Much like that Terry’s Chocolate Orange you’ve been picking at since Boxing Day, 2022 is almost gone. But here comes another year with a load of new pop culture to gorge on.

To get you suitably prepped, I’ve picked a few of the TV series, films and albums I’m particularly excited about. I’ve avoided sequels, prequels and the like, instead focusing on brand spanking new shows and films, along with some returning bands and artists. Of course, there’s no cast-iron guarantee that all of the below will actually be released in the next 12 months – one of The Guide’s hot picks for 2022 was Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, a film that is now not expected to be released until late 2023 – but hopefully it should provide a tantalising glimpse of some very good culture coming our way soon.

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Film

Tár
US out now; UK 13 Jan; Aus 26 Jan
An absolutely volcanic, Oscar-tipped performance by Cate Blanchett anchors this much-admired psychological thriller. Blanchett plays Lydia Tár, a renowned Berlin-based conductor drawn into a messy #MeToo controversy on the eve of a landmark performance. The film has tons to say about cancel culture and the licence we give brilliant people to behave badly, but it’s never judgmental or didactic, just perceptive and nail-bitingly tense.

Blue Jean
UK 10 Feb; US and Aus TBC
Given how many people it affected, there are strangely few films about Section 28, the Thatcher government’s law preventing the “promotion of homosexuality” in schools and local authorities. This drama, which led the nominations at the British Independent Film Awards, is welcome, then, following a closeted PE teacher (Rosy McEwen) who finds herself drawn into a non-sexual, but still dangerous, relationship with a student.

Cocaine Bear
UK and US, 24 Feb; Aus TBC
The internet has been besotted by this horror comedy – inspired by the true story of an American black bear who devoured his way through a duffel bag of chisel – ever since it was announced last year. But things really went up a notch last month with the release of the trailer, which promises the wildest of trips. Its cast – including Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr, Alden Ehrenreich and, in one of his final performances, Ray Liotta – is strong enough to suggest this will be more than just B-movie silliness, though hopefully there will be plenty of that too.

Barbie
Aus 20 July; UK and US 21 July
The Lego Movie proved that cynical movie/toy tie-ins can also be pretty entertaining, so we can be cautiously optimistic about this comedy based on Mattel’s planet-conquering, platinum-haired doll. Particularly as it has Greta Gerwig directing; her first two efforts in the chair – Lady Bird and Little Women – have been complete knockouts. The cast is pretty spectacular – Margot Robbie as Barbie (above), Ryan Gosling as Ken and a supporting lineup that includes Simu Liu, Emma Mackey, Michael Cera and Issa Rae.

Oppenheimer
UK and US 21 July; Aus TBC
Christopher Nolan’s first biopic was never going to be a small affair, so its little surprise that he’s chosen the father of the atomic bomb himself, Robert Oppenheimer, as its subject. Longtime Nolan collaborator Cillian Murphy plays the theoretical physicist in a film that, in true Nolan style, forgoes the CGI for real life stunts including – remarkably – the recreation of a nuclear explosion. Unlikely to be a quiet night at the multiplex, this one.

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Music

Young Fathers – Heavy Heavy
3 Feb
Since the release of their Mercury-winning 2014 debut, Dead, Young Fathers (above) have built a formidable reputation as one of the country’s most unpredictable bands, melding together soul, punk, glitchy electro and anything else they fancy. Perhaps the most unpredictable thing about their last album, Cocoa Sugar, was how pleasingly melodic it was, albeit in a skewed Young Fathers way. This follow-up seems to promise more of that tunefulness, married with a back-to-basics, three-blokes-in-a-basement studio approach.

Kelela – Raven
10 Feb
The Washington DC singer’s 2017 album Take Me Apart seemed to herald an exciting new voice in R&B, future-facing but unquestionably warm and emotionally unguarded. Since then … nothing: Kelela seemed to fall off the face of the earth. After conquering self-doubt and writer’s block she finally returns in 2023 with an album that sees her sound evolve, as she adds a political sharpness to her lyrics. It’s good to have her back.

