36 TV Shows We Can’t Wait to See This Summer

It’s almost summertime. The sun will be shining, school will be out, blockbusters will take over movie theaters … and we will be inside watching a bounty of new TV shows. The season typically isn’t the most prestigious time for TV, but there’s plenty of good stuff coming to the small screen — and it’s not all trashy fun. There’s plenty of quality offerings, including the return of two major awards sensations, The Bear and Squid Game.

Soon, you’ll be able to binge away the hottest months watching a number of crime thrillers featuring detectives with a dark past and personal issues. Marvel may be rethinking its TV strategy, but there are still two MCU shows on the docket. Jason Momoa’s leading an epic historical war drama, Owen Wilson’s playing a has-been pro golfer, and Jenna Ortega is making her highly anticipated return to Nevermore Academy. Dating reality shows will provide the mess, The Gilded Age some classiness, and a rebooted Hank Hill will deliver propane and propane accessories. Let’s get to watching. —James Grebey

A quick note about the listed platforms — at some point this summer, the streaming service known as Max will change to its new-old name, HBO Max. We trust you’ll be able to find these shows by whichever name is in use.

May

Big Mouth season eight

May 23
Netflix

Big Mouth’s gaping comes to a close with the Netflix flagship animated comedy’s eighth and final season. Nick, Andrew, Missy & Co. have been dealing with puberty for close to eight years, which is a real tough beat, but the upcoming season promises that they will “step into the harrowing unknown of the future, made less afraid of what’s to come because they have each other.” That’s the level of sincerity we’ve come to expect from a cartoon about monsters and masturbation — earnestly! Cynthia Erivo, Quinta Brunson, and Holly Hunter are set to guest-star. —J.G.

—

Adults

May 28
FX

FX successfully moved into the workplace-comedy space last year with English Teacher, so it makes sense to put its own stamp on another familiar genre: the NYC hangout sitcom, an ever-reliable staple. This latest entry revolves around five 20-somethings: Samir (Malik Elassal), Billie (Lucy Freyer), Paul Baker (Jack Innanen), Issa (Amita Rao), and Anton (Owen Thiele), all of whom are crashing at Samir’s childhood home in Queens as they try to figure out their lives. —Ben Rosenstock

—

And Just Like That … season three

May 29
Max

What better way to celebrate the summer than by spending your Thursday nights in a fantasy-world New York City with Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), and Charlotte (Kristin Davis), plus their new friends Seema (Sarita Choudhury) and Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker)? The glorious mess of a Sex and the City sequel is back for another season of Cosmos and comedy concerts, forgoing the Hamptons in favor of a hot summer in the city, where Carrie’s dealing with a rat infestation. Her on-and-off boyfriend Aidan (John Corbett) is also in town, and Rosie O’Donnell will show up at some point. —B.R.

—

The Better Sister

May 29
Prime Video

Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks star as Chloe and Nicky, two sisters (hence the title) who have been estranged for years for reasons that will presumably become clear. When Chloe’s successful lawyer husband (Corey Stoll) is murdered, it forces the siblings to come together, especially once it emerges that the prime suspect is somebody close to home. The Better Sister, which also stars Kim Dickens, continues Biel’s streak of starring in TV crime thrillers. (I will still ride for season one of The Sinner!) —J.G.

—

Dept. Q

May 29
Netflix

Scott Frank, whose last TV show for Netflix was the surprise chess sensation The Queen’s Gambit, tackles a long-running series of Danish Nordic noir crime novels. The adaptation changes the setting from Copenhagen to Edinburgh, but otherwise has the same basic premise. Matthew Goode stars as Carl Morck, a talented detective with a dark past (naturally) and some emotional issues who is charged with establishing a cold-case unit, where he and the officers under his charge will try to solve whatever unusual crimes haven’t been cracked yet. —J.G.

Also coming in May

➼ Couples Therapy season four, part two (May 23, Paramount+ with Showtime)
➼ Pee-wee As Himself (May 23, HBO)
➼ Jerrod Carmichael: Don’t Be Gay (May 24, HBO)
➼ The Librarians: The Next Chapter (May 25, TNT)
➼ Rick and Morty season eight (May 25, Adult Swim)
➼ 51st American Music Awards (May 26, CBS)
➼ Mike Birbiglia: The Good Life (May 26, Netflix)
➼America’s Got Talent season 20 (May 27, NBC)
➼ Destination X (May 27, NBC)
➼ The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy season two (May 27, Prime Video)
➼ F1: The Academy (May 28, Netflix)

June

Love Island USA season seven

June 3
Peacock

The last season of Love Island USA, hosted by Ariana Madix, marked a new peak for the dating reality show, especially thanks to the cast’s tight friendships — including the strong trio of Leah Kateb, Serena Page, and JaNa Craig and the bromance between charming snake wrangler Rob Rausch and Traitors U.K. alum Aaron Evans. Madix is back for season seven, which should offer plenty more memorable memes alongside dramatic villa fights and juicy recouplings. —B.R.

