Show Host/Interviewer (3:25)

All right, let's get into it. The Pit is returning on January 9, and it is one of the top.

Alison Stewart (3:32)

Medical procedural shows of the year.

Show Host/Interviewer (3:34)

I believe last night it won the.

Alison Stewart (3:36)

2026 Critics Choice Award.

Show Host/Interviewer (3:39)

Tell us what you think is particularly interesting about this show considering we've seen.

Alison Stewart (3:45)

So many medical shows.

Katherine Van Arendonk (3:47)

Yeah, there's a lot that's interesting about this show for me, and one of the biggest is just that it is a kind of medical show that has never existed on streaming, a streaming native platform. The way that this does. It's really straddling this line between what used to be a very standard procedural TV model where you would have many more episodes per season and you would have these sort of episodic arcs as well as this bigger seasonal thing. And I think most importantly, given that this show is now coming back in just a couple of days, you knew that it would, like there would be a new season within the next year. It was not going to be this two to three year Stranger Things severance gap before you got to saw your friends again. And so the Pit, it feels like this attempt for streaming, for HBO to reclaim this thing that streaming has really given up on. The longer season familiarity that you get to have with characters that you like, whether that will act, actually take off and we'll see more shows like this, I am not sure. But I really love that model of television. I miss it when it's. When it's not at a strong moment, which I think it really has not been. And I'm hopeful that there will be more.

Show Host/Interviewer (5:13)

What expectations do you have for its second season?

Katherine Van Arendonk (5:16)

Second seasons are really hard and I'm trying to not like, temper my expectations because I fully believe that this show is gonna continue to be great, but a really big challenge because you have to be able to give people the big, exciting return of this thing that they really loved and were surprised by. But it has to be the same as the thing that they liked. Otherwise they're like, this isn't the show that I wanted, but it can't be too much the same, because if it is, they're like, they just did the same thing again. It's a. It's a really. It's a hard target to hit. And so one of the things to keep an eye out for as you're watching this next season is to think, all right, so they had this big mass casualty in season one. Are they going to have another one of those? If not, how are they going to try to replicate that same tension without hitting the exact same beats? The other thing is this is not a show that goes home with its characters. You only get to see these doctors, Dr. Robbie, played by Noah Wylie. You only get to see them in their jobs. And so how will the show continue to develop who they are as people without being able to then do the. Of Grey's Anatomy? They're at the bar, they're back at their apartments hooking up or whatever it is.

Show Host/Interviewer (6:35)

This text says, very excited for the new season of Bridgerton. I love and appreciate the female love interest is a woman of color again. Here we go, Bridgerton. Which child is it who has to get married? The rakish one.

Katherine Van Arendonk (6:53)

Yes, it is the rakish one this season. This is season four of Bridgerton and this is now Benedict Bridgerton's season. If you have been following the show, he has been the one of the seven Bridgerton siblings who has been sort of bumping along in the background, having connections of all kinds with all kinds of people without ever really being interested in settling down and being ready for marriage. And his turn has finally come and this season is once again being split across two episode drop. So four episodes come out at the end of January and another four in February. And I mention that because I have seen the first four episodes of Bridgerton and I got to the end of the four episodes and then I wanted to, like, throw rocks out of my windows and be like, where, where, where is it? Oh, no, I was.

Alison Stewart (7:51)

It was.

Katherine Van Arendonk (7:51)

It was a scene. It was a bad scene, which is great news, actually, for Bridgerton. I have really loved this season and it is in particular, in fact, because the female love interest is a newcomer. Her name is Yerin Ha, who is. She's Korean, Australian. And she plays Sophie, who becomes the big Benedict love interest. And she's so, so good. She's so good. And I'm just thrilled to be able to watch her. And it's always fun to find new talent and be excited about them. But also, I think the season is really fun and, well, I'm. I need The Netflix. Are you listening? When. When are my screeners coming, please?

Alison Stewart (8:35)

This t. This text says I finally finished Task and loved it. Any wrecks for a new prestige true crime binge watch?

