These five action-packed TV shows are the perfect antidote to the winter blues

Nothing beats the winter blues like spending two to 10 hours watching other people solve problems that are much worse than your own. This TV season brings us plane crashes, demon battles, zombie apocalypses, a loosely connected series of murders and the threat of a media baron selling his kids’ futures away. With apologies to the eternal optimism of Ted Lasso, here are five (plus one) new shows and seasons to make you realize real life isn’t all that bad.

Gary and His Demons

After filling screens of all sizes with goofy non-sequiturs for a decade and a half, Mark Little seemed ready to build a TV brand of his own with the 2018 launch of Gary and His Demons – an adult cartoon satirizing demon-slaying fiction centred around a depressed, middle-aged bureaucrat who never gets his way. Instead, after one season, it fell into television purgatory.

That is, until Prime picked up the show and released a second season to Canadians in early February. The new episodes chronicle the titular Gary’s life through a peculiar episode of child-rearing, never quite allowing his cynicism about the monotony of adult life to get in the way of other characters’ delight. (Prime, Season 2 released Feb. 2)

The Last of Us

The Last of Us imbues the zombie-apocalypse genre with a refreshing sense of hope. The third episode alone, in which characters played by Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett find love amid the wreckage, seems to have garnered more acclaim than any single TV episode in years. The world-building is convincing enough that even the reasoning for the zombie outbreak – a fungus that mutated in such a way that it could infect humans – feels entirely possible. (HBO/Crave, new episodes weekly.)

And if this series starring Pedro Pascal shepherding another person’s child across unknown vistas – in a show that cops the aesthetics and tropes of classic westerns – while he’s surrounded by pseudo-zombies doesn’t do it for you, well, good news. You can always watch Pascal shepherding another person’s child across unknown vistas – in a show that cops the aesthetics and tropes of classic westerns – while he’s surrounded by aliens, instead, on the third season of The Mandalorian, with new episodes coming in March. That show doesn’t have nearly as much Arby’s product placement, though. (Disney+, March 1.)

Poker Face

Sticking with the same theme after writing and directing one of highest-profile murder-mystery movie series in years, Rian Johnson’s new TV semi-anthology has more episodes than the trilogy of Star Wars trilogies, and possibly more murders, too. Natasha Lyonne stars in Poker Face as would-be Columbo Charlie Cale: a drifter rolling through mid-stakes poker games across Middle America suddenly caught in a casino power struggle that escalates into, well, murder. It turns out her uncanny talent for calling another poker player’s bluff is really a near-superhuman ability to know when someone’s lying. As guest star Lil Rel Howery points out in the third episode, however, craftsmanship is best achieved by focusing on finer details – which Cale does convincingly enough that her internal lie detector doesn’t feel too much like a narrative crutch. (Peacock/Prime/CityTV+, new episodes weekly.)

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Succession

The Tom Wambsgans Betrayal Hour is back. When we last saw the Roy family, wannabe alpha male Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) unloaded three seasons of pent-up anger by betraying his wife, Siobhan Roy (Sarah Snook), and her siblings. Just as the Roy children unexpectedly teamed up to undermine their father, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), as he tried to sell the family media conglomerate, the sad-sackiest of sadsacks snuck in some sabotage – putting Tom where he’s been desperate to be for years: at the centre of the action.

Will Logan actually give Tom the power he so desperately craves, or will his son-in-law just become a pawn again? Will the siblings stay friends or undercut each other into oblivion (yet) again? Will Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) say something goofy to inadvertently screw up someone’s best-laid plans? You probably already know the answers to all those questions. You’ll probably watch Succession anyway. (HBO/Crave, Season 4 begins March 26.)

Yellowjackets

The methodical way in which Yellowjackets revealed its first-season mysteries was thrilling and familiar, answering rhetorical questions we didn’t realize merited real answers. What if the plane crash from Lost took place in Canada? What if Lost had restraint in the writers room? And what if Lost was less about the power of free will, more like Lord of the Flies and featured an ensemble cast that included Tawny Cypress as a candidate for state senate who ate dirt and might be evil? Yellowjackets answers these questions much more efficiently than Lost answered, well, any of the questions its plot prompted. Now, with one key character left for dead and another revealed to be very much alive, it’s clear there’s much to learn in both of the Yellowjackets’ timelines. (Showtime/Crave, Season 2 begins March 26.)