From Better Call Saul to Westworld, and Fifty Shades of Grey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, there are a lot of new film and television offerings to look forward to in the next year. In chronological order!
Alice Mongkongllite/BuzzFeed
Marvel’s Agent Carter, Jan. 6 (8 p.m. on ABC)
Hayley Atwell, who played Peggy Carter in the two Captain America films, along with the short Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter, takes Peggy's game to TV this time. Agent Carter will air for seven episodes during the hiatus for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Her Peggy is shrewd and calm — and is also subject to the limitations that trapped women in 1946, when the show is set. Yet while she's largely dismissed at work, she's valued by Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper, also reprising his Captain America role), who enlists her to fight against…something. Yes, these Marvel stories pretty much always lose me with their Big Bads. But that's OK: The fun is in Peggy's undercover work, her confidence, and in this show's slick production design.
ABC
Empire, Jan. 7 (9 p.m. on Fox)
I can’t tell whether Empire is an answer to my soapy needs, or a big old mess — or maybe both, which…yay! In the Lee Daniels-directed pilot, Terrence Howard plays the head of a music company — an EMPIRE, in fact — who wants his three sons to compete over who will succeed him (because he is secretly ill): Yes, someone makes a King Lear joke. It’s a good premise, and Timbaland does the music. But what sends it over the top is that his ex-wife, Cookie, is played by Taraji P. Henson, and in the pilot she gets out of prison after many years. After a few years as a staid cop on Person of Interest, it’s as if Henson wanted especially to burn it down as Cookie. She is amazing. And her clothes are amazing (see above). In Cookie we trust.
Fox
Babylon, Jan. 8 (10 p.m. on Sundance)
I'm not going to lie: Somehow I had misheard or misread what Danny Boyle's Babylon was about, and went into it thinking it was science fiction. As the first episode went on — in which Brit Marling plays the new head of PR for Scotland Yard, and James Nesbitt is the head of the police — I was very confused. But I was also thinking I pretty much liked it! Eventually, I looked at the screener's box, and saw it described as a workplace satire. Ha! This one's for Anglophiles, Marling obsessives, and Boyle completists (I am 1½ of those things).
Sundance
