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FOX WINTER 2026 SCHEDULE
On the FOX television network, January marks the launch of a new series, beginning with “Best Medicine,” based on the British medical comedy-drama series “Doc Martin” that ran for ten seasons.
In the British series, a successful surgeon leaves his London practice to become a primary care physician in a sleepy fishing village, where he spent time during his youth.
The good doctor is not the right fit for the townsfolk due to his abrasive attitude and lack of bedside manner that alienates most people. Moreover, his luxury car and flashy wardrobe also rub the locals the wrong way.
The new FOX series features Josh Charles as Dr. Martin Best, a brilliant surgeon who abruptly leaves his illustrious career in Boston to become a general practitioner in a quaint East Coast fishing village where he spent summers as a child.
Martin’s blunt and borderline rude bedside manner rubs the quirky, needy locals the wrong way, and he quickly alienates the town, even though he’s the only medical help they’ve got.
Although Martin can expertly address any medical ailment or mystery in this idiosyncratic town, he’s just desperate to be left alone. Instead, he keeps getting dragged into the middle of their personal chaos.
What the locals don’t know is that Martin’s terse demeanor masks a debilitating new phobia and childhood drama that prevents him from experiencing true intimacy with anyone.
But tenacity is the creed of everyone in the small village, and the people who live there may be exactly what the doctor ordered. “Best Medicine” also stars Abigail Spencer and Annie Potts.
The 2003 Belgian action thriller film “De Zaak Alzheimer,” based on the novel of the same title, followed an assassin who agreed to one last contract hit despite a recent diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
The assignment required the killer to kill two people, with the second victim a twelve-year-old girl who had been pimped by her father. The assassin’s creed did not involve killing children, thereby crossing his employer who puts out a contract on his hitman.
The FOX series “Memory of a Killer” stars Patrick Dempsey as Angelo Doyle, a hitman leading a dangerous double life while hiding an even deadlier personal secret. Angelo’s daughter Maria (Odeya Rush) only knows her father as a photocopier salesman.
Starring opposite Dempsey in the role of Dutch, Michael Imperioli is Angelo’s oldest friend and an accomplished Italian chef whose restaurant in the Bronx is a front for his criminal enterprise, which includes hiring Angelo as a hitman.
With a family history of dementia, Angelo has been able to juggle keeping his professional and personal lives separate. But now beginning to lose his memory, Angelo poses a potential threat to the criminal enterprise.
Exceptionally resourceful and talented, Angelo is about to be tested like never before, and now every minute counts. This is made more difficult when he discovers his wife’s recent death may not have been an accident.
When someone comes after his pregnant daughter, it’s clear the walls between his lives have been breached. Angelo must stop whoever’s coming for his family by looking into his past hits for clues, and the list is very long.
Angelo must hunt down his mortal enemy while continuing to carry out hits without giving away his diagnosis and still make it home in time to cook dinner for his daughter.
Richard Harmon’s Joe is a budding hitman working for Angelo and Dutch. Stuck with more routine work of gathering intel, Joe also faces a precarious position as the witness to Angelo’s mental decline.
The perils for Dempsey’s hitman in decline results in high-stakes drama for “Memory of a Killer.” As the wall between Angelo’s two worlds crumbles, the series should live up to being an interesting thriller.
Joe Rogan, who has his own very popular podcast, was the original host for NBC’s “Fear Factor,” a game show that challenged contestants to face their most primal fears by competing in various bold stunts.
FOX is reviving “Fear Factor” in a new format to be hosted by Johnny Knoxville, best known as a fearless stunt performer who was the co-creator and star of the MTV reality stunt show “Jackass” that resulted in several subsequent movies.
The iconic reality competition show is coming back bigger, bolder and more daring as “Fear Factor: House of Fear.” Dropped into an unforgiving, remote location, a group of strangers will live together under one roof, and face mind-blowing stunts.
Being isolated in a harsh environment challenges the contestants to play a devious social game where trust is scarce and strategy turns fear into a strategic tool. Only one person will conquer all their fears and walk away with the massive grant prize.
