See/Hear: The Best Movies, TV and Music for January 2026

Welcome to See/Hear, InsideHook’s deep dive into the month’s most important cultural happenings, pop and otherwise. Every month, we round up the biggest upcoming movie, TV and album releases, ask some cool people to tell us what they’ve been into lately, make you a playlist we guarantee you’ll have on heavy rotation and recommend a classic (or unduly overlooked) piece of pop culture we think is worth revisiting.

MOVIES

People We Meet on Vacation

Jan. 9, Netflix

It’s been a while since we’ve had a good rom-com, and this one looks promising. Based on Emily Henry’s bestselling 2021 novel of the same name, People We Meet on Vacation features Emily Bader and Tom Blyth as its leads, but the supporting cast is the real draw here: Molly Shannon, Alan Ruck, Lukas Gage and Jameela Jamil.

Dead Man’s Wire

In theaters Jan. 9 (limited release), wide release Jan. 16

Gus Van Sant’s new drama is based on a 1977 hostage situation in Indianapolis in which Tony Kiritsis, a man who had fallen behind on his mortgage payments, held his broker Richard O. Hall captive for 63 hours after Hall refused to give him more time to pay, all the while placing frequent calls to a local radio station to broadcast his demands. Bill Skarsgård stars as Kiritsis, with Stranger Things‘s Dacre Montgomery playing Hall. They’re joined in the stacked cast by Colman Domingo, Al Pacino, Cary Elwes and Myha’la. “When I read the script there were links embedded in it — you could click them and hear the real 911 calls,” Van Sant told Variety recently. “Tony talked so fast, like Scorsese on a cocaine bender, cracking jokes and losing his temper. I thought, ‘This is an amazing character. The story had this weird barnstormer energy.’”

The Chronology of Water

In theaters Jan. 9 (limited release)

Kristen Stewart makes her feature film directorial debut with this adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2011 memoir that chronicles her abusive childhood, her career as a competitive swimmer and her struggles with addiction. Imogen Poots stars as Yuknavitch, and she’s joined in the cast by Thora Birch, Susannah Flood, Tom Sturridge, Kim Gordon, Michael Epp and others.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

In theaters Jan. 16

Starring Ralph Fiennes, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman and Chi Lewis-Parry, this fourth installment of the 28 Days Later series was filmed back-to-back with last summer’s 28 Years Later. It picks up where that film left off, with Spike (Williams) inducted into a cult of killers led by Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (O’Connell). It also features Cillian Murphy’s highly anticipated return to the series as Jim.

The Rip

Jan. 16, Netflix

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon reunite yet again onscreen, this time playing Miami cops who discover millions of dollars in cash in a stash house. They’re joined in the action thriller by Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor, Kyle Chandler and more.

A Private Life

In theaters Jan. 16 (limited release)

Jodie Foster stars in this dark French comedy about a therapist who begins to suspect that her client’s suicide was actually a murder and takes it upon herself to investigate. When it debuted in France last year, Foster was nominated for the César Award and the Lumière Award for Best Actress, making her the first American to receive nominations for those accolades.

H Is for Hawk

In theaters Jan. 23 (limited release)

Based on the 2014 memoir by Helen Macdonald, H Is for Hawk follows a woman (played by Claire Foy) who spends her time training a wild goshawk as she grieves the sudden death of her father (Brendan Gleeson) and reflects on their shared love of birding.

The Moment

In theaters Jan. 30

Spinal Tap but more brat? This mockumentary features Charli XCX playing a fictionalized version of herself as she gears up for her first big headlining tour. Rosanna Arquette, Kate Berlant, Jamie Demetriou, Hailey Benton Gates, Isaac Powell and Alexander Skarsgård also star.

Send Help

In theaters Jan. 30

Sam Raimi’s new survival film stars Dylan O’Brien and Rachel McAdams as “two colleagues who find themselves stranded on a deserted island after they are the only survivors of a plane crash.” According to the film’s logline, “They must overcome past grievances and work together to survive, but ultimately, it is an unsettling and darkly humorous battle of wills and wits to make it out alive.”

TV/STREAMING

The 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

Jan. 1, 8 p.m. EST, ABC (streaming on Hulu Jan. 2)

The 2025 class of inductees includes Bad Company, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, OutKast, Soundgarden and The White Stripes, and the ceremony — recorded live back in November — also features appearances and performances by Beck, Brandi Carlile, Missy Elliott, Mick Fleetwood, Elton John, The Killers, David Letterman, Iggy Pop, Questlove, Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan and more.

