Everything British Worth Streaming in January 2025

As 2025 rolls in and the 21st century settles down for the long haul of making it through the next 75 years, the entertainment landscape is also settling after a long period of upheaval that arguably began 20 years ago with the launch of YouTube in February 2005. We'll have a more comprehensive breakdown of where the streaming services rank regarding who has the best programming for Anglophiles a quarter century in, but for now, as it is New Year's Day, we'll focus on what there is to watch in January 2025.

This time last year, we had a list that included every prominent American streaming service as everyone tested the wintertime waters to see if PBS' continued ownership of the first weeks of the year was strong enough to counter. For 2025, it's clear how the results shook out for the competition: Badly. Even BritBox, which has a roster of shows coming that rivals Netflix, is keeping its powder relatively dry this month, content to let PBS dominate the next six-eight weeks with the quadruple whammy of Miss Scarlet, All Creatures, Vienna Blood, and Funny Woman.

I do not want to suggest that things aren't still heading our way on commercial streamers in January; there are several titles for Anglophiles to check out in the next few weeks. But there's a notable lack of competition going up against public television for once, a sign that — at least in some quarters — those in charge have recognized that (in some areas at least) the old guard will not be disrupted from their routines.

Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale Season 1

Our January 2024 list started with this exact entry, as Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale was then debuting weekly on Sundance Now and AMC+. With a second season greenlit, AMC now needs people in the U.S. to have at least heard of the show. So, it is rerunning the series on its linear network, AMC, on Sunday nights and moving it to the streaming service people actually subscribe to: Acorn TV. The seven-part series re-debuts on Sunday, January 5, 2025, with one a week to follow, on AMC; all six episodes arrive on Acorn TV on premiere day.

The Gone Season 1

Besides that glorified rerun, AMC Networks is ceding the floor entirely for the first few weeks of the year, with the first new debut of the month, The Gone, not arriving until the 20th. Starring Grey’s Anatomy’s Richard Flood as an Irish detective teamed with Kiwi cop Diana Huia (Acushla-Tara Kupe) when an Irish couple goes missing on the North Island. The six-episode series premieres with two installments exclusively on Acorn TV on Monday, January 20, 2025, with one episode a week to follow through mid-February.

Planet Earth: Asia

BBC America returns to David Attenborough as the 98-year-old celebrates another trip around the sun with a brand new six-part series. The series was initially titled Asia in the U.K. when it debuted in November 2024; BBC America amended it to Planet Earth: Asia to connect the series back to Attenborough’s other hits. The seven-part series (plus the making-of-documentary closer) debuts on AMC+ and BBCA at 8 p.m. ET on Saturday, January 25, 2025, and will air/stream weekly through the end of March.

The Catch

Acorn TV rounds out January with the arrival of the 2023 Channel 5 drama The Catch, an adaptation of T.M. Logan’s bestselling novel. Jason Watkins stars as Ed Collier, a proud husband, father, and local fisherman, who is emotionally threatened by his daughter dating a rich, handsome younger man. Determined to prove his rival a villain, Ed attempts to dig up some dirt, only to accidentally expose his own dark secrets. All four episodes debut as a binge on Monday, January 27, 2025, exclusively on Acorn TV.

Prime Target

Apple TV+ continues to follow the "One British Show At a Time" method, which started in 2024 and gave the under-watched streaming service a new episode of high-end British fare every week for viewers to enjoy. January's debut will be the streaming service's newest series, Prime Target, starring British actor Leo Woodall and American-born Quintessa Swindell in a good old-fashioned thriller. The eight-episode series arrives on Apple TV+ with two episodes on Wednesday, January 22, 2025, with one a week to follow on Wednesdays.

Vera Season 14/Vera: Farewell Pet

We'll be talking a lot about BritBox in 2025. However, for January, the newly turbo-charged service will only bring three new titles, starting with one of the most anticipated debuts of 2025: the final season of Vera, which debuts on ITV on New Year's Day, and follows on BritBox the next day. The two-episode season will debut on consecutive Thursdays (January 2 and January 9), with the closing behind-the-scenes documentary Vera: Farewell Pet acting as an unofficial third installment when it arrives on Thursday, January 16, 2025.

Captivated Season 1

Initially released in the U.K. on Channel 5 as Too Good To Be True in 2024, BritBox renamed the series Captivated for international audiences as it rolled out for global release. Starring Downton Abbey's Allen Leech as a creepy wealthy benefactor who offers his cleaning lady  (Kara Tointon) a deal that sounds, well, too good to be true... because, of course, it is. All four episodes of Captivated land on BritBox on Tuesday, January 22, 2025.

Father Brown Season 12

BritBox's other major debut for January, like Vera, is one of those long-running cozy crime mystery series guaranteed to bring in viewers: Father Brown, which debuts Season 12 on both the BBC and BritBox less than two weeks apart. The Mark Williams-led series, which is settling into its recently reconfigured ensemble after hitting the decade mark, will solve another ten mysteries of the week as Father Brown meets his biggest fan and his newest nemesis. Father Brown Season 12 debuts with weekly episodes on BBC One starting Friday, January 10, and will follow on BritBox beginning Thursday, January 23, 2025, and run through the end of March.