Katherine Van Arendonk (8:45)

Ooh, let's see. You know the. The true crime genre, like, if you haven't gone back and done Mare of Easttown, like, that really is a must do. I am gonna give you a sort of off kilter recommendation, but one that I think you might really love. But you're gonna have to get a different streaming service for it. It's on Britbox and it's called Blue Lights. It is a Dublin police crime series and it's three seasons in, so you're gonna have a nice big chunk of TV to watch. But it's. They're British series, so they're only like six episodes a season. Started it and thought like, oh, this is a nice standard sort of tv. I like cop dramas. I was having a good time and then by season three, I was like, no. What? How. How is he gonna.

Show Host/Interviewer (9:39)

Why?

Katherine Van Arendonk (9:39)

Like, I was. I was completely invested in those characters. I think they're really well drawn mystery arcs without being too overwrought. I think you get a lot of that really great character depth that something like Tassel gives you. So that one is really my big police drama, crime drama recommendation these days.

Alison Stewart (10:02)

And you got two thumbs up from.

Show Host/Interviewer (10:03)

Our control room, by the way.

Katherine Van Arendonk (10:04)

Yeah.

Alison Stewart (10:05)

And finally, Euphoria is gonna come out.

Show Host/Interviewer (10:08)

In April for its third season and.

Alison Stewart (10:10)

There'S a big time jump in this one. Why do you think that was necessary?

Katherine Van Arendonk (10:15)

Well, it is for exactly the same reasons that I was just talking about for the Pit, which is that we have fallen out of this rhythm where you would expect to see the next TV season of your favorite show within the next year. It has been quite a long time since we last saw Euphoria and. And so all of these actors are now older. I think it is a good idea, frankly, to have a time jump so that you don't end up in the Stranger Things situation where you have all of these, like mid-20s something, late-20s somethings playing high schoolers still. And given that this show was always about preternaturally old high schoolers, I don't think it, like, tonally is a problem. It's probably a slightly better fit. The question is, like, who these characters are now and whether we are still going to care about them at this point. And I'm not sure yet.

Show Host/Interviewer (11:13)

We are chatting with Vulture TV critic Catherine Von Arendonk about the most exciting series hitting the small screen at the start of 2026. Listeners, what shows are you most excited watch right now or any of your favorites coming back for a new season? Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. We'll have more after a quick break. This is all of it.

Alison Stewart (11:51)

You're listening to ALL of IT on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. I'm chatting with Vulture TV critic Catherine von Arendonk about some of the most exciting series hitting the small screen in 2026. All right, we've come to the car. The the category we're calling the thrillers paradise coming out January 26th. It's a post apocalyptic apocalyptic political thriller, about 25,000 people. They stuck underground because they think the world has ended. It stars Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Nickerson, James Marsden. He does come back for the second season flashbacks. Just telling you, he plays the president. By the way, what is going to be the focus of season two?

Katherine Van Arendonk (12:35)

Yeah. So this season, this first season of paradise took place in this big bunker which we sort of find out, we understand gradually over the course of the season, Apocalypse bunker, where all of these people fled after some horrible event. And without going into too specific details for anyone who wants to now catch up on the first season of the show, it's season two. So we're gonna have to leave the bunker. There's going to be some exiting of the bunker happening. And if you watched the first season, you unders, you can imagine why that might be. Some characters that people thought were no longer in play maybe are in play. And so you have to Sterling K. Brown is going to have to do some, some exciting adventuring outside, much in the manner of shows like Silo or Fallout. As soon as there's a bunker, you got to get out of it. You can't, you can't stay in the bunker that long. But my big question about much in the in the same way as The Pit Season 2, my big question is the first season of paradise pulled off this big twist at the end of the first season. People have different feelings about that twist and whether it felt earned or whether it was satisfying but like it was a pretty accomplished twist. How you do that same kind of thing in a second season I think is an open question and is gonna be something that people are watching for. And this show has really invited you to engage with it on that level. So that's kind of what I'm keeping an eye on for whether I think of this season as successful.

Show Host/Interviewer (14:13)

And I do want to point out you mentioned.

Alison Stewart (14:16)

And it was an accident, the show Blue Lights, it's based in Belfast, not bubble. Oh, Belfast.