The 31st Annual Critics Choice Awards

Jan. 4, 7 p.m. EST, E! and USA Network

Awards season officially kicks off with the first big ceremony of the year, hosted by Chelsea Handler. This year’s most-nominated film is Sinners, with 17 nods, followed by One Battle After Another with 14.

Best Medicine

Jan. 6, 8 p.m. EST, Fox

Based on the British series Doc Martin, Best Medicine features Josh Charles as Dr. Martin Best, a physician who moves from his practice in Boston to a small East Coast fishing village. Think Schitt’s Creek meets Scrubs.

His & Hers

Jan. 8, Netflix

Based on the Alice Feeney novel of the same name, this six-part limited series follows an estranged couple, Anna (Tessa Thompson) and Detective Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal), as they investigate a small-town murder, each suspecting the other is somehow involved in the crime. Pablo Schreiber and Sunita Mani also star.

The Pitt Season 2

Jan. 8, HBO Max

When The Pitt first premiered this time last year, no one could have predicted the extent of its success. Season 1 managed to breathe new life into the medical procedural genre, earning Emmys for Noah Wyle (as Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch) and Katherine LaNasa (who stole every scene she was in as charge nurse Dana Evans) and beating out heavy hitters like Severance and The White Lotus in the Outstanding Drama Series category. Season 2 will follow the same format as its predecessor, where each episode unfolds in real-time and depicts one hour of a single 15-hour ER shift, but there’s a 10-month time jump; this season takes place over the Fourth of July weekend, meaning we can probably expect some pretty gnarly fireworks-related injuries. After the surprising off-screen departure of Dr. Heather Collins (Tracy Ifeachor) at the end of last year, this season will also introduce us to a new character: Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (played by Sepideh Moafi).

The Traitors Season 4

Jan. 8, Peacock

Is there a reality show host more perfectly cast than Alan Cumming in The Traitors? He’s back in all his campy glory with a new batch of celebrities and reality stars — including Tara Lipinski, Johnny Weir, Michael Rapaport and Travis Kelce’s mom — ready to play Mafia in a Scottish castle.

The 83rd Annual Golden Globe Awards

Jan. 11, 8 p.m. EST, CBS and Paramount+

Nikki Glaser returns to host this year’s Golden Globes, where Frankenstein, Sinners, Marty Supreme and One Battle After Another are among the high-profile candidates for Best Picture. The Globes are traditionally a pretty good indicator of how the year’s Academy Award nominations might shake out, so pay attention if you want to win your Oscars pool.

Industry Season 4

Jan. 11, HBO Max

What can we expect from Industry‘s fourth batch of episodes? According to HBO’s synopsis, “At the top of their game and living the lives they set out to have as Pierpoint grads, Harper and Yasmin are drawn into a high-stakes, globetrotting cat-and-mouse game when a splashy fintech darling bursts onto the London scene. As Yasmin navigates her relationship with tech founder Sir Henry Muck and Harper is pulled into the orbit of enigmatic executive Whitney Halberstram, their twisted friendship begins to warp and ignite under the pressure of money, power and the desire to be on top.”

The Night Manager Season 2

Jan. 11, Prime Video

A whopping eight years after The Night Manager‘s first season, Tom Hiddleston returns as British intelligence operative Jonathan Pine. This second go-around moves beyond the original John le Carré source material and finds Pine in Colombia, where he’s tasked with exposing “a conspiracy designed to destabilize a nation,” per the show’s logline.

Hijack Season 2

Jan. 14, Apple TV

In Hijack‘s first season, Sam Nelson (played by Idris Elba, who also serves as executive producer) finds himself forced to negotiate a peaceful ending to a hijacking of a seven-hour flight from Dubai to London. In season 2, he’s onboard a subway in Berlin that gets taken over by terrorists. Maybe he should stick to Uber or something.

PONIES

Jan. 15, Peacock

Haley Lu Richardson’s first big TV role after her memorable turn on season 2 of The White Lotus is PONIES (or “persons of no interest”), a spy thriller where she’s joined by Emilia Clarke. Set in 1977, it features Richardson and Clarke as secretaries in the U.S. embassy in Moscow who become CIA operatives after their husbands die under mysterious circumstances.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

Jan. 15, Paramount+

This next-gen Star Trek series is set in the 32nd century and follows a group of young Starfleet cadets (played by Sandro Rosta, Karim Diané, Kerrice Brooks, George Hawkins and Bella Shepard) as they train to become officers. Holly Hunter, Zoë Steiner, Robert Picardo, Tig Notaro and Oded Fehr also star.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

Jan. 18, HBO Max

I know what you’re thinking: another Game of Thones spinoff?! HBO seems confident you’ll love this one, though. Set 90 years before the events of A Song of Ice and Fire, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is based on George R.R. Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg, and it’s already been renewed for a second season.

