From the first ever Alien series to the new run of Netflix’s Addams Family spin-off and a true-crime drama about Amanda Knox.
1. Chief of War
Jason Momoa used his Aquaman clout to get this colourful historical epic made. He co-created and co-wrote the series, and plays Ka’iana, a warrior in 18th-century Hawaii who is trying to unify the islands before colonists take control. If the subject is unexpected from the star of mainstream commercial films, including the recent hit The Minecraft Movie, the action is on brand. Combining large-scale battle scenes with history is a formula that worked for Shogun, and Chief of War has a similar dynamic and a grounding in authenticity. The cast is mostly Polynesian, and Momoa, who was born in Hawaii, had to speak the Hawaiian language, Olelo, for some scenes. Learning it, he told GQ, was “The hardest thing I have done in my life.” The series co-creator, Thomas Pa’a Sibbett, has said, “We actually had this idea a good 10 years ago,” but he added, “We knew that in order to pull off something like this, Jason needed to bring his star power up”.
Chief of War premieres 1 August on Apple TV+ internationally.
2. Eyes of Wakanda
Black Panther director Ryan Coogler’s production company is behind this latest Marvel animated series, which fits neatly into that film’s universe as it follows Wakandan warriors at various points in history. Traveling the world, they put themselves at risk to retrieve artifacts containing the rare, powerful metal vibranium – that energy-absorbing material that has caused such a fuss in so many Marvel movies – stolen from Wakanda. Each of the four episodes has a different story and setting. The one set in ancient Greece has a disgraced former member of Wakanda’s all-female army, the Dora Milage, tracing a man known as the Lion, who attempts to build a kingdom on the strength of stolen vibranium treasure. Todd Harris, the series’ showrunner, told EW that his ambition was to create “a giant spy-espionage story that reverberates through time”.
Eyes of Wakanda premieres 1 August on Disney+ internationally.
3. Wednesday
In the second season of Jenna Ortega’s breakout hit, young goth Wednesday Addams, returns to Nevermore Academy, and there are some starry additions to the cast. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzman are back as Wednesday’s loving parents, Morticia and Gomez. Among the added characters, Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous) plays Morticia’s mother, who has the Dickensian name Hester Frump (she is not a frump; she’s glam). Billie Piper plays a music teacher, Isadora Capri, who is mentor to Wednesday’s best friend, Enid (Emma Myers) – appropriate since they are both werewolves. And Steve Buscemi plays the school’s oddball new headmaster, Barry Dort. He is featured in the show’s best teaser, which plays off Buscemi’s classic meme from 30 Rock, “How do you do, fellow kids”, so you can see that the show’s mordant wit is intact. Tim Burton directed several episodes. The season’s second half drops in September and you’ll have to wait until then for Lady Gaga’s guest appearance.
Wednesday premieres 6 August on Netflix internationally.
4. Outlander: Blood of My Blood
The wildly popular Outlander is heading toward its eighth and final season soon, but the series is also moving backwards in time – and keeping the franchise alive – with this prequel, which tells the stories of the parents of Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan). In the early 18th-century Jamie’s father, Brian (Jamie Roy) courts Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater). During World War I, Claire’s mother, Julia (Hermione Corfield) falls for Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine). But, like parents like daughter, the 20th-century couple can time travel and they land in the 18th Century, where they are separated and have to find each other again. Whatever the show turns out to be, you can already see that the casting and makeup people did a terrific job. Roy is a virtually a Heughan lookalike, and Corfield convincingly looks like she passed her profile on to her daughter. TV Insider writes that, true to the original and the Diana Gabaldon novels it’s based on, the series is full of “sexy fun and clan intrigue”.
Outlander: Blood of My Blood premieres 8 August on Starz in US and 9 August on MGM+ in the UK.
5. Alien: Earth
Noah Hawley, who pulled off the unlikely feat of turning the Coen brothers’ beloved Fargo into one of the best television series of recent years, has another go at a film adaptation with this prequel to the Alien franchise. The show is set in 2120, two years before the events of Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), when a spacecraft that that has been collecting samples of life forms from other planets crashes on Earth. Deadly creatures including, but not limited to, the drooling xenomorph that likes to leap out of humans’ chests are let loose. As if that’s not creepy enough, the heroine, Wendy (Sydney Chandler), is a young girl with a terminal illness whose consciousness has been transferred into a humanoid robotic body, and Timothy Olyphant plays her synthetic mentor, a robot with artificial intelligence. The power plays of competing tech companies comprises one theme, but Hawley has also said of the style, “If we want to make Alien something’s got to be dripping. Something’s got to be rusty”.