—

Stick

June 4
Apple TV+

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Apple TV+ got an A-list actor to headline a glossy-looking series. Owen Wilson stars as Pryce Cahill, a professional golfer whose career went into the rough 20 years ago after a meltdown. Now working at an Indiana sporting-goods store and struggling, Pryce decides to try to mount a comeback by mentoring a 17-year-old golf prodigy (Peter Dager). Marc Maron and Judy Greer co-star in Apple’s first sports comedy since Ted Lasso. —J.G.

—

The Buccaneers season two

June 18
Apple TV+

This period drama bears less resemblance to its source material — Edith Wharton’s unfinished novel about rich American women looking for British husbands — than to the anachronism-filled and modern-soundtracked worlds of Bridgerton and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. But its first season made for a frothy watch, especially thanks to charming turns from performers like Kristine Froseth, Alisha Boe, Josie Totah, and Christina Hendricks. —B.R.

—

Outrageous

June 18
BritBox

The Mitford sisters understandably aren’t as well known in the United States as they are across the pond. Luckily, BritBox is here to introduce Americans to this, well, outrageous family. The six sisters were well-off aristocratic children in 1930s Great Britain, and all of them achieved fame and/or infamy. One was a novelist, another a proud fascist, another a communist, and another was inexplicably in love with Adolf Hitler, to name a few. The six-episode series documents their wild lives. —J.G.

—

The Waterfront

June 19
Netflix

Kevin Williamson’s best known for creating Scream and Dawson’s Creek, and while his new Netflix series won’t have any masked killers (presumably), it does feature drama and a body of water. Holt McCallany stars as Harlan Buckley, the patriarch of a family that runs a small, blue-collar town on the North Carolina coast. When Buckley suffers a second heart attack, he steps back from the fishery business while his wife (Maria Bello), son (Jake Weary), and daughter (Melissa Benoist) try to protect their family’s empire — and Harlan might need to step back in once new threats emerge. Sort of a fishy Succession, if you squint. —J.G.

—

The Gilded Age season three

June 22
HBO

Carrie Coon returns to HBO Sunday nights after not that long an absence for the third season of the delectable period drama. Having triumphed in last season’s “Opera War” — a high-stakes, high-status battle between old- and new-money families — Coon’s Mrs. Russell is ready to marry off her daughter, Gladys (Taissa Farmiga). Trouble is, Gladys might prefer marrying for love. Kids these days! (“These days” being the 1880s.) Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Denée Benton, Morgan Spector, Audra McDonald, and Louisa Jacobson are also back; now joining them are Merritt Wever as Mrs. Russell’s “estranged” sister, Bill Camp as Mr. Russell’s next business rival J.P. Morgan, Phylicia Rashad as the matriarch of new family the Kirklands, and Andrea Martin as a medium, of course. —J.G.

—

Ironheart

June 24
Disney+

Marvel’s latest streaming series under the Disney+ banner serves as a direct sequel to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which first introduced Dominique Thorne’s supergenius inventor Riri Williams as a foil to Shuri (Letitia Wright). In Riri’s own series, she’ll once again don the Iron Man–esque power suit she designed herself and become Ironheart, this time to protect Chicago from the dark magic of the Hood (Anthony Ramos). —B.R.

—

The Bear season four

June 25
FX

Another June means another season of arguably the most stressful show on TV. Season three had some good moments, especially in the Tina-centric episode directed by Ayo Edebiri, but it was mostly a mess of half-formed ideas and repetitive storytelling that failed to capitalize on the thoughtful character work of the previous season. Let’s hope the follow-up gets back to what the show is good at — ideally with fewer celebrity-chef cameos and more kitchen chaos. —B.R.

—

The Ultimatum: Queer Love season two

June 25
Netflix

Lesbian mess returns to Netflix as The Ultimatum’s appropriately titled spinoff Queer Love gathers another group of couples and puts their relationships to the test. Will these women and nonbinary lovebirds decide to commit to their partners and get hitched, or are they not ready to settle down? JoAnna Garcia Swisher once more serves as the host for the new ten-episode season, but this time, the drama’s moving from San Diego to Miami. —J.G.