Just a Dash

Jan. 20, Netflix

For its third season, Matty Matheson’s cooking series makes the move to Netflix, and it looks as though the streaming service — which will also house seasons 1 and 2 beginning Jan. 20 — has given him a bigger budget. While the first two seasons were filmed in Matheson’s own kitchen, season 3 will reportedly see him venture out on the road with “no kitchen and no plan.”

The Beauty

Jan. 21, FX and Hulu

Look, does The Beauty, Ryan Murphy’s new sci-fi drama in which supermodels begin dying in “gruesome and mysterious ways” (per the show’s press release) after taking a miracle drug that allows them to achieve physical perfection, sound a lot like a ripoff of The Substance? Yes. Does Murphy have a lot to prove after the disaster that was All’s Fair? Also yes. But with a cast that includes Evan Peters, Rebecca Hall, Anthony Ramos, Jeremy Pope and Isabella Rossellini, we’ll be tuning in regardless.

Shrinking Season 3

Jan. 28, Apple TV

Last season, Shrinking finally received some of the attention it deserves, with Jason Segel, Harrison Ford, Jessica Williams and Michael Urie all earning Emmy nominations for their work on the show, which was also nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series. (Sadly, they went home empty-handed.) It feels safe to assume that the Bill Lawrence series about widowed therapist Jimmy Laird (Segel) will continue to make us laugh and cry in equal measure. This time around, Cobie Smolders returns as a potential love interest for Jimmy.

MUSIC

Dry Cleaning, Secret Love

Jan. 9

For their follow-up to 2023’s Stumpwork, the London four-piece joined forces with producer Cate Le Bon. “Being in a room with them and hearing that vitality and life force that exists between them all, it’s such a unique expression,” Le Bon says in a statement. The album was recorded all over the world, with sessions at The Loft, Wilco’s Chicago studio; collaborations with Gilla Band’s Alan Duggan and Daniel Fox at Dublin’s Sonic Studios; and finally, a stop at Black Box in the French countryside.

Courtney Marie Andrews, Valentine

Jan. 16

What’s a more apt place to record an album about love than Los Angeles’s Valentine Studios? That’s where singer/songwriter Courtney Marie Andrews crafted Valentine, which she describes in the album’s press materials as “a record in pursuit of love,” adding, “But love, it turns out, is a lot more than I gave it credit for.” Of lead single “Keeper,” she writes, “One night over dinner I asked my friend Kate if I was a keeper. This question prompted a heartbreaking conversation followed by writing an entire song over a bowl of pasta. Our ultimate landing was that everyone is a keeper if they’re truly in love.”

Lucinda Williams, World’s Gone Wrong

Jan. 23

You can probably guess from the title, but World’s Gone Wrong, Lucinda Williams’s first album of primarily original material since 2023, is about the times we’re currently living in. According to a press release, the 10 tracks (nine originals and a cover of Bob Marley’s “So Much Trouble in the World”) are intended to be “a pure reflection of our very turbulent times, intense and musically powerful” and “a wake-up call and a battle cry, finding beauty, grit and grace in a world on edge.” The record features contributions from Brittney Spencer (who appears on the title track as well as “Something’s Gotta Give”), Mavis Staples (who sings on “So Much Trouble in the World) and Norah Jones (who handles backing vocals and piano on “We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Around.”

Joyce Manor, I Used to Go to This Bar

Jan. 30

On their seventh album, frontman Barry Johnson, guitarist Chase Knobbe and bassist Matt Ebert lean hard into their West Coast roots. Of their lead single, Johnson writes, “‘Well, Whatever It Was’ has got to be one of the most Southern California-sounding songs ever recorded. I hear Jane’s Addiction in the verses, Beach Boys / Weezer in the chorus, and RHCP in the outro. It was literally produced by the guy from Bad Religion. Everyone was just firing on all cylinders for this one. Joey Waronker’s drumming, TLA’s mix, and Lenny Castro’s percussion all just sent it to the end zone. This song would go insanely hard in a Shrek film.”

