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  • If you liked Hazbin Hotel, here’s what you should watch next

    If you liked Hazbin Hotel, here’s what you should watch next

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    Hazbin Hotel’s frenetic first season finished up on Friday, with a dozen reveals and dangling plot threads, all primed for a second season. The devilish comedy comes from creator Vivienne Medrano, who first posted the pilot episode on her YouTube channel, and follows Charlie, the princess of Hell, who opens a hotel in hopes that demons will rehabilitate and get to heaven. Oh, and it’s also a musical!

    The first season finished with a bang, but it might be some time before we see the second season of Hazbin Hotel. So if you need something to sate your devilish desires for now, Medrano handpicked some of the show’s biggest influences.

    Invader Zim

    Image: Netflix

    Where to watch: Paramount Plus

    Merdano calls this one a “huge one” and it’s not hard to see why: Both shows share a similar kind of feverish sensibility, along with a strong, vibrant color palette. The spindly style of Invader Zim feels clearly at play in Hazbin, with characters like Alastor and Angel Dust feeling like they could fairly comfortably roll between shows.

    The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy

    A scowling blonde girl stands next to a oafish boy, who stands next to the Grim Reaper, who’s making a disgusted face

    Image: Cartoon Network Studios

    Where to watch: Max

    The other childhood show Merdano cites is about two kids (one a clueless happy-go-lucky oaf, the other a cynical and smart-ass tomboy) who summon the Grim Reaper and beat him at a game of limbo, thus making him their eternal servant best friend. They get wrapped up in the paranormal world of demons, gods, and other supernatural creatures, but it’s all done with a goofy spin. The infernal through-line from Grim Adventures to Hazbin Hotel is pretty obvious.

    BoJack Horseman

    BoJack looking sad in front of the Griffith Observatory

    Image: Netflix

    Where to watch: Netflix

    While there were other shows she watched when she was younger, Medrano says Netflix’s BoJack Horseman — about an anthropomorphic, depressed washed-up sitcom actor (who is also a horse) — is the one that came at the “perfect time” to show her that she could tell a complicated emotional story in adult animation.

    “[It’s] actually one of my favorites of all time; phenomenal show,” Medrano says. “It kind of showed me that adult animation can not only just be raunchy comedy, but it can be a story that has intense development of its characters. It can have incredibly flawed characters. It can make you cry. It can really get deep and dark.

    “It had just started around the time that I was like, really making the pilot and they kind of made me go, Oh, wow, adult animation is starting to change. And it’s starting to evolve.”

    South Park

    South Park stick of truth hero

    Where to watch: Paramount Plus

    Medrano calls South Park a “huge turning point” for her with adult animation — an experience a lot of people had around Comedy Central’s classic. The show tackled topical ideas and events, all with a gleeful, jaded humor that has kept it running since 1997. “From that point on,” Medrano says, “I kind of just kept watching [adult animation].”

    Rick and Morty

    (L-R) Morty and Rick staring at a holographic projection of the multiverse with Evil Morty in Rick and Morty.

    Image: Adult Swim

    Where to watch: Max

    Similar to BoJack, Medrano cites this ever-popular Adult Swim comedy as a proponent of the depth and humor she tries to balance with her work. As anyone who has watched Rick and Morty can attest, there’s more to the show and more to Pickle Rick than the reputation it gives. “Something like Rick and Morty that is still very raunchy, and vulgar, and shocking in a lot of ways — it went this direction of like, Yeah, but let’s go a little deeper, let’s get a little darker. I think that also helped shift the space kind of more towards Oh, that works! That has an audience that did really well.”

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    Zosha Millman

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  • Hazbin Hotel, Found, Reacher, and more new TV this week

    Hazbin Hotel, Found, Reacher, and more new TV this week

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    Often we come to you with these TV dispatches with a focus on the biggest premieres of the week — which we are now doing again. But this week also sees a whole host of finales, all of big shows that started in the tail end of 2023. While none of these three shows made our top 50 of the year, they’re all pretty big in their own way.

    Noah Hawley’s Fargo is ending its fifth season this week, concluding yet another chapter of exploring American greed and the violence it spawns. There’s also Reacher, TV’s biggest guy, with what’s sure to be an action-packed finale for the second season (and hopefully teeing up the already greenlit season 3). And then there’s Found, the new splashy procedural following a woman who locates missing people (and with a few dark secrets of her own).

