7 Great Shows You Missed in 2023, From Murder Mysteries to Chucky

What do you mean you didn’t watch all 500-plus TV series that premiered in 2023?

We, of course, are kidding. Gone are the days when someone could claim such an accomplishment of watching everything that television has to offer in a given year. This year, high-profile titles like Succession and The Bear inevitably rose to the top, and so many others went by without much fanfare. But there are a few hidden gems that slipped the cultural cracks and it’s never too late to find your next binge.

Here are seven shows you might have missed in 2023, including a few returning series (but don’t feel too bad about that, because again, there were OVER 500 this year).

Extraordinary (Hulu)

Premiered January 25, 2023

The Boys have been cutting the mystic of the superhero genre down to size for three seasons over on Prime Video, and HBO is planning its own takedown of Hollywood’s love of IP with 2024’s The Franchise. But a worthwhile alternative to those big-budget spectacles is Hulu’s down-to-earth pondering of what would happen if you were the only person in the world without superpowers. That’s the reality for Jen (Máiréad Tyers), who has to walk through an extraordinary world as nothing more than ordinary. Naturally, this gets at questions of how our world has been desensitized to what makes superheroes, well, super. But beyond its larger ambitions, the series is a sharp, bawdy-at-times comedy that enjoys flying under the radar of the genre it seeks to both interrogate and count itself among. Plus, there’s a human man named Jizzlord who was stuck as a cat for awhile but is now Jen’s love interest. If that doesn’t intrigue you, nothing will.

The Reluctant Traveler with Eugene Levy (Apple TV+)

Premiered February 24, 2023

Following his Emmy-winning run on Schitt’s Creek, comedy legend Eugene Levy could have done anything he wanted. Instead, he did something he’d mostly avoided doing –– travel the world. A self-described reluctant traveler, Levy heads to far-flung and pricey destinations like Finland, the Maldives, Costa Rica, Tokyo, and Lisbon on Apple TV+’s dime to let their respective cultures convince himself that packing your bags and experiencing the world beyond your own bubble isn’t so bad. Most people wouldn’t need much convincing. But with Levy’s brand of dry wit and wide-eyed skepticism, the eight-episode travel series is an endearing compliment to his time as a motel owner on Schitt’s Creek. Plus, if you aren’t the Travel Channel type, this is a slick gateway into the unscripted world with a familiar guide.

Dark Winds Season 2 (AMC+)

Premiered July 30, 2023

Zahn McClarnon, one of television’s consummate and most underrated actors, was finally given his own series with AMC’s adaptation of Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn & Chee book series. He plays Leaphorn, a complicated, long-serving tribal police lieutenant in Arizona’s Navajo County during the 1970s, who finds himself saddled with a new deputy Chee (Kiowa Gordon) just as a murder mystery comes to town. The series’s largely Native cast is a resounding statement in and of itself. But the show’s evolving and strengthening representation of Navajo culture has made it an invaluable addition alongside other shows like FX’s more recognized Reservation Dogs (which also stars McClarnon). As the series embarks on Season 3, it’s worth your time to venture into this atmospheric mystery and watch one of our great actors at work.

Who Is Erin Carter? (Netflix)

Premiered August 24, 2023

By nature of the overstuffed streaming age, shows constantly premiere and then disappear in a flash. For one fleeting weekend in August, there was no hotter series than Netflix’s Who Is Erin Carter? The titular character played by Evin Ahmad is a single mother whose violent past comes roaring back when she finds herself at the center of a robbery. Forced to cover her tracks while maintaining some sense of hard-fought normalcy, Erin has to put her particular set of skills to work. If you didn’t catch it when everyone was talking about it for about two and a half days, the seven-episode thriller is a fun binge and a solid reminder that even in the glut of Peak TV, there are still worthy discoveries to be found in the Netflix algorithm.

Wilderness (Prime Video)

Premiered September 15, 2023

Most people first heard about Wilderness back in September without even realizing it. When Prime Video announced this adaptation of B. E. Jones’s novel, it led with the news that its theme song would be the first-ever listen of “Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version)” from Taylor Swift’s forthcoming re-record of her “Reputation” album. It was a hell of a way to pitch a new TV series, especially because the noise created by the Swift association distracted many people from ever coming back to watch the series. A revenge thriller with a kick, an excellent Jenna Coleman stars as a scorned wife planning the perfect “accident” for her cheating husband (the charmingly sinister Oliver Jackson-Cohen) in the vast wilderness of America’s National Parks. Best- laid plans are always the ones to go awry, and boy, do they ever here. But for those who stuck with it, these twisted marital dynamics are more than just a Taylor Swift chaser.

Chucky Season 3 (Peacock)

Part 1 premiered October 4, 2023; Part 2 is coming in 2024

Everyone’s favorite murderous doll has quietly been enjoying a second life ion his Syfy/USA Network series since 2021. The first season saw Chucky slay his way through another small town, while Season 2 found him racking up a body count inside a Catholic school. But for Season 3, creator Don Mancini set his sights on a playground so absurd it shouldn’t work –– the White House. And yet, this 35-year-old franchise has found something of a renaissance by tackling things bigger than itself. For instance, Chucky is having an existential crisis and the only thing that can cure it in Season 3, Part 2 (premiering in 2024) will be hunting down the evil lurking in the halls of our government. After all, America’s most haunted house is said to sit at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Bodies (Netflix)

Premiered October 19, 2023

For a high-concept series spread across nearly two centuries, the pitch for this DC Comics adaptation is relatively simple. The body of a nude man is found in the same spot on Longharvest Lane in East London in 1890, 1941, 2023 and 2053. Tasked with investigating, the presiding detectives of their respective eras (Kyle Soller, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Amaka Okafor and Shira Haas) find themselves thrust into a vast, time-traveling conspiracy to seize control over the past, present and future. Bodies is fueled by ambitious storytelling, there’s no question about that. But what’s most impressive is how it manages to create four distinct timelines that still feel bound by something greater. The series navigates the racial politics of the present and the deadly prejudice of the past. It questions the “what ifs” of all-consuming power in the future and the danger of complicity across history. There’s a lot going on, but it never drops the thread of intrigue that ultimately asks a bigger question –– what difference has a hundred-plus years of progress really made?

Hunter Ingram is a TV writer living in North Carolina and watching way too much television. His byline has appeared in Variety, Emmy Magazine, USA Today, and across Gannett's USA Today Network newspapers.