Jordan Ward, Backward

Jan. 30

Jordan Ward’s aptly named follow-up to his debut album Forward pulls inspiration from legendary songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack. “They wrote really good, simple songs,” Ward told Rolling Stone recently. “Coming up off the last project, I felt I had a lot of room to grow with the songwriting, as far as structuring [it], having more clear takeaways for the songs, just also expressing things that I haven’t yet and wanted to, or even expounding on things I’ve talked about before, just to keep the story evolving.”

YOUR MONTHLY PLAYLIST

You already know which albums we’re looking forward to kicking off 2026 with, but January is also a time for looking back at the year that was. So with that in mind, I’ve rounded up a playlist featuring 25 of my favorite songs from 2025. Despite there being no definitive song of the summer, there was still plenty of excellent music: Jeff Tweedy dropped a triple album, Bad Bunny continued his global domination, and Geese got so popular that frontman Cameron Winter wound up getting spoofed on SNL. This is by no means meant to be a comprehensive “best of” list — just 25 tracks that I very much enjoyed over the course of this particular trip around the sun, shared with you in the hopes that you’ll enjoy them too.

ARTIST RECOMMENDATIONS

Each month, we catch up with a few musicians, actors, comedians or otherwise cool people whose opinions we respect to hear about a piece of pop culture they’re particularly excited about. This month, it’s Wes Leavins of Brigitte Calls Me Baby and Matt Caughthran of Mariachi El Bronx.

“I was thinking about sharing a movie or two that I believe deserve much more attention than they have received, but there is a song that has been haunting me, playing in my head day and night. On these long Chicago winter walks I take each evening and when I first wake and have breakfast. It’s like a loyal friend at this point, but it punches me in the gut each time I am with it. 

“It makes me want to cry, and it is called ‘All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun,’ an unreleased demo by Jeff Buckley and Liz Fraser of Cocteau Twins. I can’t tell you about its beauty accurately, you just have to hear it, but I can tell you it is one of my favorite songs ever committed to tape and if there is one thing it does convey to me, it is that in the midst of darkness, pain and shadow, trust and know that in time the light will come. The small acceptance that a romance is ending, it wasn’t supposed to last forever as powerful as it was, but the reminder between the two that everything will be okay. It feels like the end of love but with a soft smile between the two acknowledging that they are forever changed for having known each other. Do yourself a favor and hear it now.”

“Something I’ve been really inspired by lately is the photography of Merrick Morton. He is a street photographer whose work dates back to the 1980s and continues to this day. Along with his incredible images of gang life and street subculture, he has also worked as a motion-picture still photographer on some of my favorite films, including La Bamba, Blood In Blood Out and most recently One Battle After Another. He has published several books featuring incredible behind-the-scenes photos from these projects. He is an absolute legend.”

WORTH REVISITING

It’s hard to believe, but this month it’ll be 10 years since David Bowie passed away after a private battle with liver cancer. That means it’s also been a decade since the legendary musician’s 69th birthday when — just two days before he died — he released Blackstar, his final album. His death was a shock to fans, as Bowie had told no one save for close friends and family about his illness, and when the news broke, suddenly all the allusions to mortality on Blackstar began to make more sense.

It’s heartbreaking. Knowing he had terminal cancer, rather than make a public announcement, Bowie used the time he had left to craft a farewell as only he could — and the result is an album that doesn’t get talked about enough as one of his best. Its lyrics are full of death, particularly on the title track and on “Lazarus,” where he sings, “Look up here, I’m in heaven / I’ve got scars that can’t be seen.” Yet none of it feels morbid; on “Blackstar,” he reassures us that we’ll be just fine without him, pointing out that someone else will take up the mantle: “Something happened on the day he died / Spirit rose a meter and stepped aside / somebody else took his place, and bravely cried, ‘I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar.’” In hindsight, we should have known that the music video for “Lazarus,” in which a bandaged Bowie rises from his deathbed before eventually backing away into a closet, shutting the door behind him, was meant to be a final bow.

But even if you take his death out of the equation — impossible as that may be — Blackstar was Bowie’s most experimental work in years, one where he was backed by jazz musicians Donny McCaslin (saxophone), Jason Lindner (piano), Tim Lefebvre (bass) and Mark Guiliana (drums). Musically, it was a big swing, a reminder that Bowie was reinventing himself till the very end.

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