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Land of Sleeper
17 Feb
Have I just included this because it’s fun to write the word pigs seven times in a row? No, actually: Pigs x7, as they’re often abbreviated, are one of the UK’s most reliably riffy rock bands, serving up a noxious slew of barroom blues and thick, sludgy metal. Their fourth album promises more of the same, only somehow faster and more unpleasant, anchored by the anguished howls of Matt Baty, one of the most engaging frontmen in the business.

Everything But the Girl – Title TBC
TBC
Reunions are ten a penny these days – LCD Soundsystem seem to embark on one every other year – but here’s a comeback that feels genuinely major. Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt have been on an extended hiatus for the entirety of the 21st century, but recently announced that an album is in the offing. No word on its name, release date or what it will sound like, but you could imagine their refreshingly icy, minimalist electronica slotting well into current trends.

My Bloody Valentine – Title TBC
TBC
I included the long awaited new album from Kevin Shields and pals last year, and 12 months on … zilch. But this year, this year, will be the one where the shoegaze titans return. I feel it in my bones. We know nothing about it, of course, but we can probably guess that Shields will suddenly drop it at midnight as he did with m b v. in 2012 So keep en eye out – or alternatively just come back here in 12 months’ time when I may be making the same doomed prediction again.

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TV

Kaleidoscope
Netflix, 1 Jan
Netflix, Hollywood’s arch-disrupters, already changed how you watch TV. Now they want to disrupt the order in which you watch it. This Ridley Scott produced heist drama, about a group of thieves attempting to crack the planet’s most unbreakable vault, is intended to be viewed in whatever sequence you please, with episodes set both before and after the heist itself. Netflix are calling Kaleidoscope a “non-linear streaming experience”; if they pull it off, the results could be spectacular.

The Last of Us
15 Jan, HBO (US); 16 Jan, Sky Atlantic (UK)
Yet another zombie drama? And a zombie drama adapted from a video game to boot? Both are fair justifications for not being excited about this new series. However, when that video game was one of the most acclaimed of all time – raising the medium to new levels of emotional complexity – it seems likely to rise above the surfeit of similar shows. The steady hand of HBO and showrunner Craig Mazin, who did such a fine job with Chernobyl, should ensure that none of that is lost here. Plus the cast – Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Murray Bartlett, Nick Offerman – is pretty eye-catching.

Everyone Else Burns
January, Channel 4 (UK); TBC US and Aus
The Righteous Gemstones seems to have the market on satirising fire and brimstone types sewn up in the US, but what about the UK? This C4 comedy stars Simon Bird (complete with preposterous bowl cut hairdo, above) as the patriarch of an ultra-religious Christian family convinced that the end times are imminent. The trailer promises a broad and antic sitcom, with some exciting comic talents involved: Morgana Robinson, Liam Williams and Lolly Adefope.

Fleischman is in Trouble
22 Feb, Disney+ (UK); out now, FX (US)
Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s novel – AKA the book everyone you knew was reading in the first lockdown – gets a prestige TV adaptation, with another knockout cast. Jesse Eisenberg is the recently divorced Manhattanite attempting to balance parenting with his newfound zeal for dating apps, Claire Danes is his missing ex-wife, and Lizzy Caplan plays the best friend/narrator figure. If it’s half as unputdownable as the source material, then it will surely be among the year’s best.

Masters of the Air
Apple TV, TBC
Having been ‘“in the offing” for the best part of a decade, this follow-up to Band of Brothers and The Pacific looks finally set to air in 2023. As you’ll have twigged from the title, its focus is the exploits of a second world war United States air force division, and – like its predecessors – the cast is stocked with every promising young male actor going, including Austin Butler and Barry Keoghan. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg once again exec-produce.

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Bonus: Returning shows to be excited about

While we might be focusing on the shiny and new here, we couldn’t in good conscience press send on this newsletter without mentioning a handful of the televisual big beasts returning in 2023.

As early as Sunday, you can watch one of them: Happy Valley is back for its final series, seven years after the last one. ITV’s own crime drama mainstay, Unforgotten, returns for series five, its first without Nicola Walker. There’s no returning show more intensely anticipated than Succession: the Roys return in the spring for more of the super-rich Sturm und Drang. And, if rumours are to be believed, there are three new episodes of Line of Duty coming down the pipe too. Now we’re sucking diesel!