C.B. Strike: The Ink Black Heart

Warner Brothers Discovery (or at least its fool of a CEO) believes a ten-season remake of the Harry Potter novels will save the struggling conglomerate, currently precariously straddling the line between success and failure and running on the decades-long sterling reputation of HBO. This theory's current "proof" is the success of Food Network's Wizarding World branded cooking competition on Max and the re-upped HBO deal with the BBC to bring over new seasons of the appalling Strike series. However, "The Ink Black Heart" cratered in the U.K. ratings, and it's highly doubtful it will do better here, especially since it's streaming randomly on Thursdays starting January 23, 2025.

Missing You

One year ago, Netflix released  Fool Me Once on New Year's Day 2024. The Coben adaptation was the most-watched title on streaming in the U.K. that weekend and one of the most-watched Netflix originals in the year's first half. Now, Netflix hopes to repeat that success in 2025 with Missing You, its latest Coben adaptation, once again reset from the New Jersey/New York area to the U.K. and starring Richard Armitage. All five episodes arrive on Wednesday, January 1, 2025.

Cunk on Life

Two years ago, Netflix released the mockumentary Cunk on Earth as part of the January 2023 lineup. For 2025, comedian Diane Morgan returns once more with Cunk on Life as the Honorably Dim Philomena Cunk, asking, “What’s the point of it all?” Cunk will clunkily tackle complex concepts like Quantum Physics, Existentialism, Nihilism, and Hedonism and question everything from Nietzsche to whoever came up with those signs in kitchens that say Live Laugh Love. The film debuts on Thursday, January 2, 2025.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

Claymation is expensive, so in this economy, Netflix-style spending was required to bring back Aardman, the animation studio behind Wallace & Gromit. The first production, a Chicken Run sequel, failed to take flight, but the Cheese Loving Inventor, Wallace, and his Faithful Pooch, Gromit, look as if their new feature film Vengeance Most Fowl will be a return to form. The film debuted in the U.K. on Christmas Day, 2024; it will arrive on Netflix on Friday, January 3, 2025.

Watson

Elementary was a smash hit for CBS in 2012 when parts of the Sherlock library were still under copyright. With the whole franchise in the public domain, CBS returns to the well of Holmesian mystery shows, hoping for another success story. However, Watson is perhaps too removed from the source material, as it is set in 2024 in America, where Dr. Watson (Morris Chestnut) struggles through his grief over Holmes' death at Reichenbach Falls. Honestly, the only reason to tune in is to check out Randall Park as the New Hot Moriarty. (Sorry, Andrew Scott, but we'll need you to move over.) The series debuts on CBS and Paramount+ on Sunday, January 26, 2025, and will air/stream weekly until it is canceled.

Lockerbie: A Search for Truth

Not to be confused with the BBC-Netflix co-produced series coming later this year called Lockerbie, which is a period drama starring Connor Swindells, the Sky-Peacock co-produced series Lockerbie: A Search for Truth stars Colin Firth as Dr. Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, was one of the passengers who perished on Flight 103, and whose zeal to find justice for his daughter's death drove him on a mission that wound up going halfway around the world. All five episodes arrive on Peacock on Thursday, January 2, 2025.

The Traitors Season 3

Peacock's only genuine breakout hit since the service launched in 2020 is back, the U.S. version of the U.K. smash reality show The Traitors. Starring Alan Cumming as the host and Alan Cumming's Wardrobe as the show's biggest star, he'll take 20-odd professional reality show contestants to a castle in Scotland to play a season-long murder mystery parlor game for bragging rights and money... mostly money. The new season debuts on Thursday, January 9, 2025, and will stream weekly.

The Rig Season 2

Amazon's Prime Video was very proud of The Rig when it debuted in January 2023, making a big fuss over the fact that it was the first Prime Video original filmed in Scotland. The campaign might have been more effective if the eco-horror series hadn't been such a limp washrag and if Amazon hadn't dropped all episodes like it was too bored to continue caring about it. Somehow, the series got a second season anyway; The Rig Season 2 will premiere with all episodes (dropped with little marketing and no fanfare) on Thursday, January 2, 2025.

Rogue Heroes Season 2

No, I will not stop ranting about how the most anticipated debut of early 2025 on the BBC, Rogue Heroes Season 2, will debut weekly here in the States, and no one will ever know. The World War II-set series, Steven Knight's follow-up to Peaky Blinders, had the great misfortune of having its rights signed away to failing streamer Epix (now an Amazon-owned property rechristened MGM+ and still a complete failure). Maybe one day, Amazon will divest itself of MGM+ and allow the series to go to a streamer people actually watch. Until then, the series will hide out on MGM+ starting Sunday, January 12, 2025, streaming one episode a week through the end of March.

The Couple Next Door Season 1

Perhaps realizing that it's canceled all its royalty-focused period dramas and that a network cannot live on Outlander alone, Starz has blessedly picked up the first contemporary show it's had worth watching, The Couple Next Door. Starring Eleanor Tomlinson, Alfred Enoch, Sam Heughan, and Jessica De Gouw, the wife-swapping series is the first English Language remake of a Walter Presents show that's not on PBS or BritBox. (Wife swapping: Too racy for PBS, but perfect for Starz.) The series was a big enough hit on Channel 4 that Season 2 (an anthology series featuring two new couples in the same cul-de-sac) is already in production.

The Couple Next Door Season 1 debuts on Starz on Friday, January 17, 2025, and will air/stream weekly.