Series to Watch: January 2026

Ahead of the new year, DQ checks out the upcoming schedules to pick 10 new series to watch this January, from a Finnish crime drama and a new Agatha Christie mystery to the return of The Night Manager and a US remake of British drama Doc Martin.

The Night Manager S2
From: UK
Original broadcasters: BBC (UK), Prime Video (worldwide except UK)
Producers: The Ink Factory, Character 7, Demarest Films, 127 Wall, Nostromo Pictures
Distributor: Fifth Season
Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Diego Calva, Camila Morrone, Indira Varma, Paul Chahidi, Hayley Squires, Olivia Colman, Alistair Petrie, Douglas Hodge, Michael Nardone and Noah Jupe
Launch dates: January 1 (BBC), January 11 (Prime Video)
Eight years after the first season of The Night Manager, Hiddleston returns as former British intelligence operative Jonathan Pine, who thought he’d buried his past. Now living as Alex Goodwin – a low-level MI6 officer running a quiet surveillance unit in London – his life is comfortingly uneventful. Then one night, a chance sighting of an old mercenary prompts a call to action and leads Pine to a violent encounter with a new player: Colombian businessman Teddy Dos Santos (Calva). On this perilous new journey, Pine meets Roxana Bolaños (Morrone), a businesswoman who reluctantly helps him infiltrate Teddy’s arms operation. Once in Colombia, Pine is plunged deep into a deadly plot involving weapons and training of a guerrilla army. As allegiances splinter, Pine races to expose a conspiracy designed to destabilise a nation. And with betrayal at every turn, he must decide whose trust he needs to earn and how far he’s willing to go before it’s too late.
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Run Away
From: UK
Original broadcaster: Netflix
Producers: Quay Street Productions, Final Twist Productions
Starring: James Nesbitt, Ruth Jones, Minnie Driver, Alfred Enoch, Lucian Msamati, Jon Pointing, Tracy-Ann Oberman and Annette Badland
Launch date: January 1
The latest Netflix thriller from novelist Harlan Coben, Run Away centres on Simon (Nesbitt), who had the perfect life: loving wife and kids, great job, beautiful home. But then his eldest daughter Paige ran away and everything fell apart. So when he finds her, vulnerable and strung out on drugs in a city park, he finally has the chance to bring his little girl home. But it turns out she’s not alone, and an argument escalates into shocking violence. In the aftermath, Simon loses his daughter all over again, and his efforts to find her will take him into a dangerous underworld, revealing deep secrets that could tear his family apart forever.
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Kylmä Kausi (Guts)
From: Finland
Original broadcaster: YLE
Producer: Just Republic
Distributor: About Premium Content
Starring: Roosa Söderholm, Sannah Nedergård and Antti Virmavirta
Launch dates: January 1 (YLE Areena), January 4 (YLE TV1)
A dark, psychological drama thriller about a women’s elite skiing team and the price of dreams. When one of the skiers, Ada, vanishes into thin air just before a race, the team’s formidable queen Maria is lost without her counterpart. Anna, an eternal underdog, knows her time has come, but her relentless pursuit for success leads her down a path that strains relationships and tests her morality, while Maria’s unshakable confidence begins to waver

