Best new movies and TV series on Neon: January 2025

Neon continues to bring in a convoy of quality shows and films. See our handpicked highlights below followed by the full release schedule.

Top picks: TV

Bump: Season 5 (January 5)

Forget polishing off leftovers and binning all that spent wrapping paper with your annoying family over the holidays. You could instead be spending the post-Christmas haze with the Chalmers-Davis clan. And in fact it’s your last chance to do so, with season five wrapping up a saga of teen pregnancies, tragic diagnoses, and family drama that manages to be absorbingly entertaining and acutely relatable at once.

Over four heartfelt seasons, Nathalie Morris’ protagonist Oly has gone from unprepared teen mum to a relatively confident and secure adult, now facing her second pregnancy while mum Angie (a brilliant Claudia Karvan) grapples with her daunting health condition. We’ll miss the warmth of this gem of an Australian drama: don’t take the last chapter for granted this holiday season.

The Pitt: Season 1 (January 10)

This hot new medical drama has been building considerable buzz, which sounds unusual for such a generic setting…until you learn a little more about its inventive structure. The first season’s 15 episodes each capture just one hour of chaos at a modern-day Pennsylvania hospital, conveying the mile-a-minute disaster and negotiating that the staff must wearily endure. Honestly, sitting through all 15 episodes in one go might feel as tiring as doing the shift yourself. Noah Wyle is our central self-destructing doctor, and he looks very McConaughey in the exciting show’s promo imagery, no?

Top picks: Movies

Pretty in Pink (January 1)

John Hughes’ endearing Cinderella story. As a dowdy teen with her own quirky sense of style and a home that’s just a tad smaller than those of her snooty classmates, Molly Ringwald experiences the ultimate glow-up and sorts out a heartstring-tugging love triangle situation, forced to pick between hunk Andrew McCarthy and her gawky bestie Jon Cryer. We love almost everything about her. Almost. Because why did she take that gorgeous retro prom dress and hack it up into something much worse for her ugly-duckling-makeover-reveal moment, individuality be damned?! It’s a crime against thrifting.

Barbarella (January 6)

Soon to be remade with contemporary bombshell Sydney Sweeney, this daffy softcore-sci-fi cult classic is ideal summer viewing: something breezy and attractive and quite brainless to screen while you’re hanging out and trying to beat the heat. Jane Fonda is luminous in a pretty thankless role, constantly getting captured and harangued whilst wearing a whole collection of gaggy outfits. They truly don’t make ’em like this anymore, and while it’s an outdated and overwhelmingly style-over-substance affair, it’s sad that the tradition of pure horny kitsch has faded from our screens. The music is fab too.

A Quiet Place: Day One (January 14)

This prequel surprised me in its positive reception, with a few reviews claiming that it’s superior to the John Krasinski horror films that first weaved a grim tale of sound-sensitive aliens taking earth hostage. It takes a refreshingly different approach to the Stephen King-y, rural family dynamic of those films, following Lupita Nyong’o’s New Yorker on an existential chase.

Her character’s growing bond with fellow survivor Joseph Quinn is only eclipsed by the chemistry she has with her cat, and Nyong’o was so charmed by the beastie on set that she went from being a cat-hater to a new adoptee. D’awwww! Pig director Michael Sarnoski might have seemed like an unusual pick for such a noisy, hectic horror-survival story, but his handling of the movie’s character drama makes it stand out as much more than just another blockbuster spin-off.