If you’re still not ready to leave the house, TV has you covered.
Maybe this will be the summer when we’re all too busy re-establishing human contact to bother with television. But if the pandemic — or just life in general — still has you favoring food delivery and maximum social distancing, there will be more than enough bingeable content to keep you happy at home in front of the screen of your choice.
The summer schedule is so full that buzzy series like Apple TV+’s (and Lorne Michaels’s) “Schmigadoon!” and HBO’s (and Mike White’s) “The White Lotus” didn’t squeeze onto this chronological list of shows that pique my interest. Among the shows that did: Sandra Oh’s follow-up to “Killing Eve,” a new series teaming Steve Martin and Martin Short, and the first American appearance of a classic of Nordic noir.
Dates subject to change.
‘Loki’
Marvel’s determined exploitation of its secondary characters on Disney+ is, if nothing else, providing gainful employment for talented actors: Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany in “WandaVision,” Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” and now Tom Hiddleston, taking further time away from Shakespeare to reprise his role as the Asgardian trickster Loki. (Disney+, June 9)
‘Betty’
Crystal Moselle’s spiky, dreamy, rambling, sometimes comically dainty coming-of-age story about skateboarding teenage girls, much of it shot run-and-gun-style on New York’s streets, returns for a second season. (HBO, June 11)
‘Flack’
Temporarily adrift after the downsizing of Pop TV, this tenderly acidic satire of the public-relations business has resurfaced at Amazon, and its second season will finally be seen in America. Anna Paquin returns as Robyn, the American expat barely holding herself together while expertly managing the crises of hapless British celebrities; the terrific cast also includes Genevieve Angelson, the wonderfully deadpan Lydia Wilson and a perfectly cast Sophie Okonedo. (Amazon Prime Video, June 11)
‘Timewasters’
Four friends and bandmates in a South London housing project stumble upon a time machine (but don’t know how the controls work) in this highly casual British comedy. Their first voyage reveals that 1926 has at least one advantage over the early 21st century: Black jazz quartets are actually in demand. (IMDb TV, June 11)
‘The Turncoat’
An absurdity-of-war story in an unusual (for American audiences) setting: an isolated Nazi outpost in a Polish swamp, where a handful of German soldiers are outnumbered by the local partisans and desperately counting down to the end of the war. Fans of “Better Call Saul” will recognize Rainer Bock, who played the sad engineer Werner Ziegler in that show’s fourth season, in the familiar role of the sadistic, half-crazed officer. (MHz Choice, June 15)
‘Black Summer’
With its relentless, almost abstract violence and fragmented, elliptical storytelling, this bleak zombie drama offers a postmodern post-apocalypse. It didn’t really need a second season, but here it is, with more sprinting, remorseless undead and unapologetic human slaughter. (Netflix, June 17)
‘Evil’
The producers Michelle and Robert King are the creators of two of the summer’s most anticipated returning shows, with the fifth season of “The Good Fight” (Paramount+, June 24) and the second season of this authentically scary, weirdly funny drama about a team of occult investigators working, more or less, for the Roman Catholic Church. (Paramount+, June 20)
‘Rick and Morty’
Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland continue to download the contents of their pop-culture-saturated minds, and they’re doing it more quickly; Season 5 of their animated, interdimensional carnival of cartoonishly violent space adventure and mordant family dysfunction arrives just 13 months after the end of the previous season, the show’s shortest turnaround ever. (Adult Swim, June 20)
‘David Makes Man’
Tarell Alvin McCraney’s dreamlike series about the life of a Southern Black teenager jumps ahead in time for its second season: David is now a businessman played by Kwame Patterson, though the first season’s star, Akili McDowell, will still appear as the younger David. (OWN, June 22)