As host, Knoxville will not subject himself to the severe injuries and health issues endured during his reckless stunts in the “Jackass” franchise. No more concussions, herniated discs, torn tendons, and broken bones and fractures.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
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‘WAKE UP DEAD MAN’ ON NETFLIX
The prolific British murder-mystery writer Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, the central character of apparently half of her innumerable novels, is one of the most iconic figures, on par with the brilliant eccentric Sherlock Holmes and hardboiled detective Philip Marlowe.
The 2019 film “Knives Out,” written and directed by Rian Johnson, created Benoit Blanc as an oddball private detective with a Southern drawl and a sharp mind who resembles a modern-day Hercule Poirot figure.
Poirot and Blanc have in common the ability to unravel intricate family secrets and crimes. For the third film in the “Knives Out” franchise, Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc will be summoned to upstate New York to solve the murder of a clergyman.
“Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” sets the whodunit in a Catholic Church, where Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a firebrand preacher whose demeanor at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude holds sway over a diminished number of faithful parishioners.
Meanwhile, change is coming to the small parish in Chimney Rock when young Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), previously a powerful street boxer who killed a man in the ring, is dispatched by Bishop Langstrom (Jeffrey Wright) to work with Monsignor Wicks.
Despite anger issues which caused him to punch a church deacon, Father Jud is given a second chance partly because nobody liked the deacon and the Chimney Rock parish is in decline and in need of a fresh face.
The bishop is no fan of Monsignor Wicks, observing that he’s “a few beads shy of a full rosary” and a very unpleasant person whose flock is shrinking. Saying “Christ came to heal the world, not to fight it,” the young priest might be the tonic to fix the church.
At the rural church, the Wicks legacy runs deep with buried secrets. The monsignor’s grandfather Prentice Wicks promised Jefferson’s mother Grace an inheritance if she remained with the church, but then she was left empty-handed upon his death.
Flashbacks reveal that Grace (Annie Hamilton) exacted revenge on the church by overturning statues, destroying religious paintings, and desecrating the crucifix, and then beating up adolescent Martha, who would later become the church secretary in adulthood.
During fiery sermons, the monsignor has a knack for driving away unsuspecting visitors who drop in for a Catholic Mass. What’s left of the congregation are mostly sycophants, especially the devoted church lady Martha (Glenn Close) and groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church).
Not shying away from a theological debate with Wicks, Father Jud disapproves of the fire and brimstone sermons that resonate only with what few parishioners cling to a blind loyalty to the monsignor.
Upon his initial meeting with Wicks, Father Jud is asked to take his confession, which starts with his sin of envying the wealth and power of others, before veering off into too much detail about sexual self-gratification.
The confession looks like Wicks is playing mind games, and then makes it clear the church belongs to him and that Father Jud is just an upstart sent by Bishop Langstrom, who obviously has his own agenda.
Trying to offer a counterbalance to Wicks’ preaching, Father Jud convenes a prayer group of the most loyal congregants with the mission to break down walls between members of the church and Christ, before confessing his own transgressions in his youth.
The coterie of congregants assembled by Father Jud include local doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), an alcoholic since his wife left him; Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), an excitable attorney with family secrets; and Simone (Cailee Spaeny), a cellist confined to a wheelchair due to an accident.
Vera’s illegitimate brother Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack) aspires to a political career and obsesses over social media to chronicle his interactions; and Lee Ross (Andrew Scott) seeks to regain acclaim as a writer but now obsesses with conspiracy theories.
Rounding out the prayer group is Martha, the reliable mainstay of Wicks’ ministry. When the parishioners find out that the monsignor had not been aware of Father Jud’s meeting, they abruptly leave, voicing their displeasure with what they deem a deception.
When the monsignor is mortally stabbed in a vestibule during church service, Father Jud’s volatile past as a boxer renders him a prime suspect. At this point, 40 minutes into the film is when Benoit Blanc arrives on the scene.
For Police Chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis), the evidence, however circumstantial, which includes video of threats to the monsignor, points to Father Jud as the likely culprit.
The master sleuth Blanc has his doubts that the young priest is guilty and sets his sights on finding the real killer. In his iconoclastic approach, Blanc is the champion of the disadvantaged and can’t be swayed by public opinion.
“Wake Up Dead Man,” to be true to Blanc as the skeptic who eventually finds the truth, takes an interesting turn in that Father Jud, for all his faults, is the most fascinating character for this entertaining twisted mystery story.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
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