Everything we know (so far) about the next season of 'Heated Rivalry'

Talking About

• Heated Rivalry. We know you’re waiting for Heated Rivalry to come back. With a second season now officially in the works, here’s everything we know about what could be in store.

• Stranger Things may have begun at just the right time, with just the right ingredients. Nearly a decade later, it’s hard to appreciate it as anything but the bloated franchise it’s become. TIME critic Judy Berman chronicles the show’s descent into franchise-dom here.

• With its mid-November Netflix debut, Dynamite Kiss made a big splash by breaking all of the K-drama rom-com rules. Driven by the series’ bold start and the chemistry between Jang and Ahn, the series has been a hit in a year otherwise defined by suspense thrillers, action comedies, and slice-of-life dramas. Read here about how the show became the rom-com we needed in 2025.

Watching

• The Night Manager. Because everything old is IP again, and even though the six-episode first season had a pretty definitive ending, Prime Video has teamed up with original co-producer the BBC on an extremely belated sequel. When it finally starts cooking, this new espionage caper is just as delectable as its predecessor. Read more.

• The Pitt. Ten months after the finale of its groundbreaking first season, The Pitt is back in all its emergency room drama glory (and guts) for a second season, with some new faces. Here’s a rundown of all the new doctors and nurses this season.

• The Traitors. Welcome back to Alan Cumming's Scottish Highlands castle for another season of Peacock's devilishly fun, deliciously camp, and addictively thrilling reality competition series. A fabulous twist makes this season worth watching. Learn more here.

Reading

Books ahoy! The new year promises adventures, escapes, and mind-bending delights for bibliophiles of all stripes. Here are just a few of the books we’re most excited to read this year.

• Woman Down, by Colleen Hoover (Jan. 13). Desperate to revive her creative self, best-selling writer Petra Rose retreats to a cabin, where she strikes up a research relationship with Nathaniel Saint, a cop whose sexy swagger mirrors that of a character in Petra’s new manuscript.

• Vigil, by George Saunders (Jan. 27). Jill “Doll” Blaine, a young woman who perished in a freakish bombing incident, performs her ghostly duty of ushering another soul across the threshold of mortality—except K. J. Boone, a Texan oilman, balks on his deathbed, refusing redemption.

• Fear and Fury, by Heather Ann Thompson (Jan. 27). Embraced by the media after he shot four Black teenagers on the New York City subway, Bernie Goetz was the vigilante poster boy of the 1980s, a folk hero to millions, celebrated for fighting back against so-called criminals accused of shredding the nation’s social fabric. Thompson spins this narrative on its head.

• Autobiography of Cotton, by Cristina Rivera Garza (Feb. 3). Translated by Christina MacSweeney, this sumptuous work of autofiction plumbs the mirage-like landscapes of the border region and the frictions that simmer between neighboring nations. In dense, lyrical prose, Rivera Garza weaves in an array of political and historical allusions, highlighting the human costs and environmental degradation caused by the cash crop that created our modern world.

Find the full list here.