New Year’s Day was once thought to be a risky time to launch a new drama. Despite the calendar moving on, viewers were thought to be stuck in the old year, inching their way back to normality. Give them a week or two and they would be ready for the new stuff, but Ne’erday itself? Forget it.

Viewing on demand, and one recent drama in particular, has turned this notion on its head. The Tourist was launched on an unsuspecting viewing public on January 1, 2022. After a so-so start, word spread that this was something worth seeking out on iPlayer. Sure enough, by the end of the year it had become the most watched drama of 2022. Proof that in the on demand age, if you build it right, the audiences will come (eventually).

The second series of The Tourist (BB1, New Year’s Day, 9pm) finds our man with no memory, Elliot Stanley (played by Jamie Dornan), continuing his quest to find out who he is. We are 14 months on from the car crash in the Australian outback that opened the tale. Though Elliot (or as he was known for most of the time, The Man) was able to piece together some clues with the help of probationary police officer Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald), the jury was still out on his character. Was he a good man to whom bad things had happened, or was he the cause of the violence and mayhem that followed him around?

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Much of the success of the first series was down to the chemistry between Elliot, the strangely capable action man and tourist from Northern Ireland, and small-town Aussie cop Helen, who seemed like a typically shy, retiring country mouse but turned out to be anything but.

The other main star in the first series was the location. Writers Harry and Jack Williams (The Missing) used the wide open spaces and big skies to evoke a sense that anything could happen to a traveller in this strange, dangerous land. This time round the action opens in rural Ireland where everything, from the local weather to the local plods, is utterly different but still weird.

Joining Dornan and Macdonald is a terrific cast that includes Conor MacNeill, one of the break-out stars of City drama Industry, as detective Ruairi Slater.

You don’t need to have seen the first series but it’s no hardship to begin at the beginning with a catch-up on iPlayer. What else do you have in the diary for January?

Another of the biggest hits of last year makes its return this week, this one under a cloak of secrecy. There are so many spoiler warnings and embargoes surrounding The Traitors (BBC1, Wednesday-Friday, 9pm), that it is difficult to say anything at all for fear of spoiling the fun.

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A trailer did emerge over Christmas featuring the same “castle in the Scottish Highlands” (Ardross Castle), the same host, Claudia Winkleman, and close-ups of various shocked contestants reacting to who knows what treachery playing out before them in the murder mystery game.

Something else that has changed in the multi-channel age is Hogmanay viewing. Well, sort of. BBC One Scotland still goes its own way in the hours up to the bells. This year its night begins with Get the Tunes On (BBC One Scotland, 10pm), a mix of music and comedy hosted by singer and broadcaster Michelle McManus.

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At 11pm, sketch show Queen of the New Year, written by and starring Greg Hemphill and Robert Florence, runs the rule over the events and people that made the news this year, from true crime podcasts to King Charles. The main business of the evening, Hogmanay 2023, starts at 11.30pm, with Edith Bowman back as host and KT Tunstall, Skerryvore, and the Kinnaris Quintet among the acts performing. All the usual features of Hogmanay will be present and correct, including the countdown, the firing of the gun from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle, and the firework display with soundtrack from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Other Hogmanay viewing schedules are of course available, including STV’s Bringing in the Bells, from 11.15, with Lorraine Kelly doing the honours. On BBC2 from 11.30pm it is Jools’ Annual Hootenanny. His headline guest this year is none other than Rod Stewart, who may or may not mention his Scottish ancestry a few times. Also on the bill are The Mary Wallopers, Paul Jones, Joss Stone, and PP Arnold.

Channel 4 goes its own sweet way as usual, starting with The Last Leg of the Year, where guests include Richard Osman, Judi Love, Seann Walsh and Suzi Ruffell at 9pm. This is followed by Gogglebox 2023, reviewing the best of the year’s telly, at 11pm. Channel 5 opts for countdown and clip show New Year Sing Along: Britain’s Favourite Karaoke Hits at 10pm through to 1am. The neighbours will love that.