32 TV Shows We Can’t Wait to Watch This Summer

If the streaming bubble has burst, you wouldn’t know it by firing up the apps this summer. The next couple months are filled with tons of high-profile returning shows and plenty of intriguing new titles, too. The second season of not one but two big-budget fantasy epics will grace our screens along with a new Star Wars series that’ll hopefully be closer to Andor than Ahsoka. Carmy’s cooking up more drama in Chicago, Emily’s still in Paris, and wouldn’t you know it, but there’s been another dang murder in that building. We’ll also get a surreal tour of New York from Julio Torres, an NBA scandal for the ages, swords and sandals in the Colosseum, and at least three Apple TV+ crime dramas. Hit the beach or hit play on any number of new shows — you can’t go wrong either way. —James Grebey

Benedict Cumberbatch’s main scene partner in this psychological thriller miniseries is a seven-foot-tall blue puppet named Eric — a monster taken from the drawings of nine-year-old Edgar, who goes missing one morning. As Edgar’s father Vincent, Cumberbatch plays a master puppeteer whose grief-induced spiral into substance abuse and delusion leads him to a new mission: get Eric on TV and thus somehow get his son back. Eric was created and written by Abi Morgan, known for scripting films like The Iron Lady and Shame and series like The Hour. —Ben Rosenstock

This British sitcom about an all-Muslim, all-female punk band was one of the warmest, most fun series of 2021, subverting stereotypes while dropping banger after banger. Creator-writer-director Nida Manzoor has had a busy couple of years with the release of her feature debut, the martial-arts comedy Polite Society, so watching Lady Parts jam again in this much-anticipated season two feels especially sweet. —B.R.

Who knew watching couples-therapy sessions stitched together could be so addictive? Well, director Josh Kriegman did. The series isn’t just surprisingly bingeable; it’s Showtime’s best show airing right now, full stop. The key is Dr. Orna Guralnik, whose gentle probing and perceptive insights help couple after couple better understand the dynamics at play in their relationship. I’d watch a hundred episodes of this show every year, but I’ll settle for this new set of nine — featuring the show’s first throuple — for now. —B.R.

With the whimsy of Shaun the Sheep and the winking attitude of Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, Apple TV+’s very winning adaptation of Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad books hits all the source material’s messaging about acceptance and friendship and loyalty but never feels condescending or immature. Now, is its sole failure the decision to keep Frog and Toad as “true friends” rather than the lovers they so clearly and subtextually are? Absolutely! But it still maintains the duo’s intimacy, particularly when they share a meal — all that chomping on cookies and slurping on soup is basically ASMR. —Roxana Hadadi

The Great American Baking Show season two (Roku Channel, May 24)
Jurassic World: Chaos Theory (Netflix, May 24)
Trying season four (Apple TV+, May 24)
Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult (Netflix, May 28)
The Outlaws season three (Prime Video, May 31)

It’s been a decade since Donald Sterling, the billionaire who once owned the Los Angeles Clippers, was secretly recorded uttering some wildly racist statements that went viral. (That Sterling sounds exactly like Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force didn’t help.) The resulting scandal was one of the wilder things to happen in sports, as documented in a 30 for 30 episode that serves as the basis of FX’s new drama. Ed O’Neill plays Sterling and Laurence Fishburne plays Doc Rivers, the coach who was already struggling to turn this notoriously bad basketball team around before Sterling introduced his own drama. —James Grebey

Season two of Andor got delayed, but at least we have Leslye Headland’s new entry in the Star Wars canon, starring Amandla Stenberg as a former Padawan learner who went rogue. The Acolyte is set during the High Republic era 100 years prior to The Phantom Menace, making it the earliest screen depiction of this universe — the longest time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Headland also purposely cast Carrie-Anne Moss to give us “Trinity with a lightsaber,” so that’s reason enough to tune in. —B.R.

Candice Carty-Williams’s best-selling novel from a few years back is getting the limited-series-adaptation treatment, courtesy of Channel 4 (it’s streaming on Hulu here in the States). When Queenie Jenkins (Dionne Brown), a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman, gets unexpectedly dumped by her longtime boyfriend who says they need a break, she finds herself in the awful situation of having to, ugh, do the work to rebuild her life and find herself. —J.G.

