Streaming in January 2025: The biggest hits on Netflix, Disney, Apple TV+, Stan, Binge and more

THE PITT (Binge, Jan 10th)

When Michael Crichton’s widow filed a lawsuit alleging plagiarism against producer John Wells and actor Noah Wyle for copying ER, there had been a question over just how closely does Wells and Wyle’s new venture, The Pitt, resembles the medical drama that made them both famous.

Audiences will get to decide for themselves. Sure, both series are set in an emergency room at a busy city hospital and has Wells and Wyle’s involvement but The Pitt insists that’s where the similarity ends. Each episode will span one hour of a 15-hour shift in the emergency room.

BACK IN ACTION (Netflix, 17th)

The title of this movie is clearly supposed to work on two levels – one is related to the story of two former CIA spies who are coerced back into the espionage business when their secret identities become not-so-secret anymore.

The other is playing with the fact Back in Action is Cameron Diaz’s first movie since 2014 after which she retired from acting. So, is there something about this particular movie that was so irresistible that it lured Diaz back to work? That’s what the filmmakers are hoping you’ll wonder. It also stars Jamie Foxx, Glenn Close, Andrew Scott and Kyle Chandler.

SEVERANCE S2 (Apple TV+, 17th)

Fans have been patiently (and maybe not so patiently) awaiting the return of Severance – but just imagine if you could’ve severed your mind so that at least one version of you didn’t know it had been three years in between.

Mark and his friends were a little too curious about the technology that split their work lives and personal lives and will now face the consequences of what happens if you mess with the barrier. Things are not looking up.

CUNK ON LIFE (Netflix, 2nd)

Philomena Cunk is back in this TV special and not a moment too soon, because who else can make sense of this anarchic, whirligig world of ours if not the oh-so-dry, absurd but insightful presenter.

Cunk, of course, is just a character, played with razor-sharp deadpan-ness by comedian Diane Morgan, but her questions and many wonderings about everything from “long-necked horse monsters” to “the meaning of life” is designed to uncover the meaning of it all. Are we ready to hear it?

LOCKERBIE: SEARCH FOR TRUTH (Binge, 2nd)

In 1988, Pan Am flight 103 exploded 38 minutes after take-off, killing all 270 people on board and 11 people on the ground when sections of the plane crashed into the Scottish town of Lockerbie. It was the deadliest terror attack in UK history.

One of the passengers on the flight was 23-year-old Flora Swire, whose father Jim became a determined advocate for justice for the victims, personally spearheading a campaign to bring to hold accountable those responsible. The series dramatises Swire’s crusade over several decades with the character played by Colin Firth.

WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL (Netflix, 3rd)

Vengeance Most Fowl is the second feature-length Wallace & Gromit film, which means you get to spend 80 minutes in the delightful company of a kooky inventor and his very clever Beagle.

The story is a direct sequel to The Wrong Trousers and involves the dastardly penguin Feathers McGraw seeking revenge against the pair by hacking Wallace’s smart gnome, which wreaks havoc and threatens their future.

HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET (SBS On Demand, 16th)

For years, fans of Homicide: Life on the Street has bemoaned the lack of availability of this iconic series on streaming and digital platforms. The rights had been held up, and when it became available in the US earlier this year, there was hope Australia would soon follow.

Thank god for SBS, which has snapped up the rights to all seven seasons and the movie (seasons one to three on January 16, the fourth on January 23, the fifth on January 30 and the rest to come in February), so you can relive the gritty police procedural that laid the foundation for much that would follow, including, notably, The Wire.

WATSON (Paramount, 27th)

If House was basically the Sherlock Holmes mysteries but set in a hospital, then it provided a road map for Watson, which borrows the same setting and a similar concept, but is more explicitly connected to Arthur Conan Doyle’s works.

This modern day series is set one year after Holmes’ death at the hands of his nemesis, Moriarty, and Dr Watson opens a clinic in which he and a team of doctors try to work out the impossible diagnoses of patients in need. But then he gets the feeling that Moriarty is not as dead as seems.

PRIME TARGET (Apple TV+, 22nd)

No one ever really wants you to be too good at the thing you’re great at. It usually makes you a threat. That’s exactly what happens to a maths graduate student whose work with prime numbers in mathematics could potentially allow him to access every computer in the world.

There are plenty of people trying to stop him, and he falls into the orbit of a NSA agent who’s been tasked to watch him. The series stars Leo Woodall, who’s made a splash with his roles in The White Lotus season two and One Day.

PARADISE (Disney, 28th)

Sterling K Brown reunites with his This Is Us showrunner Dan Fogelman in this political thriller series set in an idyllic community of the world’s richest and most famous people.

Brown plays Xavier Collins, the head of security for the president (James Marsden, now officially the hottest commander-in-chief in the TV history), who discovers him dead one morning. As the last person to see him alive, he immediately becomes a person of interest but there is clearly a lot more for him (and us) to unravel. The cast also includes Julianne Nicholson and Sarah Shahi.

