Greetings, Polygon readers! Each week, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.
08.01.2024 - 21:52 / polygon.com
2024 is revving up, and 2024 TV is following suit. This week, some big name players are coming to grace our television screens, and tee up some genuinely good TV to get our new year really rockin’ and rollin’.
Like Jodie Foster who, along with Kali Reis, is bringing back all the best parts and promise of True Detective season 1. Night Country, the fourth True Detective season, is written by Issa López, and will be set up in the frigid Alaskan north during the entire month (or so) of night. Hell yeah!
Alaqua Cox will also finally be getting her chance to shine as Echo in Marvel’s Echo, the grittiest MCU show to date. Perhaps best of all, Marvel is putting this under its new Spotlight series, meaning there’s no previous MCU knowledge required.
Here’s the rest of the best new TV premieres and finales this week.
Genre: Game show
Release date: Jan. 10, with four episodes
Host: Brooke Baldwin
Cast: Eleven people who will “test human nature”
If you were offered a piece of a quarter million dollars, would you try to take an even share? The Trust is here to find out, giving 11 strangers the chance to try to keep more for themselves. Netflix is billing this as “the ultimate test of human nature,” but let’s call it what it really is: a fun enough idea for a reality show to see just how greedy these 11 people will turn out to be.
Genre: Gritty MCU
Release date: Jan. 10, with all episodes
Showrunner/creator: Marion Dayre
Cast: Alaqua Cox, K. Devery Jacobs, Vincent D’Onofrio
Echo (Alaqua Cox) first turned up in Hawkeye, where she learned the unfortunate truth about her surrogate father, Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio). Echowill pick up on her life after the end of Hawkeye, where she attempted to take over Kingpin’s empire and became the superhero we know her to be.
Genre: Spooky murder mystery
Release date: Jan. 14 with one episode
Showrunner/creator: Issa López
Cast: Jodie Foster, Kali Reis, John Hawkes
Just when you thought you were out, the spiral pulls you back in. The new True Detective harkens back to the first one in mood: Two terse and dedicated detectives solving a mysterious murder, with Lovecraftian horror and some sort of spooky shit guiding their path. A spoiler-free review: We have our first genuinely great show of the year.
Genre: Murder mystery
Release date: Jan. 14 with one episode
Showrunners/creators: Scott Frank and Tom Fontana
Cast: Clive Owen, Alfre Woodard, Dean Winters
Sam Spade (Clive Owen) is back, and he looks totally different from how we know him — mostly. The character first appeared in Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Maltese Falcon, before showing up in other stories, including the film adaptation of the same name with Humphrey Bogart as Spade. Now it’s Clive Owen’s turn, and the new AMC Plus show
Greetings, Polygon readers! Each week, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.
World of Warcraft players can pick up close to a dozen new Kaldorei-themed transmog items scattered around Bel’ameth, the new Night Elf city. These new collectible cosmetics were added in World of Warcraft Patch 10.2.5, Seeds of Renewal.
Polyphony Digital has announced the next monthly content update for Gran Turismo 7 goes live today at 11 PM PST. It adds three new cars – the Genesis X Gran Berlinetta Vision Gran Turismo Concept, Suzuki Jimny XC ’18 and BVLGARI Aluminum Vision Gran Turismo (which is available in February end from Brand Central).
The Nintendo Switch version of the farm life simulator My Time at Sandrock has just received a major update that added a lot of new content. This update also addressed many issues that have plagued the handheld port for weeks.
Old School RuneScape’s 2024 roadmap is here, following the recent Winter Summit. The team has a lot on the way, with Varlamore opening up in March, a revamped Defender of Varrock and While Guthix Sleeps, updates on sailing, Wilderness, and more
Broken Ranks is marking its second anniversary, with some gifts for the players and preparation for the next major update coming this week, Shadow of Hope.
We’ve almost done it, everyone. January — the hardest month — is almost done. But before it is, we’ve got a lot of TV to watch.
Cosmic horror game Rotten Flesh takes the creeping survival horrors of Amnesia, Outlast, and Silent Hill and gives it a compelling twist: You’re searching for your lost dog, Roy, and the only way to track him down is to call his name. But Roy’s not the only creature who can hear you as you beckon him to return. Terrifying, flesh-eating monsters roam the sewers where Roy has escaped, and they can track you by your shouts of “Roy!” too.
The Sims 4 recently released a kit focused on castle building, and a player has managed to make an incredible castle, resorting only to the items available in the base game and this new pack. The Sims 4 went free-to-play in 2022, and this made it possible for a greater number of gamers to enjoy the game. While players can enjoy dozens of features with the base game, they can also significantly diversify the type of gameplay they get access to by purchasing additional content.
2015’s Until Dawn was an early stand-out PlayStation 4 exclusive. Developed by Supermassive Games, it effectively asked players to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to a horror movie. Everyone has yelled at characters not to run upstairs when pursued or split up to search for somebody, but Until Dawn let you make those calls.
*Warning! This article contains spoilers for True Detective: Night Country episode 1*
Often we come to you with these TV dispatches with a focus on the biggest premieres of the week — which we are now doing again. But this week also sees a whole host of finales, all of big shows that started in the tail end of 2023. While none of these three shows made our top 50 of the year, they’re all pretty big in their own way.