In the last season of The Boys, fatigue started to set in — with Homelander clearly sticking around, the story is starting to go in circles. Hopefully season four will offer the shot in the arm this show needs, and that certainly seems possible with what’s planned: a custody battle between Billy Butcher and Homelander, a supe-killing virus imported from spinoff Gen V, and an election where the state of the democracy is at stake (sound familiar?). Also look for the return of Simon Pegg as Hughie’s dad, along with some intriguing new characters: Hughie’s mom (Rosemarie DeWitt), along with Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) and Firecracker (Valorie Curry), two new members of the Seven. Jeffrey Dean Morgan will also play a mystery role. —B.R.

Jake Gyllenhaal graces the small screen in a leading role for the first time in Presumed Innocent, an adaptation of an ’80s legal thriller about a prosecutor who becomes the main suspect in a gruesome murder. There was a movie version of this back in the ’90s starring Harrison Ford; here’s hoping Gyllenhaal brings some of his lightly unhinged Ambulance energy to this series to help set it apart. Ruth Negga and Peter Sarsgaard co-star. —J.G.

Welcome back to King’s Landing, where everyone’s favorite incestuous blonds are still fighting a war they can’t win. If showrunner Ryan Condal’s “very bloody feast” comments are anything to go by, the Dance of the Dragons should really be heating up in season two, so make sure your black or green capes are pinned. —B.R.

What does Orphan Black look like without Tatiana Maslany? Anna Fishko’s sequel series takes place 37 years after the original’s end and stars Krysten Ritter as an amnesiac named Lucy — along with Keeley Hawes as a grown-up scientist version of Kira Manning, Sarah’s daughter. It’s safe to say clones will be involved somehow, but it remains to be seen whether this spinoff can recapture the particular magic of watching Maslany play more than five roles at the same time. —B.R.

Remember when streaming was supposed to make everything easier? Babylon Berlin, a German neo-noir about mystery, sex, and intrigue in the last days of the Weimar Republic, became an international success when Netflix streamed the first three seasons in America. Then they lost the rights and the show went AWOL, including the fourth season, which premiered in Germany two years ago. Now, finally, it’s available to (legally) stream here, on MHz Choice — a real streaming service that we did not make up. —J.G.

Under the Tuscan Sun meets Cape Fear in Land of Women: Gala (Eva Longoria) learns that her husband’s been making financial deals with the wrong people, and she flees New York City with her mother and daughter after he disappears. The trio tries to settle in the lovely little Spanish wine town her mother lived in a half-century ago, but gossip travels fast, which is not ideal when you’re trying to hide from criminals. —J.G.

Season two took The Bear from a good show to a great one, and season three should sustain a lot of discourse this summer, even with Hulu’s unfortunate binge-drop schedule. Will the new restaurant succeed? Will Carmy manage to balance his mental health and his single-minded passion for cooking? Which pop star will Richie’s daughter introduce him to next: Chappell Roan or Sabrina Carpenter? And, most importantly: Will Sydney and Marcus get any closer to kissing? (Don’t you dare ask about her and Carmy.) —B.R.

In real life, 17-year-old Lady Jane Grey sat on the English throne for nine days until she was deposed and the new queen, known as “Bloody Mary,” had the teenager beheaded. What the Prime Video series My Lady Jane presupposes is … what if she didn’t? Based on a series of YA novels, this show spares Lady Jane, gives her steamy romance, and sets her off on an adventure to save herself and a bunch of shape-shifters(?!?) from the villains who want to destroy them. —J.G.

Julio Torres, the mind behind Los Espookys and Problemista, brings his surrealist comedy to New York City once more when he plays a man searching for a lost gold earring shaped like an oyster. Along the way, he’ll encounter colorful characters played by Julia Fox, Ziwe, Steve Buscemi, and Kim Petras. He also has a robot companion, naturally. —J.G.

