Laughing — and screening — all the way to 2026

There is abundant comedy available to ease into the formal new year and abundant new and returning television in the month to follow to keep your various screens crackling. Press Play now.

● Ricky Gervais: Mortality (comedy special premières Tuesday, Dec. 30, on Netflix)

The British comic Ricky Gervais offers more of his usual bitter, bitter candy, but that might be just the palate cleanser required after too much holiday sugar. It’s one of a veritable avalanche of new comedy specials, some available now (Kumail Nanjiani’s adorably bewildered Night Thoughts on Disney+; Robby Hoffman’s ferociously indignant debut special, Wake Up, on Netflix; Tom Segura’s gleefully disgusting Teacher, also on Netflix); and coming up (SNL’s Marcello Hernández’s American Boy, recorded in front of a hometown Miami crowd, on Netflix on Wednesday, Jan. 7).

● Best Medicine (series gets a “special advance” première on Sunday, Jan. 4, on Fox and on Wednesday, Jan. 7, on CTV)

The cosy British mystery Doc Martin gets a U.S. remake as a “charmingly complicated one-hour comedy.” Hmmm. The word charming seems to be working awfully hard in that press release, but onward. Josh Charles (The Good Wife) is the brilliant surgeon who quits big-city medicine to become a GP in the Maine fishing village where he grew up. His brusque, evasive demeanour make for a rough landing. But what’s beneath that gruff exterior? The supporting case of Abigail Spencer (Grey’s Anatomy), Annie Potts (Young Sheldon) and Josh Segarra (The Big Door Prize) will crack him like a holiday walnut.

● Small Achievable Goals (Season 2 premières Tuesday, Jan. 6, on CBC/Gem), The Pitt (Season 2 premières Thursday, Jan. 8, on Crave) and The Night Manager (Season 2 premières Jan. 11 on Prime Video)

I was late to all three of these acclaimed shows: queasy about menopause talk in SAG, worried that Noah Wyle would embarrass himself trying to revisit the magic of the late great ER, and finally suspicious that the adaptation of John le Carré’s spy drama could not possibly live up to the hype. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Any other laggards should get on it to prepare for these three sophomore returns. In SAG, the ladies dabble in HRT, couples therapy and romance while navigating a new mean-girl office culture. In The Pitt, Dr. Robby (Wyle) slouches back into Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Centre, as does Charge Nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) for another season-long night shift of squishy medical gore and deep feelings. And on The Night Manager, Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) is trying to work below the radar as Alex Goodwin, but trouble finds him again.

● His and Hers (series premières all episodes on Thursday, Jan. 8, on Netflix)

The setting is small-town Georgia. There’s a body. There’s a cop. There’s a reporter. Two of them are married. All three were connected even before one got shelved in the morgue. This magnificent mountain of melodrama looks ridiculous. Also possibly riveting. Starring Tessa Thompson (Westworld), the great, seething Jon Bernthal (Daredevil: Born Again) and Pablo Schreiber (Halo).

● Bookish (series premières Sunday, Jan. 11 on PBS)

Mark Gatiss (who also created and wrote the series) plays Gabriel Book, who runs an antiquarian bookshop called Books’ Books in post-Second World War London. In between quoting sources high and low, he also solves crimes. Jaunty seems a good word to describe the tone of this anthology crime series, which comes to North American a few months after its U.K. première.

winnipegfreepress.com/deniseduguay