Dear Life
From: Australia
Original broadcaster: Stan
Producer: Gristmill
Distributor: Hat Trick International
Starring: Brooke Satchwell, Eleanor Matsuura, Ryan Johnson, Ben Lawson, Annie Maynard, Daniel Henshall, Kerry Armstrong, Deborah Mailman, Megan Smart, Marg Downey and Khisraw Jones-Shukoor
Launch date: January 1
After her doctor fiancé Ash is attacked by a drug addict, Lillian (Satchwell) turns off his life support. Months later, Lillian is still reeling from her fiancée’s death when she receives a letter from a man crushed by a motorbike, thanking her for his new heart – taken from Ash. Suddenly, Lillian feels better – and she wants wants to know more about the people who Ash has enabled to live.
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Best Medicine
From: US
Original broadcaster: Fox
Producers: Fox Entertainment Studios, Propagate Content
Distributor: Fox Entertainment Global
Starring: Josh Charles, Abigail Spencer, Annie Potts, Josh Segarra and Cree Cicchino
Launch date: January 6
Based on the UK’s Doc Martin, this series centres on Dr Martin Best (Charles), a brilliant surgeon who abruptly leaves his illustrious career in Boston to become the general practitioner in a quaint East Coast fishing village where he spent summers as a child. Unfortunately, Martin’s blunt and borderline rude bedside manner rubs the quirky, needy locals the wrong way, and he quickly alienates the town, even though he’s all they’ve got. Although Martin can expertly address any medical ailment or mystery in this idiosyncratic town, he’s really just desperate to be left alone. Instead, he keeps getting dragged right into the middle of their personal chaos, feuds and fantasies. What the locals don’t know is that Martin’s terse demeanour masks a debilitating new phobia and childhood trauma that prevent him from experiencing true intimacy with anyone. But tenacity is the creed of everyone in their small village, and the people who live there may be exactly what the doctor ordered.
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Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials
From: UK
Original broadcaster: Netflix
Producers: Imaginary Friends, Orchid Pictures
Starring: Mia McKenna-Bruce, Helena Bonham Carter, Martin Freeman, Corey Mylchreest, Ed Bluemel and Nabhaan Rizwan
Launch date: January 15
England, 1925. At a lavish country-house party, a practical joke appears to have gone horribly, murderously wrong. It will be up to the unlikeliest of sleuths – the fizzingly inquisitive Lady Eileen ‘Bundle’ Brent (McKenna-Bruce) – to unravel a chilling plot that will change her life, cracking the mystery open wide.
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PONIES
From: US
Original broadcaster: Peacock
Producer: Universal Television
Distributor: NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution
Starring: Emilia Clarke, Haley Lu Richardson, Adrian Lester, Artjom Gilz, Nicholas Podany, Petro Ninovskyi and Vic Michaelis
Launch date: January 15
Moscow, 1977. Two ‘PONIES’ (‘persons of no interest’ in intelligence speak) work anonymously as secretaries in the American embassy. That is until their husbands are killed under mysterious circumstances in the USSR, and the pair become CIA operatives. Bea (Clarke) is an over-educated, Russian-speaking child of Soviet immigrants. Her cohort, Twila (Richardson), is a small-town girl who is as abrasive as she is fearless. Together, they work to uncover a vast Cold War conspiracy and solve the mystery that made them widows in the first place.
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A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
From: US
Original broadcaster: HBO
Producer: HBO
Starring: Peter Claffey, Dexter Sol Ansell, Daniel Ings, Bertie Carvel, Danny Webb, Sam Spruell, Shaun Thomas, Finn Bennett, Edward Ashley, Tanzyn Crawford, Henry Ashton, Youssef Kerkour, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor and Daniel Monks
Launch date: January 18
Already renewed for a second season in 2027, this Game of Thrones spin-off is set a century before the events of the original series, when two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros: a young, naïve but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall (Claffey), and his diminutive squire, Egg (Ansell). In an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet faded, great destinies, powerful foes and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends.
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Steal
From: UK
Original broadcaster: Prime Video
Producers: Amazon MGM Studios, Drama Republic
Starring: Sophie Turner, Archie Madekwe, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd
Launch date: January 21
A contemporary, high-octane thriller about the heist of the century and the ordinary office worker, Zara (Turner), who finds herself at the heart of it. A typical work day at a pension fund investment company is upended when a gang of violent thieves burst in and force Zara and her best mate Luke (Madekwe) to execute their demands. But who would steal billions of pounds of ordinary people’s pensions, and why? DCI Rhys (Fortune-Lloyd) is determined to find out, but as a recently relapsed gambling addict, Rhys must keep his own money problems at bay while dealing with the secret agendas and competing interests at the centre of this far-reaching crime.

Hildur
From: Finland
Original broadcasters: Ruutu (Finland), Siminn (Iceland)
Producers: Take Two Studios, Sagafilm
Distributor: Cineflix Rights
Starring: Ebba Katrín Finnsdóttir, Lauri Tilkanen, Rick Okon, Nína Dögg Filipusardóttir, Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Oddur Julíusson and Oona Airola
Launch date: January 26
Based on the novels by Satu Rämö, this ‘Nordic blue’ series is set in the remote, picturesque Westfjords region of Iceland, surrounded by stormy seas and towering mountains. It tells the story of Hildur, whose two sisters disappeared on their way home from school when they were young. Twenty-five years later, Hildur is working as a detective in her home town and is drawn into the investigation of a baffling series of crimes. Accompanied by unlikely allies Jakob, a Finnish trainee officer seeking a fresh start, and Florian, a German recruit mistakenly assigned to the team, she begins to uncover long-standing mysteries while it becomes clear they are on the trail of a cunning serial killer.
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tagged in: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials, Best Medicine, Dear Life, Guts, Hildur, Kylmä Kausi, Ponies, Run Away, Steal, The Night Manager