Game of Thrones fans were somewhat disappointed recently to hear that their beloved show won’t return for its final season until 2019.
The good news is that a lot of quality, scripted cable shows are premiering between now and the return of the Emmy Award-winning series to help ease the withdrawal period for Thrones aficionados.
January alone is loaded with solid, binge-worthy series debuts that will help viewers get through the cold, wintery months.
Freeform earlier this week premiered the much-ballyhooed Black-ish spinoff Grown-ish, which reportedly drew more than 1.5 million viewers in its Jan. 3 premiere, the network’s best comedy series debut in nearly six years. Freeform comes back Wednesday (Jan. 10) with another comedy series, Alone Together.
Showtime this past Sunday (Jan. 7) debuted its drama The Chi from Emmy award-winning writer Lena Waithe to 1.67 million combined same-day and early sampling viewers – its best debut numbers for a series since Billions in 2016.
Later in the month, Golden Globes show-stopper Oprah Winfrey’s OWN will serve up a reboot of Tyler Perry’s House of Payne series with new show The Paynes, while Comedy Central will debut an edgy workplace comedy dubbed Corporate, and POP will exercise viewers’ funny bones with its new comedy Let’s Get Physical.
On the drama side, FX will look to follow up on the success of The People v. O.J Simpson with the true crime drama The Assassination of Ginni Versace: American Crime Story. Also, Starz’s spy thriller Counterpart, TNT’s The Alienist, HBO’s Mosiac, WGN’s Bellevue, and Paramount Network’s Waco are on tap to premiere this month.
This week, cable networks will unveil several more new scripted series set to air later this year. Already at TCA, FX announced a Sons of Anarchy spinoff — Mayans MC -- which will premiere in 2018.
Read More: Complete Coverage of #TCA18
Overall, the number of new and returning scripted series on cable, broadcast and streaming services are expected to increase beyond the 487 that were offered in 2017, according to FX.
Game of Thrones fans should be able to find at least a few shows to fill the void until the dragons fly once again in 2019.
