Best new movies and TV series on Stan: January 2023

Each month, lots of new films and TV shows are added to Stan‘s library. Critic Craig Mathieson surveys each month’s selections and picks for titles most worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.

Top Picks: TV

Black Snow (January 1)

It’s a cold case in a tropical environment, with Stan’s original crime thriller set in a small town in Far North Queensland, where the opening of a high school’s time capsule provides new clues to the disappearance of a female student 25 years prior. Travis Fimmel (Vikings) and Brooke Satchwell (Mr Inbetween) play the detectives looking to expose the town’s secrets, with the show aiming to separate itself from a crowded genre by focusing on the South Sea Islander community the missing teen was part of.

Your Honor: Season 2 (January 14)

The first season of this grim New Orleans-set thriller, headlined by an exemplary Bryan Cranston performance as a judge trying to hide his son’s culpability in a hit and run accident involving a gangster’s child, ended on an emotionally gripping incident that didn’t resolve the associated risks and gambits showrunner Peter Moffat (Undercover) had constructed.

A second and final season will require some nimble storytelling to renew the stakes between Cranston’s grieving Michael Desiato and Michael Stuhlbarg’s vengeful crime boss. Adding Rosie Perez to the supporting cast is a good start.

Poker Face: Season 1 (January 27)

Rian Johnson really digs detective stories. After two blockbuster instalments of Knives Out, he’s bringing the genre back to episodic television in its traditional form, creating a series where an eccentric detective solves a standalone case each week. Think Columbo or Murder, She Wrote.

Johnson wrote and directed several of the 10 episodes, but he also cast Natasha Lyonne (Russian Doll) as the eccentric investigator, Charlie Cale, who has an uncanny instinct for knowing when people are lying. Working for a mere week on a single episode also meant Johnson could tempt famous names from his address book: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Barkin, Chloe Sevigny, Nick Nolte, and Adrian Brody are among the many guest stars.

Top Picks: Movies + Specials

The Harry Potter franchise (January 15)

It’s now over two decades since the publishing phenomenon that was J.K. Rowling’s growing series of novels about a school for magic and a destiny-laden student was translated into a blockbuster franchise that made household names of its young stars.

Audiences watched Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint grow up on screen, surrounded by the cream of British acting, with the eight films in total transforming in outlook and intent as they built to a very long finale. Are they now nostalgic works? If you’ve got 20 hours spare, you can find out.

Transfusion (January 20)

Nice timing: fresh from his return to the blue lagoon in James Cameron’s box-office conquering sequel Avatar: The Way of Water, Australian actor Sam Worthington stars in this local drama, playing a former Special Forces operator struggling to adapt to civilian life who takes a risk on a criminal enterprise and finds himself part of an underworld war. Worthington co-stars with the film’s writer and director, Matt Nable, an actor with a spare, intimidating persona who has long been intrigued by the fault-lines of masculinity and duty. Expect these thrills to come with uncomfortable moral implications.

Slam (January 31)

Independently released in 2019, this contemporary Australian drama about the demands of identity and the limits of acceptance in this country remains both contemporary and fascinating.

Written and directed by Partho Sen-Gupta, who worked extensively in the film industry in their homeland of India and then France before relocating to Australia in 2012, the film follows the disappearance of a Palestinian-born and Sydney-raised poet and activist (Danielle Horvat), who is searched for by a troubled police officer (Rachael Blake) and the missing woman’s brother (Omar Bakri). What the latter sees and learns challenges the seemingly comfortable life he’s built in Australia.

All titles arriving on Stan in January

January 1

Black Snow: Season 1 Premiere
Baywatch
Lego DC Super Hero Girls: Season 1
Wacky Races: Season 1 (2016)

January 2

Chaos Walking
Doctor Who: New Years Day 2022 Special: Eve of the Daleks
Gretel & Hansel
Infidel
The Wolf of Snow Hollow

January 3

Censor
Dafne
The Age of Reason

January 4

Locusts

January 5

Roger Federer: A Champions Journey

January 6

BMF: Season 2 Premiere

January 7

RuPaul’s Drag Race: Season 15 Double Premiere
My Massive C**k
These Days

January 8

Williams Sisters
Spanish Affair

January 9

Kingdom of Dreams
Back Home
The Complexity of Happiness

January 10

Cross the Line
The Last Will Be The Last

January 11

Me & My Left Brain
Love Like Poison

January 12

Virgins

January 13

For Your Love

January 14

Your Honor: Season 2 Premiere

January 15

Lethal Weapon 4
Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix
Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows – Part 1
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows – Part 2