—

Smoke

June 27
Apple TV+

The summer’s hottest crime series (pun intended) has got to be Smoke, an adaptation of a true-crime podcast about serial arsonists who burned their way through Southern California and the efforts to catch them. Taron Egerton, no stranger to Apple TV+ after leading 2022’s acclaimed miniseries Black Bird, stars as arson investigator Dave Gudsen. Jurnee Smollett plays his police-detective partner. Official descriptions for the series describe both detectives as “troubled,” so, yeah, they’re detectives in a prestige TV series. —J.G.

—

Squid Game season three

June 27
Netflix

Creator Hwang Dong-hyuk originally wrote one lengthy sequel to close out Squid Game after its record-breaking first season, then split the arc into a second and third season. Now, the final episodes are dropping just six months after the last batch. Will Gi-hun manage to unmask the Front Man and resurrect the crushed rebellion that left his longtime friend dead? Will Jun-ho finally set foot on land and confront the brother who almost killed him? Most importantly, will there be more organ harvesting? —B.R.

—

Nautilus

June 29
AMC

Disney+ sunk expectations when it announced that, actually, it would not be releasing the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea prequel series it had ordered, part of a Zaslavian cost-cutting move. However, the Captain Nemo origin story, which follows him as he builds the titular submarine and sets about a course of righteous piracy, would resurface. It aired in the U.K. last fall, and now AMC will air the adventure series in the U.S. Given Nautilus’s release woes, it’s probably for the best that they didn’t go with my idea and call it 1 League Under the Sea, setting up 19,999 possible sequels. —J.G.

Also coming in June

➼ Below Deck season 12 (June 2, Bravo)
➼ The Quiz With Balls (June 2, Fox)
➼ Next Gen NYC (June 3, Bravo)
➼ Power Moves With Shaquille O’Neal (June 4, Netflix)
➼ Ginny & Georgia season three (June 5, Netflix)
➼ Tires season two (June 5, Netflix)
➼ BMF season four (June 6, Starz)
➼ Resident Alien season four (June 6, USA and Syfy)
➼ The Survivors (June 6, Netflix)
➼ 78th Annual Tony Awards (June 8, CBS)
➼ BET Awards 2025 (June 9, BET)
➼ The 1% Club (June 10, Fox)
➼ Trainwreck (June 10, Netflix)
➼ The Real Housewives of Miami season seven (June 11, Bravo)
➼ FUBAR season two (June 12, Netflix)
➼ Kings of Jo’Burg season three (June 13, Netflix)
➼ We Were Liars (June 18, Prime Video)
➼ Countdown (June 25, Prime Video)

July

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia season 17

July 9
FXX

George W. Bush was the president of the United States when It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia aired its first couple of seasons. That’s how long the longest-running live-action comedy has been on the air. But if the Paddy’s Pub gang didn’t run out of new ways to be depraved over the past 16 seasons, chances are good they’ll have more in store in the upcoming 17th season, which will also feature the highly anticipated second part of the show’s crossover with Abbott Elementary. —J.G.

—

Dexter: Resurrection

July 11
Paramount+

It took Dexter almost a decade to come back after he left righteous serial-killing behind to become a lumberjack in the 2013 finale of the original Showtime series. It’s taking him a lot less time to return after being fatally shot. Dexter: Resurrection, the follow-up to 2021’s Dexter: New Blood, reveals that Michael C. Hall’s title character isn’t actually dead and is hot on the trail of his missing son, Harrison. —J.G.

—

Foundation season three

July 11
Apple TV+

Putting Andor’s one-year time jumps to shame, the third season of Apple’s sci-fi series takes place 152 years after the previous season, and the Foundation that Jared Harris’s Hari Seldon established to shepherd humanity through catastrophe has come a long way. Meanwhile, Lee Pace’s Cleonic Dynasty Empire is a little worse off, but things could be worse for both parties — and they get a lot worse when a mind-controlling warlord known as “The Mule” sets his sights on ruling the galaxy. It remains pretty impressive that Apple not only managed to adapt Isaac Asimov’s dense novels into something with a clear narrative, but that it has gotten to a third season. —J.G.

—

Untamed

July 17
Netflix

In what’s either going to be great or terribly timely PR for the embattled National Park Service, Netflix’s Untamed follows Eric Bana as a special agent for the parks who must investigate a brutal death when a body is discovered in Yellowstone National Park. The investigation will, you guessed it, reveal dark secrets from his past. Sam Neill co-stars as Yellowstone’s chief park ranger, while Rosemarie DeWitt, Lily Santiago, and Wilson Bethel round out the cast. Here’s hoping somebody at DOGE has a Netflix subscription and sees how important the National Park Service is. —J.G.