‘Bosch’
The most satisfyingly old-school cop show of the last decade carries its 1970s Quinn Martin-style charms into its seventh and final season, drawn from the Michael Connelly novel “The Burning Room.” Although, is it really the final season when a spinoff series featuring several of the main cast members, including Titus Welliver as the detective Harry Bosch and Madison Lintz as Bosch’s daughter, has already been announced? (Amazon Prime Video, June 25)
‘Central Park’
This animated musical-fantasy and Fox’s “The Great North,” both descendants of the peerless “Bob’s Burgers,” may just prove something about lightning not striking twice. But if a bright and tuneful triangulation among Neil Simon, Lin-Manuel Miranda and “Eloise” does the trick for you — or if you believe, quite sensibly, that no opportunity to hear Leslie Odom Jr. sing should be missed — then definitely catch up with “Central Park” in preparation for its second-season premiere. (Apple TV+, June 25)
‘The Mysterious Benedict Society’
The premise of Trenton Lee Stewart’s children’s novel “The Mysterious Benedict Society” — that subliminal messages sent through mass media are putting the whole world into an end-of-days funk, as part of an evil plot for world domination — is so timely that it’s surprising to learn the book was published in 2007. Tony Hale plays Mr. Benedict, who recruits four gifted (and truth-loving) children to foil the plot, and the generally hilarious Kristen Schaal plays his assistant, No. 2. (Disney+, June 25)
‘Monsters at Work’
John Goodman and Billy Crystal return to the “Monsters” franchise in this animated series, Pixar’s first full-fledged television show in 20 years (following “Buzz Lightyear of Star Command”). Sully and Mike are now responsible for Monsters Inc.’s transition from the fossil fuel of children’s screams to the cleaner energy source of children’s laughter. (Disney+, July 2)
‘Leverage: Redemption’
“Leverage,” a lightweight comic gloss on “Mission: Impossible,” might not be the show you would expect to see revived after nearly a decade, but maybe its steal-from-the-rich ethos plays into current sensibilities. Much of the original cast returns, minus the show’s star, Timothy Hutton, whose place on the call sheet is taken by Noah Wyle. (IMDb TV, July 9)
‘Unforgotten’
In the fourth season on “Masterpiece” of this ne plus ultra of cold-case mystery series, the unfailingly sensitive London detectives Sunny and Cassie (Sanjeev Bhaskar and Nicola Walker, both outstanding) link a person who went missing in 1990 to a group of police officers who were trainees at the time. (PBS, July 11)
‘McCartney 3, 2, 1’
The contentious, anxious, furiously righteous culture we’re living in doesn’t offer a lot in the way of pure pleasure. (That’s not to say it needs to, just to observe that it doesn’t.) A reliable exception are interviews with the ever insouciant and intelligent Paul McCartney, and this series will offer six episodes of the former Beatle in conversation about music with the producer Rick Rubin. (Hulu, July 16)
‘Power Book III: Raising Kanan’
The rapidly expanding “Power”-verse adds its third series, a prequel in which Mekai Curtis plays the teenage Kanan Stark, who will grow up to become the drug dealer and high-volume killer played by 50 Cent in “Power.” Book III is set in the early 1990s in Jamaica, Queens, where the honor student Kanan gets his real education from a couple of hard women, his cousin (Hailey Kilgore) and his mother (Patina Miller). (Starz, July 18)
‘Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away’
The 84-year-old blues guitar legend Buddy Guy narrates his own life story, sometimes in song, in performances newly recorded for this “American Masters” documentary. (PBS, July 27)
‘Burden of Truth’
Kristin Kreuk wraps up her quietly powerful, completely under-the-radar performance as a one-time corporate lawyer fighting for the underdog in small-town Ontario, as this worthwhile Canadian series reaches its fourth and final season. (CW, July 30)
‘Mr. Corman’
