‘Brave New World,’ ‘Lovecraft Country’ and Other Shows to Look for This Summer

Netflix
Premieres July 3

Ann M. Martin’s classic coming-of-age novel series “The Baby-Sitters Club” has been adapted once again, this time for a 10-episode first season on Netflix. As in the beloved books, the action begins with young Kristy Thomas (played by Sophie Grace) starting the titular club, alongside a few friends.

With almost 35 years between the first book being published and this new iteration of the story, showrunner Rachel Shukert says the show may evoke a “retro” longing for a simpler time.

“You see this in Episode 1 when Kristy’s mom is looking for a baby-sitter for the first time, but all of these tools we have now, like the internet, make it seem much easier to find care for a kid, but also make it more complicated,” she says.

“There’s a million websites that you have to remember passwords for and you have to pay to join, and there’s a text chain and no one gets back to you right away.”

Kristy’s entrepreneurial know-how designs a club that meets at a set time so that parents can call one number and be assured they will be able to book a baby-sitter — and one young and fun enough to want to engage with the kids for whom they care for.

But with adult actors including Alicia Silverstone, Mark Feuerstein and Marc Evan Jackson onboard to play the parents, the story is a multi-generational one, too.

Peacock
Premieres July 15

David Wiener’s adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” comes eight decades after the original story was first published, but, Wiener notes, “its themes and ideas have only become more and more relevant with each passing generation.”

Huxley wrote about advances from genetic engineering to mass entertainment that have come to pass; the drug everyone takes to numb their feelings, for example, is called Soma, which is a very real muscle relaxer on the market.

“We built the world of this show by taking Huxley’s beliefs regarding humanity’s dependence on technology and passing those ideas through the filter of our own culture and time,” Wiener says.

“I think that our use of technology today, particularly in regard to socialization and sex, is proceeding just as Huxley would have predicted.

Narratively, we arrive at most of the same moments [as in the novel], though we often get there by other means.”

Wiener’s streaming series is set in New London, where people are sorted into societal classes in which, naturally, the Alphas are on top.

Harry Lloyd plays Bernard, one such Alpha, and Jessica Brown Findlay is Lenina, a Beta with a complex relationship to Bernard.

Such concepts as monogamy are left to the “savages” — those people, including John (Alden Ehrenreich), who have been left behind from the new, technologically and pharmaceutically enhanced way of life.

“Our story is told from a subjective point of view — we’re almost always experiencing the world through one of these three central characters,” Wiener says.

Showtime
Premieres June 21

“The Chi” returns for Season 3 without a pivotal player.

Jason Mitchell, who played Brandon, will not be back after misconduct allegations arose against him.

Brandon had been a mentor to Kevin (Alex R. Hibbert) in the first two seasons, but in his absence the young man will begin leaning more on Emmett (Jacob Latimore), who, showrunner Justin Hillian notes, “gives terrible advice.”

He continues: “We are going to see Kevin’s world turned upside down,” while his friend Jake (Michael V. Epps), who has been referred to as a “bad kid,” will “actually get some stability.”

Hillian wanted to challenge perceptions of some characters because he doesn’t “think there are bad kids, but environments do tend to mold.”

This season, “The Chi” expands it story to focus more on Kevin’s older sister Kiesha (Birgundi Baker), and according to Hillian, priority storylines include “the ingenuity of black mothers and their power to rally armies and demand action in times of crisis, the challenges of blended families, complex LGBTQIA relationships, second chapters” and a mayoral race.

“We really just wanted to give our characters’ personal issues some context.

Sure, they don’t always make the right choices, but there is also a larger system at play that usually isn’t working for them,” he explains.

“We pulled the curtain back a bit to take a peek at the way the city functions in an effort to dramatize how that trickles down into the lives of our characters and informs not only their choices, but also their options.”

USA
Premieres June 2

The second season of true crime anthology drama “Dirty John” moves to USA Network and puts convicted murderer Betty Broderick and her tumultuous marriage to Dan Broderick at the center of the story.

“The franchise of ‘Dirty John’ is ‘love gone wrong,’ and this year I wanted to examine a woman’s headspace,” says showrunner Alexandra Cunningham.

The eight-episode season flashes back and forth through time, allowing both Amanda Peet and Tiera Skovbye to take on the role of Betty, while Christian Slater and Chris Mason play Dan at different stages in the couple’s relationship.

The show begins at the end of their relationship, “because we want to really bring people into the emotion that ultimately leads to the crimes,” Cunningham explains.

“But then, one of the reasons we wanted to go back in time is to show the evolution, especially the gaslighting aspects.”

The show dives into Betty and Dan’s early courtship through marriage, children, a rise in social status, divorce and, ultimately, Betty shooting her ex-husband and his new wife in cold blood.