—

Love Island: Beyond the Villa

Peacock

Sure, there’s a new Love Island cast waiting in the wings for season seven, but what if you’re craving more of the breakout cast from last year? Luckily, Peacock gathered many of the contestants for a non-competitive spinoff, including winner Serena Page, along with JaNa Craig, Aaron Evans, Miguel Harichi, Leah Kateb, Kaylor Martin, Connor Newsum, Kenny Rodriguez, Olivia Walker, and Kendall Washington. Beyond the Villa will track the former Islanders around Los Angeles as they navigate their personal and professional lives. —B.R.

—

Washington Black

Hulu

Washington Black, based on an acclaimed 2018 novel of the same name, is a sweeping piece of historical fiction, following the title character, an 11-year-old boy, as he’s forced to flee from a sugarcane plantation in 19th-century Barbados. He ends up under the wing of Medwin Harris, a world traveler with a traumatic past who currently serves as the leader of Nova Scotia’s Black community. Sterling K. Brown plays Medwin, though one assumes Washington Black will have fewer insane pop-song covers than Brown’s other Hulu series, Paradise. The cast also includes Tom Ellis, Charles Dance, and Billy Boyd. —J.G.

Also coming in July

➼ Dan Da Dan, season two (July 3, Netflix)
➼ The Sandman, season two (July 3, Netflix)
➼ Bachelor in Paradise, season 10 (July 7, ABC)
➼ South Park season 27 (July 9, Comedy Central)
➼ Back to the Frontier (July 10, Max)
➼ Celebrity Family Feud season 11 (July 10, ABC)
➼ The Summer I Turned Pretty (July 16, Prime Video)
➼ Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season three (July 17, Paramount+)
➼ Acapulco season four (July 23, Apple TV+)
➼ Match Game (July 23, ABC)
➼ Twisted Metal season two (July 31, Peacock)

August

Chief of War

August 1
Apple TV+

There are no catchy Lin-Manuel Miranda–penned songs in this telling of Polynesian history. Jason Momoa plays Ka’iana, the warrior who fought a bloody campaign to unite the Hawaiian islands in the late 18th century as the threat of colonization loomed. A war drama that’s telling a historical tale from a culture that hasn’t seen much mainstream representation, Chief of War boasts a predominantly Polynesian cast, including Temuera Morrison, Cliff Curtis, and Luciane Buchanan. —J.G.

—

Eyes of Wakanda

August 6
Disney+

With Ironheart officially closing out phase five of the MCU, this four-episode animated take on the history of Wakanda will be the first series of phase six. It follows the Hatut Zeraze, a tribe of warriors that act as Wakanda’s secret police and travel through time to take back vibranium artifacts from the kingdom’s enemies. —B.R.

—

Wednesday season two, part one

August 6
Netflix

Netflix’s wildly popular series returns after a nearly three-year wait. Star and producer Jenna Ortega has teased that Wednesday Addams’s sophomore season will lean more into Nevermore Academy’s horror side, but perhaps the most terrifying aspect for the goth icon is the fact that her parents, Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Gomez (Luis Guzmán), are going to be hanging around campus more, and her brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) is enrolling. Meanwhile, in the real world, Netflix’s release strategy continues to frighten and confuse. Season two of Wednesday will air in two parts, with the first batch dropping on August 6 and then the second part coming a month later on September 3. Hmmm … what if Netflix filled that month by releasing one episode of Wednesday per week, naturally stretching out how long the show is in the Zeitgeist and letting fans talk about it on a weekly basis? No … that would be crazy … —J.G.

—

Outlander: Blood of My Blood

August 8
Starz

Season eight of Outlander is still coming, but Starz is giving Caitríona Balfe and Sam Heughan a break from love, trauma, and gray-haired wigs, offering this spinoff series about Claire and Jamie’s parents. Blood of My Blood tracks the elder Frasers in 18th-century Scotland and Claire’s parents as they endure World War I. Presumably, there will be no time-traveling crossover between the two plots thanks to those stones, but you never know. —J.G.

