Everything coming to PBS in January 2024
While December was light on original programming for PBS, January 2024 is a different story altogether. This month marks the premiere of new seasons for fan-favorite series Finding Your Roots and Antiques Roadshow, as well as returning drama shows Miss Scarlet and the Duke and All Creatures Great and Small. There’s also a new British dramedy, Funny Woman, which is making its American premiere on PBS.
Beyond those shows, there’s more of what PBS does best: Enriching your world with revealing news, nature, and cultural specials. It’s all free, and brought to your TV screens through generous donations from viewers like you. Some of them even got tote bags for their pledges.
If you missed the best shows on PBS from December, you can still stream those online. You’ll just have to wait for the premiere dates listed below to catch everything coming to PBS in January.
Great Performances: From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2024
Premieres: Monday, January 1
Celebrate the New Year with waltzes by Strauss and more performed from Vienna’s Musikverein by the famed orchestra led by guest conductor Christian Thielemann. PBS favorite Hugh Bonneville returns to host.
American Masters: Hopper: An American Love Story
Premieres: Tuesday, January 2
Discover the secrets behind Edward Hopper’s most iconic and enigmatic works. Known for Nighthawks and other evocative paintings of American life, Hopper has left a lasting impression on our culture. Meet the man behind the brush and see how his marriage to fellow artist Josephine Nivison Hopper shaped his art and career.
A Citizen’s Guide To Preserving Democracy
Premieres: Tuesday, January 2
This special is based on Dr. Richard Haass’ bestselling book The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens. Through interviews and real-life examples, Hari Sreenivasan and Haass explore how Americans are working towards strengthening democracy and renewing the spirit of a more informed and engaged citizenry.
Finding Your Roots
Season 10 Premiere: Tuesday, January 2
Renowned scholar Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. returns for a new season of Finding Your Roots. Using genealogical detective work and cutting-edge DNA analysis, Gates guides 21 compelling guests – including three of his loyal viewers – deep into their family trees, revealing surprising stories that transcend borders and illuminating an American root system fortified by its diversity.
Miss Scarlet and the Duke on Masterpiece
Season 4 Premiere: Sunday, January 7
Eliza has taken over the business of Nash & Sons (not that he has any sons), and things are not going entirely smoothly, although help comes from some familiar sources. Outside of work, her relationship with William (The Duke) builds toward a looming decision that will shape both their lives.
All Creatures Great and Small on Masterpiece
Season 4 Premiere: Sunday, January 7
It’s spring 1940, and with Europe at war, the community in Darrowby is pulling together more than ever before. With Tristan away serving, Siegfried and James bring in some extra hands to help around the practice: highly efficient bookkeeper Miss Harbottle and student vet Richard Carmody. Happily married, Helen and James begin to think about their future despite the looming possibility that James could be called up to serve
Funny Woman
Premieres Sunday, January 7
Funny Woman follows Barbara Parker, a small-town beauty queen who decides to swap her pageant life for comedy television in 1960s London. After landing a TV show audition, Barbara finds that being a woman in a largely male environment has its own challenges. As she ‘finds her funny’ voice, Barbara redefines the prevailing attitude toward funny women and reinvents herself.
Antiques Roadshow
Season 28 Premiere: Monday, January 8
Season 28 strikes it big with stunning discoveries filmed at historic locations in five distinctive cities across the country.
The Cost of Inheritance: An American Reframed Special
Premieres: Monday, January 8
This hourlong documentary explores the complex issue of reparations in the U.S. using a thoughtful approach to history, historical injustices, systemic inequities, and the critical dialogue on racial conciliation. Through personal narratives, community inquiries, and scholarly insights, it aims to inspire understanding of the scope and rationale of the reparations debate.
Independent Lens: Beyond Utopia
Premieres: Tuesday, January 9
This gripping documentary follows families on a journey to leave North Korea, as the threat of severe punishment and possible execution looms over their passage.
Nature: Big Little Journeys
Premiere: Wednesday, January 10
Small animals, even tiny ones, must sometimes make epic journeys to find a home or a mate. While the distances may not seem monumental to us, they are to these little creatures. Grasses appear like skyscrapers, mounds become mountains, and raindrops are as big as cars. In this three-part series, meet six heroic, tiny travelers risking it all to complete big journeys against the odds.
POV Brief Tender Light
Premieres: Monday, January 15
At the elite MIT, a Ghanaian alum follows four African students striving to become agents of positive change back home. Even as their dreams are anchored in the societies they left, their daily realities are defined by America. Each must refdeine their ideas about the world and about themselves, and ultimately, how to transform youthful ideals into action as adults.
Independent Lens: Racist Trees
Premieres: Monday, January 22
Were trees intentionally planted to exclude and segregate a Black neighborhood? In this documentary, racial tensions ignite in Palm Springs, California, over a fight to remove a wall of trees that form a barrier believed to exclude a community.
American Experience: Nazi Town, USA
Premieres: Tuesday, January 23
Explore the rise of the German American Bund, a 1930s organization of American Nazis. With chapters across the country, the Bund represented what experts believe was a “very real threat of fascist subversion in the United States.”
Frontline: Israel’s Second Front
Premieres: Tuesday, January 23
Correspondent Ramita Navai investigates militants in the West Bank and Lebanon, their ties to Iran, and their role in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Independent Lens: Razing Liberty Square
Premieres: Monday, January 29
Liberty City, Miami, was home to one of the oldest segregated public housing projects in the U.S.. Now, with rising sea levels, the neighborhood’s higher ground has become something else: real estate gold.
Frontline: Democracy on Trial
Premieres: Tuesday, January 30
The roots of the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump, which stem from his 2020 election loss, are explored.
Nature: Gorilla
Premieres: Wednesday, January 31
Gabon’s Loango National Park is home to a group of western lowland gorillas that have become accustomed to biologists who have studied them for almost 20 years. This documentary presents an intimate look at a silverback and his family, and features a newborn baby gorilla, brave researchers, forest elephants, buffalos, and the last remaining wild coastline in the African tropics.
Nova: When Whales Could Walk
Premieres: Wednesday, January 31
In Egypt’s Sahara Desert, massive skeletons with strange skulls and gigantic teeth jut out from the sandy ground. This fossil graveyard, millions of years old, is known as the “Valley of the Whales.” Now, paleontologists have unearthed a whole new species of ancient whale dating to 43 million years ago, and this predator wasn’t just able to swim – it also had four legs and could walk. Follow scientists as they search for new clues to the winding evolutionary path of mammals that moved from the land into the sea to become the largest animals on Earth.
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