Mayor of Kingstown season three (Paramount+, June 2)
The Real Housewives of Dubai season two (Bravo, June 2)
Below Deck Mediterranean season nine (Bravo, June 3)
Sweet Tooth season three (Netflix, June 6)
Perfect Match season two (Netflix, June 7)
Power Book II: Ghost season four part one (Starz, June 7)
Becoming Karl Lagerfeld (Hulu, June 7)
The Lazarus Project season two (TNT, June 9)
Love Island season six (Peacock, June 11)
Alone season 11 (History, June 13)
Grantchester season nine (PBS, June 16)
Hotel Cocaine (MGM+, June 16)
Alone: Australia season two (History, June 20)
Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini (Hulu, June 20)
Shoresy season three (Hulu, June 21)
That ’90s Show season two (Netflix, June 27)
Zombies: The Re-Animated Series (Disney+, June 29)

Apple TV+ has carved out a niche for itself with its sci-fi series, and Katie Robbins’s new “darkly comedic” half-hour drama for A24 seems to fit the mold. Rashida Jones, who serves as executive producer, stars as a woman living in Kyoto who receives a robot made by her husband’s company after he and her son disappear in a suspicious plane crash — and realizes the bot may be her only way to learn the truth about what happened. —B.R.

I’m not sure anyone had the 2016 animated film Sausage Party on their “TV spinoff” bingo card, but this eight-episode sequel series does feature the return of five voices from the original: anthropomorphic sausages Frank (Seth Rogen) and Barry (Michael Cera), hot-dog bun Brenda Bunson (Kristen Wiig) and their friends Kareem Abdul Lavash (David Krumholtz) and Sammy Bagel Jr. (Edward Norton). How do you up the ante after ending your first movie with various foods participating in a giant, graphically detailed orgy? By building a food-based society where you can do that all the time, apparently. —B.R.

The tabletop card game Exploding Kittens began as a Kickstarter project in 2015, designed by The Oatmeal cartoonist Matthew Inman. Nine years later, it’s … an animated Netflix show? With Mike Judge and Greg Daniels on as executive producers? And Tom Ellis, famous for playing Lucifer on Lucifer, voicing God trapped in a cat’s body? Sure! —B.R.

Gladiator II gets some company in the Colosseum as Peacock’s Those About to Die enters the arena. Anthony Hopkins stars as Emperor Vespasian in this swords-and-sandals epic, which promises to dig into the ugly business side of gladiatorial games. Will we give Those About to Die a thumbs-up? Well, because a thumbs-up back then signaled that a defeated gladiator was to be killed rather than spared, maybe that’s the wrong metric. —J.G.

Natalie Portman stars in this Apple TV+ drama about a 1960s housewife who gets in on the true-crime craze a few decades early. Leaving her husband to move to Baltimore and become an investigative reporter for The Sun, she finds herself fascinated by the unrelated murders of Black bartender (Moses Ingram) in her 30s and an 11-year-old Jewish girl. (Both crimes are inspired by real events.) The show is based on Laura Lippman’s 2019 book — no relation to the 1940s Raymond Chandler noir. —J.G.

It’s a bold move to take on the task of adapting Giovanni Boccaccio’s classic 14th-century short-story collection, centered on a group of nobles telling stories to pass the time while sheltering from the Black Death outside Florence. But in showrunner Kathleen Jordan’s soapy dark-comedy take, the focus is on those sheltering nobles, not the stories they’re telling. This is, first and foremost, a satire about class struggle during a pandemic — another uncomfortably familiar subject for contemporary audiences. —B.R.

Down in the Valley (Starz, July 5)
The Bachelorette season 21 (ABC, July 8)
Claim to Fame season three (ABC, July 10)
Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer (Hulu, July 11)
Unprisoned season two (Hulu, July 17)
Cobra Kai season six part one (Netflix, July 18)
Betty La Fea, the Story Continues (Prime Video, 7/19)
Snowpiercer season four (AMC+, July 21)
61st Street season two (The CW, July 22)
Futurama season 12 (Hulu, July 29)
Women in Blue (Apple TV+, July 31)

With apologies to Michael Keaton, Christian Bale, and Robert Pattinson, the definitive version of Batman was the ’90s cartoon Batman: The Animated Series. Luckily for us, that show’s co-creator Bruce Timm wants another crack at the Dark Knight. Batman: Caped Crusader — which will air on Prime Video, which saved the show when Max passed on it in 2022 — is a true Batman period piece, taking place in the 1940s when the superhero made his comic-book debut. The costumes have retro designs and the aesthetic is old-timey, but Caped Crusader will innovate the 80-year-old IP in several ways, too, including a reimagined Harley Quinn, now an Asian woman with a much more intimidating vibe and no relationship with the Joker. —J.G.

