Jason Sudeikis and Tanya Reynolds in Ted Lasso season 4.
Courtesy of Apple TV
There’s an odd phenomenon in the TV calendar recently, where one day of the week is absolutely stacked with season and series premieres and the others have maybe one or two. It happened in early July, when Little House on the Prairie, The Five Star Weekend and several summer network shows all premiered on a Thursday. It’s happening again this week, where a bunch of streaming shows and the latest from Ryan Murphy will all roll out on Wednesday.
I don’t think this is a trend so much as these two weeks stand out because it’s summer. In September, when networks start up their new seasons and streamers keep up their normal pace, a day with a half-dozen shows debuting is more or less normal. In August, it’s weird.
Anyway: Arguably highest-profile of those Wednesday premieres is Ted Lasso, which after three years off starts up again on Apple TV. I would recommend reading my Hollywood Reporter colleague Lacey Rose’s big feature on how star and co-creator Jason Sudeikis came back around to doing another season. She gets deep into the process of its return — which seemed inevitable for a while, but maybe wasn’t. This to me is kind of the crux of things:
There were those who simply never accepted that that was it, of course. “I mean, I cried, I experienced the ending of it, but I believed that there was more,” says [Brett] Goldstein [who plays Roy Kent and is a writer and EP], who was chief among them. “It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, just make new things, make new things, make new things.’ But it’s such a beautiful world that has been built, and it has so many characters and such a richness to it, it’s like, why would you leave?”
Sudeikis ultimately got there, too, though if he was going to do more, he knew he needed not only a new narrative focus but also another boss behind the scenes. “Even just to help communicate things in a timely, clear fashion to the people pushing that money in front of us,” he says, acknowledging his own “left-brain” limitations as he continues: “It’s like growing up, we’d go school-supply shopping every August and I’d buy an assignment notebook — and by the second week of September, I don’t know where those things were.”
A bit more on Ted Lasso below, along with the rest of the calendar for this week. All times are ET/PT unless noted.
Premieres
Monday
• Futurama (Hulu): The fourth season of Hulu’s revival of the animated series blasts off.
• The Chelsea Detective (Acorn TV)
Tuesday
• Betrayal (Hulu): A new season of the true-crime show (based on the same-titled podcast) is subtitled “Dirty Secrets” and is about “how a husband and father had been abusing his position of authority to pursue a secret sexual life.”
• 8 p.m.: Wizards Beyond Waverly Place (Disney Channel): The Disney Channel sequel series has a four-episode final “season” that will air in a two-hour block here; it streams on Disney+ starting Wednesday.
• 9 p.m.: Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Seattle Seahawks (HBO/HBO Max): Training camp started just a week ago, so the first episode might be a bit thin on drama.
Wednesday
• Ted Lasso (Apple TV): Just how Ted (Sudeikis) ends up back at AFC Richmond has yet to be revealed, but we know he’s now coaching the club’s women’s side. Returning cast members include Goldstein, Brendan Hunt (also a co-creator of the show), Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple and Jeremy Swift; Andrea Anders and Matteo van der Grijn also reprise their roles. New to the show are Tanya Reynolds, Jude Mack, Faye Marsay, Rex Hayes, Aisling Sharkey, Abbie Hern, Grant Feely and Tracey Ullman.
• Sterling Point (Prime Video): In this YA drama, a 17-year-old (Ella Rubin) inherits a small island in Canada from her grandfather. Romance and whatnot ensues. Megan Park (My Old Ass) created the series, and The O.C./Gossip Girl alums Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage are exec producers.
• The Challenge (Paramount+): No longer on MTV.
• One Hundred Years of Solitude (Netflix): Season two of the Spanish-language drama based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel.
• Let’s Marry Harry (Netflix): A Bachelor-ish show starring professional reality TV guy Harry Jowsey.
• Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy (Netflix): Think Super Size Me, but with a British guy and fried chicken instead of Morgan Spurlock and McDonald’s.
• 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT: The Shards (FX/Hulu): Ryan Murphy executive produces this series based on Bret Easton Ellis’ kinda-sorta autobiographical novel about his prep school days in 1980s L.A. The kinda-sorta part comes in because The Shards is also a serial killer story. Murphy and Ellis will likely either be a perfect match tonally or a disaster, but nowhere in between.
Thursday
• My Life with the Walter Boys (Netflix): More YA drama. Considerate of the streamers to drop these shows just before kids start going back to school.
• 9 p.m.: Monsters of God (HBO/HBO Max): From the folks who brought you Chimp Crazy, another series about people obsessed with animals (reptiles, in this case) that should absolutely not be pets.
Friday
• Alley Cats (Netflix): Ricky Gervais created and leads the voice cast of an animated show about degenerate cats.
• 10 p.m.: Anna Pigeon (USA): Chicago PD alum Tracy Spiridakos plays a crime-solving park ranger. It’s based on a series of mystery novels by Nevada Barr.
Sunday
• The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls (Prime Video): Sure.
• 9 p.m.: The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Roaring 20th (Bravo): Sure.
• 10 p.m.: Double Wives of Suburban Wives (TLC): They would probably like you think Secret Lives of Mormon Wives based on the title, but it’s about married women (and their husbands) who make adult content on OnlyFans and the like.