Max Burkholder was just a few years removed from playing a rugrat in Daddy Day Care when he began voicing characters on Seth MacFarlane’s animated Fox programs. At a time when most kids probably weren’t allowed even to turn on Family Guy or The Cleveland Show, a tweenage Burkholder was honing his comedic chops.
“I grew up doing American Dad, Cleveland Show, Family Guy voices—my brother and I even talked like them and made jokes,” Burkholder says. “I think I just get Seth’s sense of humor. I feel it deep in my bones.”
So when Burkholder learned that his old boss MacFarlane was looking for someone to play a teenage version of Mark Wahlberg’s character from the movie Ted, which was morphing into a prequel TV series on Peacock, the young actor best known for Parenthood was all in.
“It was a pretty rare thing. I just sent in my tape, and a couple months later, I had the job,” he says. “There’s usually seven or eight rounds of auditions as they kick you up the ladder.” But MacFarlane evidently recognized the spirit of John Bennett, Wahlberg’s character, in Burkholder.
The prequel picks up in 1993, more than a decade before the films. Teenage Ted is just as foul-mouthed and funny as the older version as he and John navigate high school together.
“It has so much of the same humor as the movies. It has all the same people, the same team who did the movies, and it’s obviously a talented team of writers and producers. It’s hilarious and raunchy,” Burkholder says.
Burkholder says he didn’t try to do an impression of Wahlberg for the show. Instead, he kept in mind that some formative events in John’s life haven’t happened yet. “In large part, we started from scratch, even though there are two movies’ worth of information for me to draw on for the series,” Burkholder says. “That gave me a runway, a jumping off point, into a wealth of information about the character.”
Ted premieres on Peacock on January 11.
The Most-Anticipated New Streaming Shows In 2024
Here are 14 other notable new shows coming to streaming platforms in 2024.
The highly anticipated spinoff from the Robert Pattinson film The Batman won’t appear until later this year. The streaming service pushed back the premiere to sometime in 2024—the exact date hasn’t been set, but it’s expected in the fall. The vehicle starring a nearly unrecognizable Colin Farrell is one of three planned TV spinoffs of this Batman world.
Anything with Golden Globe and Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh is worth watching. In this comedy bowing January 4, Yeoh plays a widow navigating a new world when her husband is murdered due to his work with the Taipei triad and her son tries to take over while battling his clueless brother.
True crime documentaries have been successes for Hulu, so here’s another one: Daughters, part of the third group of ABC News docs to hit the service, follows a Mormon fundamentalist cult that perpetrated horrible crimes, including murder, in service to leader Ervil LeBaron. The first of five episodes bows January 4.
The Marvel series started off strong but seem to have hit a lull of late, with the second season of Loki the only recent one to receive decent critical and viewer response on Disney+. That should change with Echo (bowing January 9), nominally a spinoff from Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye but incorporating several characters from the comic book universe. It follows Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) as she evades Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio), following the events in the Hawkeye finale.
While this show has aired before, each new season is so different from the last, with an entirely new cast and plot, that it’s essentially an original program. The fourth edition of Detective, which will also air on HBO when it bows on January 14, stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as warring detectives tasked with solving the disappearance of eight researchers in remote Ennis, Alaska.
The team behind Narcos returns with a new drama about Griselda Blanco, a real-life Colombian mom of three who turned to a life of crime (and later rose to infamy) who ran a vicious cartel. In a casting coup, Sofía Vergara plays the titular character, trading her Modern Family comedy for drama. The show bows January 25.
This prequel to the 2000 thriller with Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley explores the early days of their relationship. James McArdle, Emun Elliott and Tamsin Greig star in Paramount+’s tale that examines the 1990s crime culture in Britain. It bows on January 25.
Sarayu Blue (one of the best character actors in the business, getting a well-deserved co-leading role), Nicole Kidman and Ji-Young Yoo as Americans living in Hong Kong in 2014 whose lives entwine following a tragedy. It’s based on the bestselling novel The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee and takes a deep dive into what privilege means. It bows January 26.
It’s risky for sure to remake the 2005 movie in which the co-stars (Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt) infamously had so much chemistry, it broke up one marriage and sparked another. But Amazon evidently decided it was worth the risk. In this comedic spy adventure, the beautifully paired Donald Glover and Maya Erskine play a married couple who don’t know the other is an assassin until they turn their guns on each other. It premieres February 2.
In this historical drama, the trauma and horror of World War II help birth the fashion world amid the Nazis’ occupation of Paris. Ben Mendelsohn plays upstart Christian Dior, and Juliette Binoche stars as Coco Chanel, who is desperately fighting to keep her spot on top. Todd A. Kessler’s drama bows February 14.
Following the success of the David Beckham docuseries on Netflix, is it any wonder Lionel Messi is getting similar treatment on a rival streamer? Messi had quite a year, following up Argentina’s 2022 World Cup victory with a much-ballyhooed transfer to Major League Soccer, where he proved age is just a number (or, maybe, American soccer isn’t as good as abroad). The series following Messi’s five World Cups bows February 21.
The original animated series became a smash for Nickelodeon nearly two decades ago—and long before a certain other Avatar became the top-grossing movie of all time; they’re not related. Now, a live-action revival hits Netflix just as the first generation of Airbender viewers are having kids themselves and feeling nostalgic for the program about people with the ability to manipulate one of the four elements telekinetically. Airbender bows February 22.
This is also not technically a new series—but it is switching platforms, so it is new to Netflix. Formerly streaming on Peacock, Girls5eva follows an aging girl group whose hilarious quest to stay relevant in middle age often backfires but provides plenty of laughs. The concept is hit or miss, but the cast is first-rate with Sara Bareilles, Busy Philipps, Paula Pell and the transcendent Renée Elise Goldsberry. The show returns March 14.
Did someone say “conspiracy theory?” In an era when many too often look for the complicated answer, this true crime drama based on the bestselling book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer follows the hunt for John Wilkes Booth in the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. It premieres March 15.