“We’re talking about people brought up in the ’50s, courting and married in the ’60s, who made a lot of choices based on what [they were] ‘supposed’ to be.

We wanted to give a real sense of what it was that she was trying to hold onto so hard, even when Dan was clearly changing.”

HBO
Premieres June 7

In Michaela Coel’s latest series, the multihyphenate draws upon personal experience to tell the tale of Arabella (whom she also plays), a young woman who is dubbed the “voice of her generation” but whose life changes immensely after she’s drugged and assaulted.

“While I was in the police investigation room waiting for the detective to whom I’d give my witness statement, my friend was with me, for support, and he was playing Pokemon Go.

I remember stepping outside of myself and observing how absurd and bizarre that moment was,” Coel says.

That blend of serious drama with pops of head-tilting comedy sets the tone for the 12-episode season, and Arabella’s friends are an integral part of the story as well.

While at its core the show is designed to show “that we’re all connected,” Coel says, there is also a message about the importance of consent baked in.

“If you were taken advantage of in some way, it can affect you, sometimes in imperceptible ways.

It’s good to be aware of this and to put things in place to make sure you heal and grow in ways that minimizes the potential long-term damage to your perception both of yourself and the world around you.”

Amazon
Premieres July 3

In the first season of David Farr’s drama series adaptation of the 2011 film “Hanna,” the titular character (played by Esme Creed-Miles) was being protected by a father figure from Utrax, a government program that enhanced children’s DNA to create super-soldiers.

But in Season 2, she will be the protector, Farr says.

“Hanna has lost Erik, the defining presence in her life. [Her] external battles are mirrored by her personal battle to overcome her loss.”

In her charge is Clara (Yasmin Monet Prince), formerly known as Child 249 in the Utrax trainee program, and exploring her escape allows the show to dive deeper into that program in general.

“Hanna is still our heroine, and her journey to discover who she is and who she wants to be is the main driver of everything,” Farr says.

“But it was also important and enjoyable to create other characters who have known no life other than the Utrax facility, and can see no future other than what Utrax plans for them. Until Hanna arrives. And changes everything.”

Meanwhile, Marissa (Mireille Enos), who was tasked with tracking Hanna down but sees the teenager as her “redemption” and “the daughter she never had,” becomes “a real resistance heroine in this season,” he adds.

Hulu
Premieres June 19

After Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger wrote the 2018 film “Love, Simon” based on Becky Albertalli’s novel “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda,” they heard from fans who felt Simon’s journey was “a very idyllic version of coming out,” Aptaker recalls.

This inspired them to revisited the world through a new lens, and “Love, Victor” was born.

In the 10-episode first season, the titular Victor (Michael Cimino) is a Latinx high school athlete who “comes from a small, conservative town in Texas [with] very religious parents,” Aptaker says. “All of that complexity informs his story and how he struggles with his sexuality.”

Additionally, Victor is “only 15,” executive producer Brian Tanen notes, so he is at an earlier stage in his journey than Simon was in the film.

After moving to a new town, Victor meets Mia (Rachel Hilson) and isn’t sure if his interest in her is platonic or romantic.

“Over the course of the season, Victor has to learn that sexuality is a spectrum, and figure out where he falls on that spectrum,” Tanen says.

“The feelings of wanting to be accepted, striving to figure out who you are, and wanting to fall madly in love” are universal and timeless ones, says Berger, but “it was incredibly important to us that teenagers watching the show felt like they were watching something real and authentic.

So throughout the process, our whole writers’ room met with countless teenagers to hear their stories” and work in details from slang to the effect of social media into the show.

HBO
Premieres in August

In creating her adaptation of Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel, “Lovecraft Country,” Misha Green wanted to expand the world of the book, throwing “in some twists and turns that will hopefully surprise even the most astute genre fan.”

The show follows Atticus Black (Jonathan Majors), his uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) and his friend Leti (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), on a road trip across 1950s Jim Crow America.

At its core, Green considers “Lovecraft Country” a family drama and notes that the characters will have to deal with “monsters of their pasts” to get through their current situation.

On the road trip to find Atticus’ missing father, the trio is immediately faces a life-or-death situation with the police, who have a law that says they can hang black people if they are caught out in their county after sundown.

But mere moments later, their situation becomes even more dangerous when literal monsters storm out of the woods.

“In ‘Lovecraft Country’ we are firmly rooted in the historical reality of 1950s America and use the fantastical elements to illuminate the horrors of the time, and highlight the parallels to now,” says Green. “My favorite mashups are when genre is mixed with the historical and you find a way to honor both. Over the course of the season we traverse all the pulp landscapes — horror, mystery, adventure, sci-fi. The creatures in the pilot are not the only monsters our heroes will face.”

Disney Plus
Premieres July 31

Jim Henson’s classic Muppets are back for the streaming era with a comedy variety show titled “Muppets Now.”

