Tuned In

2014: Looking Forward to the Year in TV

Here's looking forward to the new and returning shows I'm most excited for in 2014--and to the surprises we don't even know about yet.

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Last summer's best surprise, Orange Is the New Black, comes back this year

As I mentioned yesterday, the face of TIME’s 2014-preview issue, currently on newsstands, is Seth Meyers, who I interviewed in his still-under-construction offices at 30 Rock last month. But Meyers’ Late Night–and Fallon’s Tonight, premiering Feb. 17–are only two of the TV debuts to look forward to in 2014. To name a few:

* We have a slew of promising debuts in January: HBO’s high-powered, dark True Detective (Jan. 12); Fox’s military comedy Enlisted and Syfy’s viral-outbreak thriller Helix (both Jan. 10); and FX’s gay-rapper comedy Chozen (Jan. 13, along with a new season of Archer)

* New series from some of the channels that have pushed basic cable’s drama boundaries, including The Red Road from Sundance and Revolutionary War drama Turn from AMC

* FX’s adaption/reimagining of Fargo, with a new story and new characters

* The Leftovers, Damon Lindelof’s Rapture drama for HBO, based on the Tom Perrotta novel

* Also for HBO, Daily Show expat John Oliver’s still-in-the-works topical comedy show

* Possibly my most-anticipated new TV show of the year, the BBC (and BBC America’s) miniseries adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s fantastic fantasy Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which imagines a 19th-century England in which magic is real

* And, of course, there are the many, many returning series to anticipate–new seasons of last year’s newcomers Orange Is the New Black, Rectify, and Orphan Black, for instance, as well as the beginning of the end for Mad Men, which will air the first half of its final season.

But the most important thing to remember is that all those sophomore shows I just mentioned were on my ten-best list for 2013–and not one was on my radar at this time last year. So the show I’m most excited for in 2014 is The One I Don’t Even Know About Yet. And you?