Jane Levy stars in new midseason musical dramedy “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist.” [NBC]

A charming comedy says goodbye, midseason offers some promising premieres and a scary Stephen King adaptation debuts on HBO.

Dispatches: Weekly TV news

In a move that is sure to leave many “Friends” fans wishing that Netflix was there for them, the subscription service dropped the series on Dec. 31. The show will not be available to stream in the United States until the spring of 2020, when WarnerMedia launches HBO Max.

Contenders: Shows to keep on your radar

“Power” is back (Jan. 5, Starz, 8 p.m. ET) for its last five episodes. When we last saw Ghost (Omari Hardwick), he was falling from the balcony of his nightclub, the apparent victim of a mystery shooter. All will be revealed as the series comes to an end.

The Rose family returns in the final season of “Schitt’s Creek” (Jan. 7, Pop TV, 9 p.m. ET) financially stable enough to leave the small town they have longed to escape, but the choice to go is harder than they thought.

Executive producer Dick Wolf adds to his franchise collection with “FBI: Most Wanted” (Jan. 7, CBS, 10 p.m. ET). The new series focuses on the work of the Fugitive Task Force, which tracks and captures notorious criminals. Julian McMahon plays lead agent Jess LaCroix.

NBC is going for something less formulaic with the midseason premiere of musical dramedy “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” (Jan. 7, 10 p.m. ET, additional episodes air Feb. 16). The show stars Jane Levy as Zoey, a coder at a San Francisco-based tech company, who develops an extraordinary ability. She can see and hear people’s thoughts - as musical numbers. The cast delivers on the performances, less so on the story.

“Party of Five” gets a contemporary makeover (Jan. 8, Freeform, 9 p.m. ET). The reboot of the Fox series (1994-2000) follows the Acosta kids, a group of Mexican- American siblings, who are left on their own after the deportation of their undocumented parents. The storylines obviously touch on politics but ask viewers to consider compassion more than ideology. There is also plenty of teen melodrama. (This is a Freeform show, after all).

Jeffrey Deaver’s bestselling crime novel “The Bone Collector” is adapted as “Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector” (Jan. 10, NBC, 8 p.m. ET). The show features the titular character, a former NYPD detective and forensic superstar, who was forced to retire after a serial killer set a trap that left him paralyzed. Three years later, the killer is back and Rhyme teams up with a young officer to catch him.

In another adaptation, writer Richard Price (“The Wire”) delivers Stephen King’s novel “The Outsider” to subscribers of HBO (Jan. 12, 9 p.m. ET). What starts as a true crime story develops into a much darker tale with supernatural twists and turns. The scary series stars Ben Mendelsohn and Jason Bateman.

Report Card: Ratings winners and losers

Winners: “Killing Eve” has been renewed for a fourth season.

Losers: RuPaul’s daytime talk show will not move forward after last summer’s trial run.

Melissa Crawley is the author of “Mr. Sorkin Goes to Washington: Shaping the President on Television’s ‘The West Wing.’” She has a Ph.D. in media studies and is a member of the Television Critics Association. To comment on Stay Tuned, email her at staytuned@outlook.com or follow her on Twitter at @mcstaytuned.

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2020-01-08T07:01:00Z

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