Let me guess: You already have shows like True Detective: Night Country, Expats, and all those Chicago series on tap to watch in January. But new shows are coming out this month that you’ll want to add to the list. Available on streaming services like Peacock, Netflix, and Paramount+, these shows are very different from one another. But they’re all exciting new entries to the streaming TV space.
Two new shows are prequels to popular movies, Ted and Sexy Beast. One, meanwhile, is a new show starring recent Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh. What are they about? Here’s a quick rundown to convince you not to let these three streaming TV shows fly under your radar this January.
If you’re looking for light-hearted laughs to kick off the year and aren’t phased by vulgar and raunchy humor, queue up Ted this month. A prequel to the popular movies Ted and Ted 2 starring Mark Wahlberg, the series continues the story of the lovably potty-mouthed sentient teddy bear Ted, voiced by Seth MacFarlane (who also created both the movies and the series). It’s the ‘90s, and it has been a decade since Ted shocked the nation when he came alive. The dust has settled, and Ted lives an average life with the Bennet family. This includes 16-year-old John (Max Burkholder), his innocent and sweet mother Susan (Alanna Ubach), his crass and surly father Matty (Scott Grimes), and his college-aged feminist cousin Blaire (Giorgia Whigham).
Like a traditional family sitcom with plenty of R-rated humor, Ted follows John and Ted’s antics in each episode. Most stories deal with the trials and tribulations of coming of age. From bullying to trying drugs, dating to sexual curiosity. But surprisingly, there are deeper messages behind the veil of inappropriate language about acceptance, sexual identity, racism, sexism, and more. Ted is a fun watch and an easy seven episodes to blaze through in one or two sittings.
Michelle Yeoh shined in Everything Everywhere All at Once, and you’ll want to check her out next in The Brothers Sun. In the black comedy action series, she plays Eileen, mother to two sons. Bruce (Sam Song Li) moved to Los Angeles with her when he was young and has built an average life for himself there. He doesn’t remember much about his childhood in Taiwan. But when his brother Charles (Justin Chien) pays a visit, Bruce learns the harsh truths. His family members are well-known gangsters; his late father was a crime boss, and his brother has become a hardened criminal who has come to Los Angeles to protect his family and navigate the precarious situation.
The naïve Bruce finds himself caught up in the criminal underworld, fearing for his safety and that of his family and dealing with a brother who is far different from him. Co-created by Brad Falchuk, who is behind such massive hits as Glee, American Horror Story, Scream Queens, and Pose, there are high expectations for The Brothers Sun. The series touches on everything from familial obligations to power, loyalty, and legacy.
Stream The Brothers Sun on Netflix.
Sexy Beast was a cult hit movie released in 2000 about a gangster named Don Logan (Ben Kingsley) who enlists the help of a safecracker named Gal (Ray Winstone) for one final job. Serving as a prequel to the movie, the series Sexy Beast is set in 1990s London, with James McArdle (Andor) and Scottish actor Emun Elliott playing younger versions of the main characters, respectively. The characters of Teddy Bass and DeeDee Gove, meanwhile, are played by Stephen Moyer (True Blood) and Sarah Greene (Bad Sisters).
The U.K. series will explore the relationship between the two central men a decade before the fateful events depicted in the movie. This includes Gal taking up with the seductive Deedee, which threatens to jeopardize everything they worked for. Sexy Beast will run eight episodes long for its first season.
Stream Sexy Beast on Paramount+.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.