Katherine Van Arendonk (14:21)

Excuse me. Not double excuse me.

Progressive Insurance Announcer (14:23)

Yes.

Alison Stewart (14:23)

Okay. The Night Manager is a spy thriller series. It premiered a decade ago. Well, how's the show bringing viewers into the world now?

Katherine Van Arendonk (14:33)

Yes. So this was a Le Carre thriller, and it starred Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Colman at a time when you might have looked at those two people and been like, I bet they're gonna have pretty exciting careers in the next decade. And you would have been correct. And they did. And now they're back. And so it, like we were talking about with euphoria, you have this long space. You get to get back into the mode of who these people are. And there's a kind of standard spy version for how to do this, which is like, he's out of the game, but you have to get him back for that. The show will have to make up the question about Night Manager. And the thing that I find really interesting about it, actually, is that it did this strange thing that I really loved in the first season where Olivia Colman was pregnant when she filmed that first season. And it sort of didn't mention it, and it was just sort of a part of who her character was. And you could see it on screen. It was very clear, and it sort of came up a tiny bit, but it was mostly just left unremarked, upon which I found to be a really interesting way of developing that character. And so how you come back to her as a person now, like, how much of these people's lives you see in the backdrop, I think are gonna be for me, the interesting thing about Night Manager Season 2.

Show Host/Interviewer (16:03)

This text says, big Boys on Hulu was the best show I saw last year, and he had a rivalry, wink, wink. But nobody talks about it, so I just wanted to give it a shout out.

Katherine Van Arendonk (16:12)

Another text. I just. I. The fact that you are in a bubble where no one is talking about heated rivalry means that you. There are some other bubbles for you to join. Yes. One a day life. Yes. I want all anyone is talking about.

Alison Stewart (16:26)

Yeah, exactly.

Show Host/Interviewer (16:27)

This text says, what about heated rivalry? All in capital letters. For people who haven't heard the Canadian sports romance series about hockey about two players who decide that they are in love. Yes.

Alison Stewart (16:43)

Yes.

Katherine Van Arendonk (16:44)

So heated rivalry really came out of nowhere for a lot of people who follow tv, which is really exciting. It did not come out of nowhere for people who follow romance, because hockey romance has been a huge genre for several years now. It's an adaptation of a Rachel Reed series called Game Changers, and it's a little tiny Canadian show that was made with, like, $3, and then HBO licensed, like, a 2 before they actually released it. And everyone was like, what's this? I have no idea. And if you are a person who is at all interested in romance and who is interested in, particularly in queer romance, I cannot recommend it highly enough. I think it's a fascinating series and for somebody who feels like they are not hearing enough about it, truly. Go on threads. Go on TikTok. You only need to search a little bit, and your algorithm will be in and dated. There are so many edits for you. Your people are out there, I promise.

Show Host/Interviewer (17:48)

All right, let's go into the fantasy era of things. Night of the Seven Kingdoms. It comes out on the 18th of January. It's HBO's latest fantasy drama, Sent. It's set about a century before the Game of Thrones. How is the world different from Game of Thrones or even House of the Dragon?

Katherine Van Arendonk (18:08)

Yeah, I. I opened up my Night of the Seven Kingdom screeners with, I admit it, a sense of fatigue. I have been living in this world for many, many years. I feel like I got it. I got the language, I got the dragons. I got the sort of tone. I got the tendency toward violence and particularly sexual violence. I was like, okay, Game of Thrones. And then I watched it and I was like, well, wait a second. First of all, this first episode is only like 43 minutes long. That's. That's funny. And then episode two was only half an hour long, and I was like, but this feels like a. This is sort of a lighter, less serious take on what this world might be. And in fact, that is the case. It's funny is. I feel like should be the major headline about this series. It's funny and more fun. It's not that it. It's not that it doesn't feel like Game of Thrones at all. It still does. The main characters are a hedge knight named Ser Dunk, who's very bad at being a knight and who is sort of taken on by this precocious little kid who wants to be his squire, whose name is Egg. And they are traipsing around this familiar Game of Thrones landscape while Dunk tries to basically create his career as a knight. Catherine, it is. Yeah.