Featuring segments that include celebrity interviews, science experiments and a mini cooking show, the series was designed to play with new “mediums and technologies and venues,” says executive producer and director Andrew Williams, “as long as we are always true to who the characters are.”

The most important thing, he adds, is to continue to impart the Muppets’ message of “if you believe in yourself and the ones you’re with, then anything is possible.” The beloved Miss Piggy is a character around whom the team knew they had to craft a segment.

Taking her famous larger-than-life personality and love of being in charge and mixing it with how modern self-proclaimed experts reach their audience, they created a vlogstyle recurring piece for her.

Pepé the King Prawn, on the other hand, lends his chaotic energy to an improvised game show, while the Swedish chef takes on real-life celebrity chefs in the aforementioned cooking segment as a way to allow the Muppets to “subvert some familiar genres,” Williams says.

“One of the exciting things about the unscripted-genre-hopping aspect of ‘Muppets Now’ is that it allowed us to bring in celebrity guests to work with the Muppets in a lot of different ways. A great Muppet celebrity guest is very much like the Muppets themselves: they find a lot of joy in the work that they do, and they commit to it 100%.”

HBO
Premieres June 21

Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald’s “Perry Mason” is a much darker tale than the 1957 legal drama of the same name.

Their version is set in 1930s Los Angeles and follows the titular character (played by Matthew Rhys) as he investigates a gruesome kidnapping case that “pulls [him] out of his rut and sets him on the path to become himself,” says Fitzgerald. The show will follow “Mason down the dark alleyways of the city, as he tracks the twists and turns of a single case that leads to new and unexpected places,” he continues.

But, his core values are what viewers of the original series or readers of Erle Stanley Gardner’s novels will remember: “What’s Mason after in 1932? Finding truth and seeking justice,” Fitzgerald says.

Much inspiration was drawn from Gardner’s books, with the duo often using specific “dialogue passages as little character tentpoles for the series,” Jones says.

In that source material, Perry had a “dogmatic idea of the law and its applications in the world,” Jones notes, and that kind of “strident language” made them “consider, ‘What if Mason came from a religious background and how much of it, if not all, had been abandoned by him — or better yet, what moral footing did religion once provide for him that the practice of law could eventually do?’” Rhys’ Mason further confronts religion when he meets Sister Alice (Tatiana Maslany), an evangelist.

Netflix
Premieres June 19

The first season of “The Politician” jumped forward in place and time to find the uber-ambitious Payton Hobart (Ben Platt) living in New York City and about to embark upon a run for a real political office: the state senate.

The second season wastes no time diving into Payton’s new political campaign.

Exec producer Ian Brennan says they “always thought about the Season 1 finale as the first episode of Season 2.”

Payton, therefore, is thrown “into the deep end right away, like David squaring off against two Goliaths.”

Those are Dede Standish (Judith Light), the incumbent state senator who thought she would be on an easy track to Washington, D.C., and Hadassah Gold (Bette Midler), her “even more formidable” chief of staff.

As Brennan puts it, both women are “not just political animals but true thoroughbreds who know how to win elections and how to wield political power honestly and effectively.”

Payton’s mother, Georgina (Gwyneth Paltrow), will make a decision that “threatens to upstage Payton and everything he’s hoping to achieve,” Brennan says, and that raises the stakes further.

“This season is Payton on the national stage for the first time, and he knows he’s not going to get a do-over, so every choice he makes has the chance to be the next crucial step to becoming president of the United States or torpedo his political ambitions completely.”

HBO Max
Premieres June 25

The third season of “Search Party” moves to HBO Max, but picks up exactly where the second left off: with Dory (Alia Shawkat) arrested for murder and her friends “in survival mode and making a ton of snap decisions for better or worse,” says executive producer Sarah-Violet Bliss.

When the series launched, Dory was an altruistic young woman who convinced her friends to search for the then-missing Chantal (Clare McNulty), but as she feared the worst, the group spiraled into darker acts.

The third season will follow Dory “trying to manage her very public court case,” Bliss says, while she is also haunted by guilt about at least one of her crimes.

Dory was arrested for the murder of her sort-of boyfriend Keith (Ron Livingston), but she killed April (Phoebe Tyers), and people are now wondering where that young woman is.

Dory’s guilt “manifests in the form of a ghostly figure of a soaking wet April, reminding her that the other shoe is going to drop,” says Bliss.

But as the case thrusts her into the spotlight, “she starts to believe her own lies and acquires a secret taste of fame,” adds executive producer Charles Rogers.

This “makes her less and less relatable to [her friends] Drew, Portia and Elliott.

Between the lawyers, interrogations, looming trial and media circus swirling around all of them, they’re simultaneously more fractured than ever while also feeling united in trauma and pressure.”