Can you believe we’ve already made it past the midpoint of the year? And there’s still so much solid gold TV to stream. Add shows to your Flicks watchlist to get notified when episodes drop.
Ballard: Season 1
Nothing can squash Bosch, as Prime Video’s elongated relationship with Titus Welliver’s heroic cop proves. In this refreshing new spin-off, his colleague Detective Renée Ballard takes centre stage, saddled to a crumbling cold case division within the LAPD and following in her mentor’s footsteps when it comes to the uncommon empathy she shows each long-forgotten victim.
Maggie Q should be a capable lead in continuing to bring Michael Connelly’s crime novels to the screen, unspooling a historic thread of secrets that begin with a murdered John Doe. Expect conspiracy, corruption, and presumably a few guest appearances from now-retired old mate Hazza.
Dexter: Resurrection: Season 1
The city that never sleeps just found another reason to stay wide-eyed: TV’s killer of killers, portrayed once again by Michael C Hall, is in town, after the legacy-juicing events of the sequel series New Blood. When fans last saw Dexter, he’d been left in a coma after taking a bullet in the chest from his own dang son, and so dad is keen to track down his offspring in New York City to set things right.
We’re sure that cops sniffing out his bloody trail and a supporting turn from Uma Thurman will complicate the family reunion just a bit—not to mention the string of murders that are likely to ensue.
Foundation: Season 3
This handsome, terribly serious sci-fi epic from Apple TV+ takes it sweet time to drop new batches of episodes. And considering its exorbitant budget and Asimov origins, patience is definitely necessary to stick the landing.
The ensemble cast are still fighting to have their conflicting visions of the future bear fruit, with the despotic Empire trying to quash the fragile establishment of “Foundation,” the “psychohistorical” and innovative new way forward for us meatbags lost in space. You will certainly need to go back and watch the first few seasons to have a chance of understanding what anyone’s talking about in season three.
The Sandman: Season 2
Netflix is in a strange spot with this big budget, audacious fantasy adaption. The writer of the original, beloved graphic novels, Neil Gaiman, has faced heinous sexual assault allegations, and so the whole immortal saga is seemingly coming to a pretty abrupt and perhaps awkward end. Fans, however, will rejoice in the fact that the second and final season of The Sandman releases in two big chunks, with a special follow-up episode at the end of this month to boot.
Tom Sturridge returns as Dream or Lord Morpheus, part of the ultimate dysfunctional family that includes embodiments of fates, feelings and cosmic forces. The best-loved is Death, a goth manic-pixie-dream-girl played by actor Kirby. Their somber yet smiling final chapter will be released on the 31st, promising a look at “the high cost of living.” It’s probably less of an economics report and more of a tear-inducing, existential farewell.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Season 3
Of all the contemporary Star Trek spin-offs and continuations on offer for fans to feast upon, Strange New Worlds perhaps captures the original Roddenberry spirit the most—tinted in lush, retro colours, and following the Enterprise a decade before Kirk took over as Captain. Spock’s there, though, working under Captain Pike (Anson Mount) on episodic adventures that can jubilantly take on new genres and tones as the cast hops across the known and unknown galaxy.
A fourth season has been greenlit, too, so you can enjoy these latest eps safe in the knowledge that arcs should be paid off sometime next year.
The Summer I Turned Pretty: Season 3
Summer isn’t meant to last forever: that’s what gives the season its liminal, romantic power. In the third and final instalment of this sweet series based on the YA novels by Jenny Han, Lola Tung’s lovesick protagonist Belly is finishing her junior year of college, but none the wiser as to which Fisher brother has her heart: Jeremiah, her current “soulmate,” or her first love Conrad.
Last season featured some heartbreaking turns related to the boy’s mum Susannah, and that intergenerational family story will loom large over this final chapter.
Too Much: Season 1
There is, to put it simply, “too much” to like about this new rom-com series from infamous creator Lena Dunham. Megan Stalter plays the lead, and she’s been nothing but utterly hilarious in a scene-stealing supporting role on Hacks; loveable Brit Will Sharpe plays her enigmatic love interest; and Richard E Grant and Stephen Fry are on the sidelines for comic support.
Stalter’s workaholic all-American gal decides to take a trip across the pond, seriously burned out by her hectic life in New York. Planning to live in icy solitude like a forgotten Brontë sister, her OTT personality instead lands her right in the social heart of London—with love, friendship and probably a bunch of self-acceptance on the cards.
Twisted Metal: Season 2
It’s not difficult to imagine why dystopian media is so evergreen—but most shows (looking at you, HBO and Pedro Pascal) take a tone of weepy existential dread about the whole ordeal. Not so, in this splattery, clattering action series based on a raucous video game series. Anthony Mackie returns as an apocalyptic wanderer, tracked by marauding goons driving ice-cream trucks in clown masks.
Reviewing the first season, Clarisse Loughrey had this to say about Mackie and his companion Stephanie Beatriz: “Twisted Metal offered me what I can only describe as my own character development arc, as I watched my hard-nosed cynicism in the face of two irritating jokesters gradually soften into genuine affection.” In the endtimes most of all, ya gotta have friends!
Untamed: Limited Series
Starring a few talents from Down Under (Eric Bana and Sam Neill!) and yet setting its scene in picturesque Yosemite National Park, this new thriller miniseries sinks its talons into nature: wondrous landscapes, and the rugged darkness lying within human behaviour alike. Bana is Kyle Turner, a park ranger enforcing man’s law upon the wilderness—his gig gets considerably more tricky with the discovery of a dead body within the park’s leafy depths, sparking questions of whether an animal or another pesky human put him there.
A mystery with some seriously pretty, desktop background-able vistas, the show should scratch that itch The Dry has left.
Washington Black: Miniseries
Meet the other George Washington: a young Black kid taken from his Barbados home in the early 1800s, and whisked around the world on a fabulous flying machine. As you might be able to tell, Washington Black’s story is very much fictional, based on the beloved adventure novel by Esi Edugyen, with poignant historical details fleshing the whole thing out into an authentic-feeling epic.
Ernest Kingsley Jr plays the protagonist, swept from slavery to unbelievable, Jules Verne-esque new landscapes, and Tom Ellis and Sterling K Brown offer terrific support.
