Max has just dropped the teaser trailer for its 2024 slate and as you can see from the video, which we've included below, there are some serious televisual treats in store for subscribers to one of the best streaming services.
The trailer included a return to form for True Detective, more House of the Dragon, a new season of the superb comedy Hacks and the rather more frightening Welcome To Derry, which is a prequel to Stephen King's It. There's also a tiny taster for the return of The Last of Us, although that one isn't scheduled until 2025.
There's tons to be excited about, but these five series in particular are making our excite-o-meter go beep beep beep – we're already anticipating that we'll be updating our best Max shows list with a lot of these. Here are five we think you'll want to watch in 2024.
True Detective: Night Country
Premiering on January 14, True Detective: Night Country stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis in the case of a missing scientist found dead and very frozen – a death that turns out to have roots going back many years. Early word says that this season recaptures the magic of the broody first season that starred Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. It also looks like the new season will focus on the dynamics between the two leads – who appear to have some bad blood between them. Between that and the magic words "Jodie" and "Foster", this has rocketed right to the top of our to-watch list.
House of the Dragon Season 2
If season one was epic, then season two of House of the Dragon is even epic-er. The series is set to return with more dragons, more swords, more backstabbing and more skulduggery in the summer of 2024, and it looks like it'll be worth waiting for – while George R.R. Martin works on seasons three and four, he says that season two is "powerful" and "gut-wrenching". As he wrote in a blog post this week, the episodes he's seen are "dark, mind you. Very dark. They may make you cry (I did not cry myself, but one of my friends did.)". In season two, we'll see the Targaryen civil war, aka the Dance of the Dragons, and it's safe to say there will be betrayal, battles and a fair bit of fire too.
The Penguin
Colin Farrell is once again unrecognizable as the titular criminal in the next chapter of The Batman saga, in which we discover how the villainous Penguin rose to become one of the most feared men in Gotham's criminal underworld as he transforms from the disfigured Oswald Cobblepot to the fearsome Penguin. The new footage of The Penguin in Max's teaser trailer is the first we've seen for several months and has got us even more excited about the eight-episode show, which is scheduled to be released in late 2024.
The Regime
From the creators of Succession comes The Regime, a miniseries from HBO directed by Stephen Frears that features Kate Winslet in a timely and chilling drama about a crumbling authoritarian regime. The new miniseries set to debut in the spring of next year. Winslet is the Chancellor and cuts a terrifyingly cold figure alongside a star-studded cast that includes Matthias Schoenaerts, Guillaume Gallienne, Andrea Riseborough, Martha Plimpton and Hugh Grant.
The Sympathizer
Based on the best-selling Pulitzer prize-winning book of the same name, The Sympathizer mixes genres in a tale of a North Vietnamese mole in the South Vietnamese army who is forced to flee the war and becomes embedded in an exiled community in the US. There, he becomes involved in the filming of a very big American movie before returning to Vietnam to battle communists. It's a complex, convoluted story told as a pitch-black comedy, and when you see the A24 logo in the trailer you know you're in for something unusual.
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