Alison Stewart (19:31)

Oh, no, please continue.

Katherine Van Arendonk (19:32)

Oh, but it is. It is more like a knight's tale than it is like, you know, your classic Game of Thrones dragons Sadness.

Alison Stewart (19:41)

This text says Shrinking is an absolute favorite. Talking about such hard topics with such empathy and joy and one of the most insightful approaches to grief. Every member of the cast is absolutely phenomenal. Shrinking is coming back on the 28th of this month. The show is about a grieving therapist balancing his responsibilities as a father and a friend after the loss of his wife. Jason Segal plays the therap. How do you feel about the way it balances humor with heavier emotional moments?

Katherine Van Arendonk (20:16)

It definitely does balance humor with those heavier emotional moments. It is something I increasingly struggle with for this show because particularly as season two develops, I find that Jason Segel's character is really invested in trying to forgive this person who has done something that's really traumatic to his family. And it is difficult for me to kind of tease apart the show's investment in a kind of trauma and recovery narrative from the like who they want me to understand that he is, which is a functionality psychologist who or therapist who is able to make reasonable choices within his career because he's like way past many lines at this point. As far as like what, what seems okay for a therapist to be doing and how much energy it has to put into asking people to forgive this person versus just being a Bill Lawrence hangout show. It's something I, I am not sure how I feel about how the second season negotiated and I would actually really like season three to correct for a little because it feels like there have not been enough consequences for Jason Segel's character for me within the world of this series. But I know that there are a lot of people who disagree with that perspective and that is great. I prefer a Bill Lawrence show to have that bill be more of a sort of thread than the load bearing structure.

Show Host/Interviewer (22:04)

I have to ask you about the.

Alison Stewart (22:05)

Rise and fall of Reggie Jenkins, which.

Show Host/Interviewer (22:07)

Is premiering on February 23rd.

Alison Stewart (22:10)

It's Tracy Morgan.

Katherine Van Arendonk (22:12)

Yeah, that's all I can say.

Alison Stewart (22:13)

It's Tracy Morgan.

Show Host/Interviewer (22:14)

What makes this a uniquely Tracy Morgan show?

Katherine Van Arendonk (22:18)

Well, so for one thing it's the fall and rise of Reggie Dinkins, which is. Which is important because the Tracy Morgan of it suggests that it will not be directly engaging with Tracy Morgan's personal life over the past several years, but may be influenced by it. He had this really terrible accident and has been coming back to Hollywood as he has recovered from that event. And the character that he plays in this show is he is a football player who has had something terrible happen. Not so much a physical accident but, you know, other things in his career. And he is now trying to come back. And so that alone is sort of interesting. But it is also a Tina Fey Robert Carlock show, which they're, I mean, that's a 30 Rock team that is always interesting to return to. And the other thing is that its co star, his. Tracy Morgan's co star is Daniel Radcliffe who, who tends to make really, really interesting career choices. And so I am very curious to see it just in that context alone. Whether anyone is going to be invested in network sitcoms who are not already watching network sitcoms, I am not sure. But it's certainly something that I'm keeping an eye on.

Show Host/Interviewer (23:44)

Dan Rad and Tracy Morgan.

Katherine Van Arendonk (23:47)

I know that's kind of wild. I know. And the thing is that I tend. I actually think both of those people can have incredible chemistry with basically anyone. But together I feel like that energy is gonna be so weird and fun and like off kilter. I don't, I'm just, I was so delighted to see the couple of stills that they're like press stills where they're just standing next to each other and you're just looking at both of their faces and thinking, ah, they're in the same. What is this?

Show Host/Interviewer (24:19)

What?

Katherine Van Arendonk (24:20)

Yeah, I know. I'm delighted.

Show Host/Interviewer (24:22)

Katherine Van Arendonk, Vultures TV critic giving us a little bit of a preview of what we're gonna watch over the next few months. Thanks, Katherine.

Katherine Van Arendonk (24:30)

Thanks so much for having me.

Show Host/Interviewer (24:32)

And that is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you and I will meet you back here next time.

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