The newest idea on TV this week is a show that ended in 2017
The Terminal List and Nobody Wants This both return, Lupin breaks its own record for delays, and HBO drags Girls back from 2017.
In this piece · 3 sections+
Pull up the release calendar for this week and count the sequels. The Terminal List 2. Nobody Wants This 3. Tulsa King 4. Lupin 4. Not one of these is a new idea. They're renewals of things you already agreed to once, like a gym membership you forgot you had. And the single piece of genuinely new programming anybody announced this week? HBO is bringing back Girls. Lena Dunham, five episodes, most of the original cast, cameras rolling in 2027. The freshest concept in television this week is a show that wrapped nine years ago. Meanwhile Paramount renewed Tulsa King for a fifth season before the fourth one had even dropped, which is the corporate equivalent of ordering dessert while you're still chewing the appetizer.
The Drops
The Terminal List, season 2 (Prime Video). Chris Pratt is back as James Reece, the special-ops guy who answers every setback by killing roughly a hundred people. All eight episodes land Wednesday the 21st, adapting Jack Carr's novel True Believer, this time with Reece grieving in Mozambique instead of grieving in California. Antoine Fuqua produces. It's competent and humorless and exactly the thing a certain guy wants on in the background while he does his push-ups. You know the guy. You might be the guy.
Nobody Wants This, season 3 (Netflix). The good one. Kristen Bell and Adam Brody, the agnostic podcaster and the hot rabbi, moving in together across ten episodes that drop Thursday the 22nd. Two seasons in and the chemistry still hasn't curdled, which on a Netflix romance is practically a miracle — usually by year three one of them has a secret twin and an amnesia subplot. Justine Lupe and Timothy Simons still circling as the siblings everybody has and nobody wants.
Tulsa King, season 4 (Paramount+). Sylvester Stallone, still running a fictional weed empire in Oklahoma with the energy of a man who has never once in his life been told no. Out Friday the 16th, rolling out weekly, Terence Winter back writing it, Dwight Manfredi trying to go legit while every corrupt official in the state lines up to stop him. Already renewed for a fifth season, as mentioned, so nothing that happens in season four can possibly carry stakes. He's not dying. He's got a contract.
Lupin, Part 4 (Netflix). Omar Sy returns as Assane Diop on the 23rd, three years after Part 3 — the longest Netflix has ever made us wait for him. Eight episodes. Assane handed himself over to the cops at the end of the last batch, so Part 4 is presumably him getting back out again in the most needlessly elegant way available, because that's the whole show and it's a genuinely good one and I won't be taking criticism.
The rest is a grab bag. Six Kings Slam has moved to December 27–30, so the tennis can wait. Netflix drops something called The New Stanford Prison Experiment on the 21st, and I honestly can't tell from the listing whether it's a documentary or a reality competition, which is its own kind of answer about where Netflix's unscripted department is at. Hulu's got Swipe Right on the Devil, true crime about a dating app, a genre now big enough to have its own subgenres.
Pick of the Week
Nobody Wants This, season 3. The only thing dropping this week that isn't an action franchise or a man in a suit coming back for his fourth lap. I haven't seen the new episodes — nobody has — but two full seasons of Bell and Brody actually seeming to like each other on camera buys a lot of goodwill, and it earns the Saturday-night slot on faith. Put it on, let it be charming, resist the urge to check how it compares to season one.
The closer
Disney quietly axed Daredevil: Born Again in September, after branding the upcoming run its third and final season, which is a bold way to announce a cancellation: pre-grieving the body while it's still on the table. And Netflix renewed The Hunting Wives for a third season on the 7th, more than a month before season two is even out, greenlighting television on pure vibes and a Nielsen hunch. By this time next year every show will be renewed two seasons ahead of its premiere, Girls will have a cinematic universe, and the only truly original thing on any platform will be a documentary about why nothing is original anymore. See you next week.