romance set in South East London quickly descends into an incredibly tense race against time in Supacell, this new time-bendy supernatural sci-fi thriller from Netflix and directed and created by Rapman. The premise goes like so: a group of people randomly develop superpowers, with no connection between them besides being Black. From the trailer, it essentially looks like a mix between 2000s series Misfits and Raine Allen-Miller's Rye Lane. In other words: pacy, twisty and bucketloads of fun.
The Bear season 3
Release date: June 27
A show releasing a new season at regular intervals and not making its audience wait years for its next installment? TV is so back, baby. The Bear, which is surely one of the biggest small-screen success stories of the past decade, is heading back into production for season 3 this month with an eye on a June release date. We ended season 2 of the Chicago-based series at Carmy's restaurant's friends and family night, meaning season 3 will most likely revolve around its actual opening. Not to mention all the personal drama that goes alongside all of the chef drama, like Carmy still potentially being locked in a walk-in freezer while seemingly every relationship around him is close to crumbling.
The Umbrella Academy season 4
Release date: August 8
The most dysfunctional family in the universe are getting one last adventure. The fourth and final season of The Umbrella Academy, based on the Gerard Way comic book of the same name, will hit our small screens sometime this year, wrapping up a huge plot twist that shocked fans at the end of its last run. Season three ended with the enhanced siblings sans their superpowers, meaning season four will revolve either around them getting them back or trying to work out life without them. According to Netflix, this final season will also see them face a bigger and worse enemy than ever before—one that wants them out of the picture for good.
Industry season 3
Release date: August 11
Holy moly did Industry season 2 end on one nuclear-grade banger of a cliffhanger or what, when [redacted for spoilers] was sacked, unceremoniously, from Pierpoint, presumably with nowhere to go and their career in the mud. Whomp whomp! We can only expect (and hope) that the third season, with Game of Thrones' Kit Harington joining the cast as a green-energy tech CEO, will be as brutal, sexy and vicious as the first and second, which combined made for some of the best TV drama we've seen in ages, with the frenetic thrills of Uncut Gems and robust character work of a Sopranos, or any other heavyweight small screen classic worth its salt. We demand more Ken Leung.
Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2
Release date: August 29
Lord of the Rings nerds rejoice! For not only is a new slate of films reportedly on the way (Do we need them? Does it really matter if we don't?), but a brand new season of Prime Video's The Rings of Power is also set to land this year, in August. The last season, mercifully, ended up being a crowd-pleaser (a relief considering it was apparently one of the most expensive TV shows ever made). This new season will take place in the Second Age of the Lord of the Rings universe and will depict the early adventures of returning characters like Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), Elrond (Robert Aramayo) and the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron (Charlie Vickers).
The Penguin
Release date: Autumn
Colin Farrell is packing himself back into the prosthetics to reinhabit his role as Gotham's greatest crime lord from 2022's The Batman. The Max series will explore Oswald Cobblepot's rise to the echelons of the city's criminal underworld. Not much else is known about the story yet, but that's just the way the shadowy world of organized crime works, you know?
Originally slated for an early-2024 release, The Penguin was pushed back by the strikes that hit Hollywood and put everything on ice for six months last year. A preview of Max's slate in November suggested that we'll now see The Penguin by autumn, but let's see how that bears out.
Dune: Prophecy
Release date: Autumn
Dune will be the latest sci-fi franchise to get its own TV spin-off in a series which should land this fall, and will cover the origins of sectarian sisterhood the Bene Gesserit (funnily enough, it was originally subtitled The Sisterhood). We have no idea what it'll be about at this juncture but presume that the updated subtitle is in reference to the prophecy around Paul Atreides, portrayed by Timothée Chalamet in Denis Villeneuve's two films. But who knows?
The Boys season 4
Release date: At some point in 2024
The bloodiest (non-animated; we see you, Invincible) superhero series on air returns for its fourth season in 2024, in which we can expect Homelander to go full fascistic-homicidal-Nazi-dad mode and commit a genocide or two with his eye lasers. That's unless Butcher has anything to do about it (before he, er, kicks the bucket). The Walking Dead fans will be excited to see the introduction of that series' very own Negan, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, seen here without his signature baseball bat. Not that it'd be any use against a coterie of megalomanic killer supes, anywho.
Squid Game season 2
Release date: At some point in 2024
The biggest show that Netflix ever released is, of course, getting a second series. How couldn't it? It's a good thing the first series, about a deadly game inflicted on the most debt-ridden people in society, ended on a cliffhanger. After taking home the massive winnings, Gi-hun has his sights set on the game masters who want nothing more than for him to keep quiet so they can keep playing their evil games. Season 2 looks set to crack the whole thing wide open, but we still have to wait some time before a release date is delivered (hopefully not through ominous playground speakers).
