25 Most Hotly Anticipated New TV Shows Of 2020
Trawling the upcoming schedules so you don’t have to...
We’re elbow deep in the golden age of television, and the quality doesn’t show any sign of letting up. With the number of available platforms for both crowd-pleasing and ground-breaking TV shows seeming to double every year, 2020 may be the first time that streaming services equal or even outnumber traditional broadcast and cable channels.
What that means is that there’s more choice than ever before - but you’ll have to pay through the nose for it. These new services are cheap on the face of it, especially considering the massive amount of content available - but get three or four of them plus cable, and you’re suddenly making a financial investment in becoming a shut-in.
So here you go, you lucky, lucky people - a long, painstakingly curated list of the hottest new shows coming to series in the next twelve months of so. See for yourselves whether you’ll be juggling a full slate of premium cable and subscription web services, or picking and choosing your favourites… but the smart money says you ain’t never leaving the house again.
25. Snowpiercer
From all reports, TNT are producing a TV adaptation of Bong Joon-Ho's strange, bleak 2013 film Snowpiercer to premiere next year, which was itself an adaptation of the 1982 French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette.
Set seven years after a climate catastrophe turns the planet into an icy hellscape, Snowpiercer follows the fortunes of the last of the human race, living on a huge train that, never stopping, constantly travels around this fallen, freezing world.
It’s a great, really weird high concept - The Walking Dead meets Murder On The Orient Express? - but playing out over a series allows showrunner Graeme Manson time and space to really get into the politics and class warfare that the movie only skated over.
Snowpiercer would be higher on this list, but it’s been a troubled production: the original showrunner and writer was fired from the project and the movie-length pilot’s director Scott Derrickson (of Sinister and Doctor Strange fame) refused to return for reshoots, claiming that new guy Manson’s vision for the script wasn’t what he signed up for.
Let’s see whether his fears were justified - TNT certainly have faith in Manson, having already greenlit season two.