OPTICS (iView, 29th)

If this week’s events surrounding the off-screen drama between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni has taught us anything, it’s that there is a lot going on in the world of crisis management we’re not supposed to see. That’s the whole point, for these operatives to be working, changing the story, creating new narratives to serve someone’s intentions.

Optics, starring and created by Jenna Owen, Vic Zerbst and Charles Firth, is an Australian comedy set in this tricky, sticky world. Owen and Zerbst play two young women who are promoted to run their firm as they try to save the reputations of their clients while potentially walking into a trap.

LUDWIG (7plus, 29th)

Everyone loves a twin switch. David Mitchell plays dual roles as brothers John “Ludwig” Taylor, a slightly awkward puzzle maker, and James, a successful detective who goes missing.

James’ wife, Lucy, asks Ludwig to impersonate his brother to infiltrate the force and investigate the disappearance, and being a puzzle guy, he’s inevitably drawn into a bunch of other cases.

YOU’RE CORDIALLY INVITED (Prime, 30th)

Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Bros) wrote and directed this sort of comedy-of-errors starring Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell as two high strung people who have both booked the same wedding venue for the same date for their loved ones – she, her sister, he, his daughter.

Sharing a sunset, a bathroom, a party was not either of their bingo cards and they become the fiercest of rivals as they try to throw and prevent the best wedding ever. It also stars Geraldine Viswanathan, Meredith Hagner and Jack McBrayer.

ASURA (Netflix, 9th)

Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda is a legend in international cinema, having made films such as After the Storm and the Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters. While Asura is not the first TV project he’s done, it’s still exciting that someone of Kore-eda’s stature has lent his talent to another.

The series, Asura, is about four sisters who have come back together for the first time in a while and agree to keep the secret their father has a suspected lover and a child from that affair. That which bonds them is also what threatens to tear them apart as their own hidden truths start tumbling out.

UNTIL I KILL YOU (iView, 1st)

The ABC has held on to this one for some months now (the New Zealand premiere was in April) and the anticipation has been building. Based on the autobiographical book Living with a Serial Killer by Delia Balmer, the four-part series stars Anna Maxwell Martin and Shaun Evans.

The series is an examination of violence and trauma and tells the real-life story of a woman who was abused by her boyfriend who later confesses to having killed another partner and was then convicted of killing two and suspected of more than three others.

STAR TREK: SECTION 31 (Paramount, 24th)

This Star Trek spin-off movie has long been promised and has been in development for more than six years, not long after Michelle Yeoh debuted the character of Philippa Georgiou in Discovery. However, there was not one but two versions of Georgiou (alternate universes and all that) and this one follows the fierce former fascist leader who learnt to be more compassionate.

The character was written out of Discovery in 2020, with a view to the spin-off, which follows Georgiou’s involvement with a secretive division of the United Federation of Planets. You may not be a Trekkie but Yeoh is reason enough for anyone to be, at least, curious.

MISSING YOU (Netflix, 1st)

It’s true, you cannot get between Richard Armitage and a Harlan Coben Netflix adaptation. Missing You will be Armitage’s fourth role in a Coben series, all the more remarkable because each time he’s playing a different character.

The story is about Detective Kat Donovan (Rosalind Eleazar from Slow Horses) whose fiancé disappeared 11 years ago. Then she sees his face on a dating app, which someone triggers unanswered questions about her father’s murder and other past secrets. Very Coben.

PROTECTION (Stan, 10th)

The world of witness protection is the spotlight in this British crime drama starring Siobhan Finneran and based on the experiences of officers who have worked in the dangerous field where the stakes are high and mistakes can be fatal.

The show follows an inspector named Liz, an experienced protection officer who hears of a shooting at a safe house and become mired in an incident that puts at risk not just her reputation but also that of her lover’s, and the life of her protectee, a person whose own criminality makes everything murky.

UNSTOPPABLE (Prime, 16th)

Based on Anthony Robles’ autobiography, Unstoppable is a drama that tells his story of how he won a national wrestling championship despite being born with only one leg.

When it comes to sports drama, the key is having an underdog character that everyone can get behind, and Robles has an extraordinary story. He is played by When They See Us’s Jharrel Jerome with Jennifer Lopez as his mother Judy. The supporting cast includes Bobby Cannavale, Michael Pena and Don Cheadle.

THE NIGHT AGENT S2 (Netflix, 23rd)

The Night Agent was a surprise hits, and ended up being the most watched series on Netflix in the first six months of 2023, even if, let’s be honest, it wasn’t particularly memorable. Quick, name the main character. But it was exactly the kind of broadly appealing, innocuous show which demands little of its audience who can still play on their phones while the autoplay quickly shuffles them on to the next episode.

The second season of the spy thriller finds Peter (yes, his name is Peter) further enmeshed in the world of spies and double crosses. The timing of the show’s release is curious as, a week later, it will be followed by the second season of another forgettable Netflix spy thriller anchored by a young white dude out of his depth, The Recruit.