The Diplomat season 2
Release date: At some point in 2024
The Diplomat's first season became an overnight success when it launched on Netflix last year, so it's no surprise they're raring to get its second outing out the door. At the end of season one, the titular diplomat, Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), who is on deployment in London to prevent all-out war, is left reeling from the potential death of her husband Hal (Rufus Sewell) in an explosion ordered by the Prime Minister (Rory Kinnear) who is trying to cover up his international faux pas. Clearly, we're going to start season two with a bang. The streamer has also announced that Allison Janney will make her political drama return after The West Wing by joining for season two.
Agatha All Along
Release date: At some point in 2024
It was Agatha all along! Well, actually, at first it was Agatha: House of Harkness, then it was Agatha: Coven of Chaos and then it was Agatha: Darkhold Diaries, and for a minute it was Agatha: The Lying Witch With Great Wardrobe, but now—or at least at press time—it's officially Agatha All Along. The standout supporting character from Marvel's WandaVision, Katherine Hahn's Agatha Harkness, will be joined by Aubrey Plaza, Heartstopper's Joe Locke, and theatre legend Patti LuPone for this spin-off of everyone's favorite meddling witch next door. Not much is known about what the series is about, or even when it's going to be coming out, but we can probably expect a fair amount of spooks and spells along the way.
Severance season 2
Release date: At some point in 2024
The second season of Ben Stiller's work-life balance mindfuck drama has been a long time coming. The first season dropped in 2022 and imagined a world where clocking out from the dramas of work wasn't just a vague aspiration but something that could be bioengineered with the help of a brain implant—when you're at work you have no memory of home, and when you're at home you have no memory of work. Considering the finale ended on the kind of cliffhanger that would have you racing to skip the opening credits of the next episode, the fact we've had to wait two years for even confirmation that a second instalment seems cruel and unusual punishment (almost like having a chip rammed into your head). But with production now officially underway, we hopefully don't have to wait long to clock back in.
2024 releases to be confirmed:
The Night Manager season 2
Release date: TBA
The world fell to its knees when the first season of The Night Manager hit our screens in 2016, introducing us to Tom Hiddleston's former military officer Jonathan Pine. Based on the John le Carré novel, it was a slick and sexy spy offering and one we thought we'd left back in the ‘10s. However, last year it was announced that the series would be coming back with Tom Hiddleston, and now it's been confirmed by Deadline that the show has been given a second and third season and that it will be kicking off filming later this year. It might be tight to get it before the year is out, but if we don't get the second outing by the end of 2024 it will likely be early 2025.
Wednesday season 2
Release date: TBA
The moodiest girl in the world will be back for round two. Wednesday's first season broke Stranger Things season 4's viewing records at lightning speed, so it's only natural the Addams Family spin-off will be back for more. Jenna Ortega's take on the sullen sibling sees her at Nevermore Academy, a boarding school for outcasts. After fending off a literal beast in season 1, there are plenty more monstrous and familial battles in store for round two.
You season 5
Release date: TBA
Hello, you, again (and again and again and again). You just can't get rid of Penn Badgley's Joe Goldberg—stalkers are like that, after all. Coming back with one final season, season five of You, the series about a stalker slash hopeless romantic slash murderer slash book enthusiast, will land is back where it all started in New York City. Joe is happily settled down with Kate, who knows (most of) his dirty little secrets, but homecomings always entail a few reunions. According to Netflix, a familiar face is back to haunt Joe, and with the mammoth list of victims left in his wake, the avenger could be anyone's guess. Goodbye, you.
The show was originally slated to drop in 2024, but the writers' and actors' strikes may see it pushed back to 2025. Only time will tell.
Alien
Release date: TBA
There's a lot of Alien to look forward to on the horizon. Not only are we getting a new film, Alien: Romulus, but a TV series as well. With so many Alien timelines all over the place, you'd be forgiven for being confused about where exactly this show is going to fit. While most details are being kept under wraps, we do know that it's set 70 years in the future, meaning it fits somewhere between the original franchise and the prequel films (Prometheus and Alien: Covenant). It will also be taking place on Earth, somewhere the Xenomorphs so far haven't been. The series is being headed up by Fargo and Legion showrunner Noah Hawley, so at least the notoriously variable-in-quality property is in good hands.
Hijack season 2
Release date: TBA
Idris Elba might just be the unluckiest passenger of all time. After successfully negotiating a hijack of a flight mid-air in season one of Hijack, it's been announced that the Apple TV+ series will be coming back for a second run. Will he have to prevent the hijacking of a bus this time? A train? A boat? Who knows! It's slightly unlikely that Hijack season 2 will hit our screens this year, but remain hopeful that this flight will arrive at its destination ahead of schedule.