    There’s more new and premiering TV to watch, of course — in addition to whatever ongoing shows you might be following, like True Detective: Night Country — but it’s a good reminder that there’s plenty of television worth catching up on, even without the urgency of the new episode.

    Here’s the best of those new finales and premieres to watch on TV this week.

    New shows on Netflix

    Love on the Spectrum season 2

    Genre: Finding romance reality show
    Release date: Jan. 19
    Relationship coach: Jodi Rodgers
    Cast: A group of people on the spectrum looking for love

    Netflix is back with another reality dating show, this time a second season of Love on the Spectrum, a show about exactly what it sounds like: people on the autism spectrum navigating the dating world. Season 2 of the show features some new cast members, alongside some folks from season 1.

    New shows on Hulu

    Death and Other Details

    Genre: Murder mystery
    Release date: Jan. 16, with two episodes
    Showrunner/creator: Mike Weiss and Heidi Cole McAdams
    Cast: Mandy Patinkin, Violett Beane, and more

    A locked-room murder mystery on a cruise ship, filled with plenty of staggeringly rich people who all have a motive. Also on board, conveniently: Rufus Cotesworth (Mandy Patinkin), a washed-up detective, who leaps into action — with the help of his also conveniently present former protege Imogene (Violett Beane). Very quickly, though, they learn there’s more to this murder — and its victim — than meets the eye.

    Fargo season 5 finale

    Photo: Michelle Faye/FX

    Genre: Crime drama
    Release date: Jan. 16
    Showrunner/creator: Noah Hawley
    Cast: Juno Temple, Jon Hamm, and more

    It’s all coming to a close, as Dot (Juno Temple) hopes to reassert control over her life and rid herself of her megalomaniac ex-husband, Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm). The body count has been rising, and the penultimate episode saw government forces gear up to raid Tillman Ranch, setting up what should be an action-packed, violent finale.

    New shows on Prime Video

    Hazbin Hotel

    Genre: Animated goth theater kid musical
    Release date: Jan. 19, with four episodes
    Showrunner/creator: Vivienne Medrano
    Cast: Stephanie Beatriz, Kimiko Glenn, Keith David, and more

    Charlie Morningstar (Erika Henningsen) is the princess of hell, and has her heart set on doing the impossible: rehabilitating sinners in her hotel so well that they’ll be accepted into heaven. It isn’t long before she finds this task is harder than she thinks — luckily, she has a cast of characters who are there to help her (if not fully believe in her mission). Also: It’s a musical!

    Reacher season 2 finale

    A close up of Jack Reacher, a very large man, wearing a jacket and looking off in the distance, probably at someone smaller than he

    Photo: Brooke Palmer/Prime Video

    Genre: Big guy spy action
    Release date: Jan. 19
    Showrunner/creator: Nick Santora
    Cast: Alan Ritchson, Serinda Swan, Shaun Sipos, and more

    The Big Man’s back for his final episode of the second season. The penultimate episode ended in quite the cliffhanger, with multiple team members held hostage by Robert Patrick’s Shane Langston. No big deal, though — Reacher is still Reacher, and last we saw him, he was sauntering through the front gate ready to dole out some punishment.

    New shows on Paramount Plus

    The Woman in the Wall

    Genre: Broody detective story
    Release date: Jan. 19, with one episode
    Showrunner/creator: Joe Murtagh
    Cast: Ruth Wilson, Daryl McCormick, and more

    When a woman wakes up to find a dead body in her house, she’s got two problems: The first — well, obviously, she has a dead body that is in her house. But the second is more important: She has no idea how it got there.

    The Woman in the Wall picks up from there for what Showtime calls a “psychologically and emotionally compelling detective story shot through with dark humor,” using six episodes to reexamine one of Ireland’s biggest scandals, the Magdalene Laundries.

    New shows on Peacock

    Found season 1 finale

    Shanola Hampton as Gabi Mosely in a close-up, sitting and looking steely

    Photo: Steve Swisher/NBC

    Genre: Dramatic procedural
    Release date: Jan. 16
    Showrunner/creator: Nkechi Okoro Carroll
    Cast: Shanola Hampton, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Kelli Williams, and more

    Gabi (Shanola Hampton) has been finding people — and hiding the secret of having her own kidnapper in her basement — all season. And it’s been a pretty wild ride, with plenty of flair for the dramatic. So I’m guessing the season finale of Found will deliver a helluva cliffhanger, particularly since it’s already been greenlit for season 2.

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    Zosha Millman

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