Congrats to The Umbrella Academy for getting four seasons and the chance to end its story on its own terms — there are a lot of Netflix shows based on graphic novels that wish they’d had the chance. The final season brings back Viktor (Elliot Page), Luther (Tom Hopper), and the rest of the superpowered Hargreeves family for six more episodes, and given that season three ended with an apocalypse averted and reality rebooted, truly anything could happen next. —J.G.

Vince Vaughn starring in another mystery series? Great news for all the True Detective season-two fans out there. In Bad Monkey, a comedy created by Bill Lawrence of Scrubs fame, Vaughn plays a former detective now working as a restaurant inspector who finds himself once again investigating crimes when a tourist finds a severed human arm while fishing. Michelle Monaghan, Jodie Turner-Smith, Meredith Hagner, and Rob Delaney co-star. —J.G.

Hate-watchers rejoice: She’s back. Season three of Emily in Paris (which, remember, is meant to be pronounced so that it rhymes) ended with Camille (Camille Razat) leaving Gabriel (Lucas Bravo) at the altar, Alife (Lucien Laviscount) dumping Emily (Lily Collins), and Camille’s surprise pregnancy reveal. Season four will deal with the aftermath of that, plus Emily’s gonna visit Rome, which will give Italians a chance to be as mad about this wonderful mess of a show as the French are. —J.G.

Hulu’s delightful mystery-comedy is never one to skimp on high-profile guest stars, and season four is particularly stacked: Meryl Streep will return, joined by newcomers Molly Shannon, Eva Longoria, Eugene Levy, Kumail Nanjiani, and Zach Galifianakis. And the show will spend at least some time in Los Angeles at the beginning of this season, though our beloved Arconia will remain the main setting of the show. It is the only building the murders happen in, after all. —B.R.

The track record for most Terminator media is bleak, but perhaps a Netflix anime can be the first good entry in the franchise since T2: Judgement Day. Terminator: Zero follows a soldier who is sent back to 1997 from the hellish “future” of 2022 to protect a scientist working on an AI that could potentially stop Skynet. It’s a promising sign that the Japanese studio Production IG, which made Ghost in the Shell, is behind the series, as they’ve some experience with cyborg action. Is that enough to make up for how awful Terminator Genisys was? We’ll find out when the full season drops on August 29. —J.G.

“Good, not great,” is probably not what Amazon wanted to hear about the first season of their billion-dollar Lord of the Rings series. Perhaps the second season, which kicks off with Sauron having revealed himself and created Mount Doom, will live up to expectations and take the “mid” out of “Middle-earth.” Morfydd Clark returns as Galadriel, who seems like she’ll have plenty of chances to kick ass in what looks to be a number of blockbuster action set pieces. —J.G.

Industry, I’ve missed you — so much, in fact, that a couple songs from Nathan Micay’s excellent synth-heavy score have entered my Spotify most played. The finance babble might not sound appealing from the outside, but trust me, this is a show you’ll want to catch up on. Where we left off, poor Harper got fired for lying about her college diploma shortly after getting off scot-free for the whole insider-trading thing. Expect season three to contend with the fallout from that, as well as newcomers Kit Harington as the CEO of a green-tech energy company Lumi and Barry’s Sarah Goldberg as a portfolio manager at FutureDawn, an ethical investment fund. —B.R.

Influenced (Prime Video, 8/1)
Unstable season two (Netflix, 8/1)
Bel Air season three (Peacock, August 15)

The year of Anna Sawai continues as the Shōgun star returns for season two of the acclaimed Apple TV+ drama Pachinko, based on the book by Min Jin Lee. The first season drew widespread praise for the thoughtful intimacy of its generation-spanning story of family, following Kim Sunja (played at three different ages by Youn Yuh-jung, Kim Min-ha, and Yuna) as she navigates Japanese society as a Korean immigrant. Season two promises to continue her story, filling in the gaps from the book along the way. —J.G.

Kaos (Netflix)