Alien: Earth premieres 12 August on Hulu in the US and 13 August on Disney+ in the UK.
6. Butterfly
Daniel Dae Kim (Lost) stars in this spy thriller as David Jung, a former US intelligence agent who has returned to South Korea to save the grown daughter, Rebecca (Reina Hardesty), who has believed him to be dead for nine years. She is now a trained assassin, just like her dad, and works for a nefarious private intelligence company called Caddis. David actually founded Caddis but the company is now run by the lethally ambitious, mercenary Juno (Piper Perabo), who wants him dead. The cat-and-mouse game of loyalties includes some sardonic lines from Rebecca, always ready to undercut her father’s sentimentality. Much of the series is set in South Korea, and when the production was announced Kim, who is also one of the series’ producers, called it “the realisation of a lifelong dream to bring together American and Korean storytellers and create a show that bridges two cultures that I love deeply”.
Butterfly premieres 13 August on Prime Video internationally.
7. The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox
In this fact-based fiction, Grace Van Patten (Tell Me Lies) plays Amanda Knox, the young woman at the centre of an especially high-profile crime and punishment saga. “Many people think they know my story, but now it’s my turn to tell it,” the fictional Amanda says in the trailer. The real Knox has told her story before, cooperating with a 2016 Netflix documentary and writing two books, and it is full of twists and turns. Knox, then an American student in Italy, was convicted of the 2007 murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, only to have the verdict overturned, then to be tried again in absentia, convicted and exonerated again. The fictional approach allows the series to heighten that already dramatic tale. Sharon Horgan plays Knox’s mother in the series, which was created by KJ Steinberg. She was a writer on This Is Us, and so must know something about portraying emotional trauma.
The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox premieres 20 August on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK.
8. Hostage
Suranne Jones (Vigil, Gentleman Jack) is the British Prime Minister, Abigail Dalton, and Julie Delpy (Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy) is the President of France, Vivienne Toussaint – a satisfying alt-history in itself. The series becomes a political thriller when the PM’s husband is kidnapped and held hostage during Toussaint’s state visit to London. To complicate matters, the French president is being blackmailed. The two world leaders, wary rivals, have to work together to get out of this mess, which comes to include an explosion at 10 Downing Street and the PM saying on television, “I will not negotiate. My loyalties are to my country. I will not allow it to be held for ransom.” The series was created and written by Matt Charman, who also created the Netflix espionage series Treason and co-wrote Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, similarly themed thrillers in which the political becomes intensely personal.
Hostage premieres 21 August on Netflix internationally.
9. Long Story Short
Bojack Horseman, the animated satire about a has-been TV star who happens to be a horse, was both popular and critically acclaimed, with Rolling Stone calling it one of the best television shows of all time. That means there are high expectations for this series from the same creator, Raphael Bob-Waksberg. This time he’s dealing with humans, the Schwooper family of three siblings, in a show that moves back and forth in time between their childhood and adulthood. The comedy reveals how little some grown-ups have changed from the kids they used to be, especially when they are squabbling in the back seat of a car. Max Greenfield is the voice of Yoshi, Ben Feldman is Avi, and Abbi Jacobson is Shira, their purple-haired sister. Paul Reiser and Lisa Edelstein play their parents. “This show is not going to be as cartoony or as bleak” as Bojack, Bob-Waksberg has said, although “there are certainly cartoony elements”.
Long Story Short premieres 22 August on Netflix internationally.
10. The Terminal List: Dark Wolf
Like Jack Ryan and Reacher, The Terminal List is a Prime Video series that has never become a cultural touchstone but has definitely drawn an audience of fans, with Chris Pratt as James Reece, a US Navy Seal commander coming to grips with an operation gone wrong. A second season of that original show is already in the works. This new military drama is a prequel about Ben Edwards, played by Taylor Kitsch, who in the original was a Seal turned CIA agent. He came to a bad end there, but he had his reasons, which the prequel explores. Set seven years earlier, the story follows Edwards as he is discharged from the Seals and drawn into the shadowy CIA world. Pratt has a supporting role, as Edwards and Reece train troops in Iraq and develop a bond. To say the friendship eventually frays is understating things, but in Dark Wolf that is far in the future.
The Terminal List: Dark Wolf premieres 27 August on Prime Video internationally