Screen Babble Weekend Watch: New Year special with The Apprentice, Ahsoka, Secret Invasion - and Love Island

Steven Ross, NationalWorld’s Digital Trends Writer, brings you a special New Year edition of Weekend Watch, the sister podcast to Screen Babble. This week we’ll be looking at the best shows coming up in 2023, covering everything from reality TV, to big budget sci-fi .and prestige dramas. These are the top shows that you should clear your schedule for in the new year.

Two big reality series making a return in January are The Apprentice and Love Island. The Apprentice is back for season 17, with the first episode airing on BBC One on Thursday 5 January - You’re Fired is also coming back and will air staight after The Apprentice on BBC Two. The new season is expected to be bigger than ever, with 18 contestants taking part and the first episode shot in the Caribbean. Love Island seasson nine is expected to start on Monday 16 January on ITV. It is the first season of the dating show to air in the winter since the sixth series in 2020.

Contiuning with the reality TV theme - Big Brother is set for a major comeback next year. The twice cancelled show has been given a new home on ITV (the announcement was made following the series finale of Love Island in summer) and is expected to air in March. The series sees a bunch of regular Joes sharing a house together, taking part in challenges, getting into arguments, and then complaining about each other in the diary room. It will be the first season of the show since it was axed in 201.

Onto more prestige television now, and The Fall of the House of Usher is coming to Netflix. The horror drama series, based on the Edgar Allen Poe short story, follows a narrator who arrives at his friend’s house to find that those inside are dead or dying. After strange goings on, the narrator begins to suspect that the house is alive and malevolent. A release date for The Fall of the House of Usher is yet to be confirmed.

American drama Poker Face has been announced by Peacock - the series stars Orange is the New Black’s Natasha Lyonne, as a detective who hits the road and solves a different mysterious case each week. The show will air in the US in January but it is not yet known when it will come to the UK.

Two upcoming Disney+ shows to be aware of next year are Ashoka and Secret Invasion. Ashoka is another Star Wars spin-off series with Rosario Dawson in the title role. It takes place after the events of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. The series is expected to arrive around September 2023. Secret Invasion is a new Marvel series which sees Nick Fury try to rid the MCU of the Skrulls who have established themselves in the highest positions of power. It is expected to land early next year.

One more major sci-fi series arriving next year is Gen V, a spin-off from The Boys about a college where students are made into supes and face physical and moral tests. The series will arrive on Amazon Prime Video some time in 2023.

The final show to keep an eye out for next year is the Eurovision Song Contest - last year’s show was won by Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra but due to the ongoing invasion by Russia, the contest will be hosted in 2023 by the runner-up nation - Britain. Eurovision will be broadcast live from Liverpool on 13 May 202.

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