How much whimsy do you like with your Southern California existential dread? Joseph Gordon-Levitt tests the mix in this slice-of-life dramedy about an anxiety-ridden fifth grade teacher; he’s the creator, director and star. Extra credit for the casting of Debra Winger as the mother alternately perturbed and shamed by her son’s anxiousness. (Apple TV+, Aug. 6)
‘Forbrydelsen’
The dark Danish series that kindled the Nordic-noir boom, winning multiple International Emmy and BAFTA awards for best series and being remade in America as “The Killing,” has apparently never been available on TV or for streaming in the United States. The streaming service Topic will finally remedy that situation, 14 years after the show’s premiere, offering its three seasons in successive weeks. Seeing Sofie Grabol’s performance as the anguished detective Sarah Lund, not to mention seeing Lund’s iconic Faroe Islands sweater, will no longer require skulduggery or an all-regions DVD player. (Topic, Aug. 12)
‘Modern Love’
Get out your handkerchiefs: Summer brings a second season of the anthology series based on the popular New York Times feature of the same name, nearly two years after the premiere of Season 1. (What could be more appropriate than the pandemic’s having delayed a show about the vicissitudes of contemporary coupling?) Interesting names in the new season’s multitudinous cast include Gbenga Akinnagbe, Minnie Driver, Tobias Menzies, Sophie Okonedo and Anna Paquin. (Amazon Prime Video, Aug. 13)
‘Heels’
A folksy family drama incongruously set in the world of professional wrestling. Alexander Ludwig (“Vikings”) plays the star of a small family-run circuit, and Stephen Amell (“Arrow”) plays the golden boy’s disgruntled, more responsible brother, who writes the scripts in which he casts himself as the hateful “heel.” (Starz, Aug. 15)
‘Nine Perfect Strangers’
The latest Nicole Kidman-David E. Kelley-Liane Moriarty team-up (following “Big Little Lies,” also based on a Moriarty novel) is set at an Australian wellness resort. Kidman plays the woman in charge; her castmates in the presumably mysterious and melodramatic goings-on include Melissa McCarthy, Michael Shannon and the Australian star Asher Keddie. (Hulu, Aug. 18)
‘The Chair’
The provenance of this low-key romantic-academic comedy set at an Ivy-ish university is surprising: The “Game of Thrones” duo David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are executive producers, and Benioff’s wife, the actress Amanda Peet, is the showrunner and a writer, her first time in either role. But the name that matters is that of Sandra Oh, who stars as the newly installed chairwoman of the English department, saddled with a faculty that includes querulous veterans (Holland Taylor, Bob Balaban) and a celebrated, self-destructive writer (Jay Duplass). (Netflix, Aug. 27)
‘Only Murders in the Building’
Steve Martin and Martin Short star in a TV series, and if that doesn’t make you want to check it out, well, OK, maybe it just means you’re under the age of 60. The show tries to hedge that particular bet with its third headliner, the 28-year-old Selena Gomez. The three play Upper West Side co-op neighbors and true-crime aficionados who get caught up in a real murder mystery. (Hulu, Aug. 31)
Other notable shows premiering or returning this summer: “Lupin” (Netflix, June 11); “Love, Victor” (Hulu, June 11); “Blindspotting” (Starz, June 13); “Kevin Can ____ Himself” (AMC+, June 13); “Tuca and Bertie” (Adult Swim, June 13); “Dave” (FX, June 16); “Elite” (Netflix, June 18); “Physical” (Apple TV+, June 18); “Inside No. 9” (BritBox, June 22); “The Beast Must Die” (AMC+, July 5); “Gossip Girl” (HBO Max, July 8); “grown-ish” (Freeform, July 8); “Animal Kingdom” (TNT, July 11); “The White Lotus” (HBO, July 11); “Miracle Workers: Oregon Trail” (TBS, July 13); “Schmigadoon!” (Apple TV+, July 16); “Ted Lasso” (Apple TV+, July 23); “DC’s Stargirl” (CW, Aug. 10); “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” (NBC, Aug. 12); “The Walking Dead” (AMC, Aug. 22)
"TV" - Google News
June 03, 2021 at 04:00PM
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Summer TV 2021: 26 Shows to Watch - The New York Times
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