—

Alien: Earth

August 12
FX on Hulu

The first Alien movie’s all-time great tagline ominously warned that “in space, no one can hear you scream.” Presumably, that means that the screams will be terrifyingly audible in Noah Hawley’s prequel TV series, which is set two years before the original film and brings the chest-bursting action to Earth for the first time in the franchise. (Not counting Alien vs. Predator, of course.) Sydney Chandler, daughter of Kyle Chandler, stars as a young woman who must respond when a spacecraft carrying the deadliest being in the galaxy crash-lands on terra firma. Timothy Olyphant plays her robot mentor. —J.G.

—

Peacemaker season two

August 21
Max

James Gunn has a lot on his plate these days as co-CEO of DC Studios, especially with a new Superman movie set to introduce the latest DC Universe. Season two of Peacemaker, his irreverent superhero series centered on the ignorant mercenary (John Cena) from The Suicide Squad, will follow the events of Superman. Frank Grillo’s Rick Flag Sr., who appeared in animated form in Creature Commandos and will pop up in Superman, takes over the main antagonist role this time, presumably seeking revenge after Peacemaker killed his son in The Suicide Squad. —B.R.

—

Amanda Knox

Hulu

If true-crime documentaries aren’t quite your speed, might you be interested in a true-crime drama series about Amanda Knox? Tell Me Lies star Grace Van Patten plays Knox, who infamously was arrested and wrongfully convicted for the murder of her then-roommate in 2007 when they were both foreign-exchange students in Perugia, Italy. The eight-episode limited series will follow Knox from the murders and across the subsequent 16 years of her life, which she spent fighting to prove her innocence — and several of which she spent in prison. The real Amanda Knox is an executive producer on the series. —J.G.

Also coming in August

➼ Las Culturistas Culture Awards (August 5, Bravo)
➼ The Thursday Murder Club (August 28, Netflix)

TBA Summer

Billy Joel: And So It Goes

HBO

Only the good die young, but Billy Joel is in his mid-70s, and that means he’s got decades of stories to tell. HBO’s two-part documentary series about Billy Joel will be full of fascinating scenes from the life of the iconic singer-songwriter. And, presumably, some of those scenes will be from an Italian restaurant. From the directors of past HBO docs like Jane Fonda in Five Acts and Spielberg, Billy Joel: And So It Goes offers in-depth interviews and never-before-seen concert footage to tell the life story of the Piano Man. —J.G.

—

King of the Hill

Hulu

Looks like Beavis and Butt-Head isn’t the only long-running animated sitcom from Mike Judge to get a revival. Over 15 years after the original run, most of the surviving cast is expected to reprise their roles, though it’s hard to know how the show will cope with the loss of Brittany Murphy, Tom Petty, and especially Johnny Hardwick (who recorded at least some material as Dale for the revival). I’m nervous about this one, I tell you hwhat. —B.R.

—

Long Story Short

Netflix

We don’t know much yet about BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s new series, but the logline calls it “an animated comedy about a family over time,” including “the shared history, the inside jokes, the old wounds.” If it’s anything like Bob-Waksberg’s previous work, the show should be both funny and emotionally draining. —B.R.

—

Perfect Match season three

Netflix

Arguably Netflix’s most perfectly constructed reality trash (complimentary), Perfect Match is coming back for a third season. Once more, reality stars will compete in pairs that get mixed, matched, and broken up for strategic and sexy reasons until only one couple remains. The season hasn’t started yet, but in a sense, it already kicked off with a bang; a promotional clip at the end of the Love Is Blind season-eight reunion had Amber Desiree “AD” Brown (Love Is Blind season six) and Ollie Sutherland (Love Is Blind: U.K.) show up to announce that they were going to compete in Perfect Match’s third season. Then Ollie got down on one knee and popped the question. Does doing Perfect Match count as a honeymoon? Unclear. —J.G.

—

Too Much

Netflix

We’ve been waiting impatiently for Lena Dunham’s next big TV project basically since Girls ended in 2017. (We don’t talk about Camping.) After some recent forays into the film world (Sharp Stick, Catherine Called Birdy), she’s back with a romantic comedy partially inspired by her own love story with the musician Luis Felber (also an exec producer on the series). Megan Stalter plays Jessica, who moves from New York to London after a tough breakup and connects with Felix (Will Sharpe). —B.R.

—

Unspeakable: The Murder of JonBenét Ramsey

Paramount+

There’s no shortage of JonBenét Ramsey content streaming at any given point, despite the nearly 30 years that have passed since the child beauty queen’s murder. But if you’re excited by the prospect of Melissa McCarthy and Clive Owen playing JonBenét’s parents, this latest unnecessary dramatization may be for you. It remains to be seen where exactly the show will land on humanizing the many suspects, or which theories (if any) it will endorse. —B.R.