Mamoudou Athie stars in Archive 81, premiering this month on Netflix

2022 is here, and with a new year comes new programming. After all, with cold weather hitting nearly every part of the country, what better time to stay indoors, under the blankets and consume some new media? We here at Pop Culture Junkie has five suggestions of shows from genres like fantasy, superhero, mystery and horror to add to your streaming queue.

Archive 81 (Netflix, January 14th)
Based on a popular podcast of the same name created by Marc Sollinger and Daniel Powell, Archive 81 is a thriller series that follows Dan Turner, an archivist who takes a job restoring a collection of damaged video tapes from Melody Pendras, a documentarian who was investigating a strange cult in 1994. Turner gets drawn into the mystery of what happened to Pendras The series is loosely based on the first season of the podcast, which has a sort of cult status among its fans. The series stars Dina Shihabi and Mamoudou Athie and acclaimed horror director James Wan is is among the roster of executive producers.

John Cena returns as Peacemaker on HBO Max.

Peacemaker (HBO Max, January 13th)
Ok, you have probably heard of this one. John Cena reteams with his Suicide Squad director James Gunn for this spinoff series that dives into the so-bad-guy-he’s-good character’s origin story. Joining Cena are actors Jennifer Holland, Robert Patrick, and Freddie Stroma. The first TV series set in the DC Extended Cinematic Universe, this show was created by Gunn out of boredom during lockdown. Gunn wrote all the episodes and directs a few as well.

Josh Gad and Isla Fisher star in Wolf Like Me on Peacock.

Wolf Like Me (Peacock, January 13th)
There’s a lot of secrecy behind the specifics of this show, though it has been called genre-bending, and the title definitely suggests something unusual. Wolf Like Me stars Josh Gad as Gary, a man living in Australia who is still reeling from the death of his wife and struggling to raise his pre-teen daughter. Gary meets Mary (Isla Fisher), and thinks he may have finally found someone who understands him, but Mary has a secret she can’t bring herself to share. Series creator and executive producer Abe Forsythe based the series, which will also air on the Australian streaming platform Stan, on his own life experiences. If you want to know if there’s any hot lycanthropic action, you’ll have to watch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsjoSlvT090

Naomi (The CW, January 11th)
Kaci Walfall stars as the title character in The CW’s newest superhero series. A popular high school student, Naomi is a huge fan of Superman comics, connecting especially to the fact that, like Clark Kent, she is adopted. In the pilot, written by executive producers Ava DuVernay and Jill Blankenship, Naomi’s hometown of Port Oswego experiences a supernatural event no one can explain. Naomi must then look to two mysterious people who may hold the answers to her origin story: used car dealer Zumbado (Cranston Johnson) and tattoo artist Dee (Alexander Wraith). This being a CW show, there is also plenty of teen angst ala Riverdale to contend with.

The Woman In the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window (Netflix, January 28th)
Ok, so it’s only tangentially a mystery, as it’s more of a parody of the Gone Girl/Girl on a Train/Sharp Objects genre of unreliable-and-unstable-white-woman-narrated thrillers. Kristen Bell plays a homebody who loves wine (natch) and may or may not have witnessed a murder. The show also stars Michael Ealy, Shelley Hennig, Cameron Britton and more.