Doomsday Machine
Release date: TBA
Another year, another deep dive into the inner machinations of our tech overlords. In Doomsday Machine, Claire Foy will star as Sheryl Sandberg, who held the position of COO of Meta (formerly Facebook) before stepping down in 2022. The show is based on Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang’s book An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination, which delved into how Facebook became a key name in political and social upheaval and how its relentless pursuit of growth and impact has shaped our current cultural and geopolitical climate. The limited series will run on HBO sometime this year.
The Day of the Jackal
Release date: TBA
This year's roster of spy thrillers is filling up nicely with the addition of The Day of the Jackal. Following in the footsteps of Bond and The Night Manager, the series takes inspiration from one of the most seminal pieces of spy fiction, written by Fredrick Forsyth in 1971 (which also had a famous film adaptation a couple of years later). Eddie Redmayne will star as ‘The Jackal’, a mysterious assassin hired to take down a global leader, while Lashana Lynch will play an MI5 agent tasked with taking him down. The 10-episode series will air on Sky sometime later this year.
Death by Lightning
Release date: TBA
The likelihood of this one landing in our laps before the end of the year is slim, but with as stacked a cast as it has, can you blame us for trying to rush it along? Michael Shannon and Matthew Macfadyen will star respectively in Death by Lightning as early US president James Garfield and Charles Guiteau, one of his greatest supporters and who ended up being the man who killed him. Nick Offerman and GLOW star Betty Gilpin have also recently been announced in the series which will be executive produced by Game of Thrones creators (and the people behind the Netflix series 3 Body Problem) David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.
Firebug
Release date: TBA
The Taron Egerton x Apple TV+ relationship remains strong after his 2022 prison series Black Bird (which was tragically overlooked when it was released). He's teaming back up with the streamer for Firebug, a series loosely based on the serial arsonist John Leonard Orr. Orr was an arson investigator and fire captain thought to have set more than 2,000 fires over the decades before being arrested in 1991. Egerton will play the Orr proxy (as well as executive produce the series) while Jurnee Smollett co-stars as his rising star detective.
Murderbot
Release date: TBA
Alexander Skarsgård has always managed to embody characters that have a rogue, sometimes sinister oddness to them, as if you don't quite know what they're thinking (Lukas in Succession, James in Infinity Pool, Eric in True Blood). To that end, his upcoming role as a self-hacking android who simply loves to spend his days watching trash TV feels tailor-made for the actor. The show in question is Murderbot, based on the book series The Murderbot Diaries by best-selling author Martha Wells. Another Apple TV+ big-budget sci-fi punt no less, so you know it's going to be good.
The Miniature Wife
Release date: TBA
We will have no shortage of Matthew Macfadyen on our screen in months to come, which is a good thing for anyone still trying to fill the hole left by Succession. He'll be starring alongside Elizabeth Banks in The Miniature Wife, a dramedy about a married couple dealing with strife and power imbalances in their relationship. If that all sounds very Tom and Shiv, just wait for the high-concept twist that the title teases—the wife is shrunk. This show is literally about a miniature wife. In all seriousness, though, the series is based on the critically acclaimed short story by Manuel Gonzalez, which picked up heaps of praise when it was released in 2013.
Down Cemetery Road
Release date: TBA
From the same production that gives us Slow Horses (probably your dad's favourite show) and Hijack (probably also your dad's favourite show) will come Down Cemetary Road, starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson. The series, which will launch on Apple TV+, will see Wilson star as a woman obsessed with the disappearance of a young girl in the aftermath of a freak house explosion and Thompson as the private investigator she hires to figure out the truth once and for all. It will be based on a novel by Mick Herron, whose book also inspires Slow Horses (seriously, ask your dad about it).
Lions
Release date: TBA
Richard Gadd is the most buzzy man on television right now as his darkly confessional series Baby Reindeer dances around the top spot of the Netflix charts. We'll be seeing more of him in the future, with his next series, Lions, which he's also written and will star in, coming to the BBC. The six-part series will follow Niall and his estranged ‘brother’ Ruben, who reunite at a wedding. When chaos ensues, their tumultuous decades-long relationship is stirred up. The show will follow almost 40 years of their highs and lows and reflect on what it means to be a man.
The Four Seasons
Release date: TBA
If you saw everyone sharing 30 Rock clips a few months back and thought, ‘Man, I wish we had another show like that’, well, you might be in luck. The team behind 30 Rock—Tina Fey, Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield—are coming together again to reboot the 1981 film The Four Seasons for TV. If that line-up wasn't already good enough, Steve Carrell is also on board to star. The film follows three couples who vacation together every season and starred Alan Alda and Carol Burnett. There aren't many details about whether the adaptation will stick true to the original or treat the concept as a jumping-off point, and so far there aren't any other hints at casting. Let's hope Fey's Rolodex of 30 Rock stars is being whipped out for cameo purposes as we speak.