Summer TV Preview 2021: From ‘Gossip Girl’ to ‘Ted Lasso’ and More
Some of the most beloved shows of last year premiered in the summer, from the piercing darkness of I May Destroy You and Lovecraft Country to the joyful optimism of Ted Lasso and The Baby-Sitters Club. But it was a much sparser TV summer overall than we’ve gotten used to in recent years, as the backlog of series filmed prior to the pandemic started to run out before Hollywood started returning in earnest to production in the fall.
Quantity-wise, the summer of 2021 looks a lot more robust, thanks to the vaccine and an industry that’s figured out how to work efficiently within Covid protocols. We’re hoping there’s plenty of quality, too, between returning favorites like Lasso or the long-running Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and intriguing new shows that cover everything from superheroes to raunchy comedians, sexy spies, animated bird-ladies, privileged high-school kids, embattled college professors, and more.
-
‘Loki’ (Disney+, June 9)
OK, so The Falcon and the Winter Soldier fizzled at the end. But Tom Hiddleston’s Loki has long been one of the most lively and entertaining characters in the entire MCU, so hopes for this series are high. If you’re wondering how a Loki show is even possible, since Thanos murdered him real good at the start of Avengers: Infinity War, it’s because a slightly younger Loki from an alternate timeline survived thanks to the time heist shenanigans from Avengers: Endgame. That alone is weird enough to suggest this enterprise may be more along the lines of WandaVision, especially when the supporting cast includes Richard E. Grant and… Owen Wilson? Everyone, bow down to the God of Mischief!
-
‘Lupin’ Part 2 (Netflix, June 11)
Omar Sy utterly charmed the world as master thief Assane Diop in the first half of this French crime drama. That batch of episodes ended on an old-school kind of TV cliffhanger, with Assane’s teenage son being abducted by a hitman working for his wealthy arch-nemesis. Can Assane reunite his family, get justice for his late father, and get away clean at the end? We’ve learned not to bet against the big man.
-
‘Tuca & Bertie’ (Adult Swim, June 13)
Once upon a time, Netflix had a reputation for saving shows canceled by traditional broadcast and cable networks. Now, it’s the other way around, with series like One Day at a Time and this animated female buddy comedy from the BoJack Horseman team being saved by old-fashioned linear networks. Season One of Tuca, starring Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong as the titular bird BFFs, was a lovely and dryly funny gem that we’ll happily watch wherever it lives, even if it has to eventually migrate to a UHF station.
-
‘Dave’ Season 2 (FXX, June 16)
This comedy co-created by and starring rapper Dave Burd, a.k.a. Lil Dicky, improbably turned out to be one of last year’s highlights, mixing raunchy stories about Dave’s malformed sexual equipment with sincere and poignant tales of his hype man GaTa (played by Burd’s real hype man GaTa) battling bipolar disorder or Dave’s girlfriend Ally (Taylor Misiak) pushing back against the man that fame is turning him into. We can’t wait for new episodes, even if we may occasionally have to watch them through our fingers like a horror movie.
-
‘Physical’ (Apple TV+, June 18)
The last time Rose Byrne was the lead in an ongoing TV series, it was as lawyer Ellen Parsons on the ultragrim FX drama Damages. In the decade since, Byrne has turned herself into one of cinema’s most indispensible comic actors in films like Bridesmaids and Spy. Her return to series regular work (not counting her stint as Gloria Steinem in the miniseries Mrs. America) seems to be splitting the difference between dark and light, casting her as an Eighties housewife supporting her husband’s run for state office while finding release in the strange new world of aerobics. Let’s hope Physical can fill the GLOW-shaped hole in our hearts.
-
‘Kevin Can F**k Himself’ (AMC, June 20)
Annie Murphy follows up her award-winning turn as Alexis on Schitt’s Creek with this meta mash-up of a series. It’s one part multicam sitcom, in which Murphy’s Allison is the patient and adoring wife to a juvenile loudmouth named Kevin (Eric Petersen), one part dark drama where Allison steps away from the laugh track to consider how much she’s come to hate her life — and the husband she blames for it.
-
‘Monsters at Work’ (Disney+, July 2)
Billy Crystal and John Goodman are back for their third go-round as monster buddies Mike and Sully in this series set in the immediate aftermath of the events of the first Monsters Inc. While other voices — such as Bonnie Hunt, Jennifer Tilly, and, of course, Pixar good luck charm John Ratzenberger — return, the main conflict comes from a new character, Tylor Tuskmon, played by Ben Feldman from Superstore. Tyler, you see, just graduated top of his scaring class at Monster University, only to enter a workforce where scares are out and laughs are in. Pixar follow-ups have been hit and miss, but Monsters University was a pleasant surprise. Here’s hoping these guys have a third success in them.
-
‘I Think You Should Leave’ Season 2 (Netflix, July 6)
Tim Robinson’s sketch comedy series arrived in the spring of 2019 with little fanfare, only to become one of the most analyzed and memed shows in recent memory. Can Robinson and company live up to our memories of the focus-group sketch (“Oh my god, he admit it!”), the Baby of the Year pageant, or the hot dog car crash? We’ll be happy with whatever it has to offer, just so long as the steering wheel doesn’t whiff out of your hands while we’re driving.
-
‘Gossip Girl’ (HBO Max, July 8)
The sexy, scandal-packed hit that made megastars of Blake Lively, Penn Badgley, Leighton Meester, and more in the mid-aughts is back. This new iteration is set in the same hoity-toity prep schools of New York City’s Upper East Side, but with a diverse next-generation cast navigating social media platforms that make the original Gossip Girl’s blog look quaint. Tavi Gevinson is among the ensemble, but get ready to have names like Jordan Alexander, Whitney Peak, and Evan Mock roll off your wagging tongues.
-
‘The White Lotus’ (HBO, July 11)
Mike White’s last HBO series, the Laura Dern corporate comedy Enlightened, was one of the strangest, saddest, most uncomfortable, and most beautiful shows to ever sneak its way through the television development process. Now White’s back with this six-part miniseries, a social satire about the wealthy guests (including Jennifer Coolidge, Connie Britton, Steve Zahn, Jake Lacy, Alexandra Daddario, and Sydney Sweeney) and staffers (Murray Bartlett and Natasha Rothwell) at an exclusive Hawaiian resort. We’ve already made our reservation.
-
‘Wellington Paranormal’ (CW, July 11)
FX’s incredible What We Do in the Shadows is actually the second TV spin-off of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s cult classic 2014 vampire mockumentary film. The first one was made by Clement in their native New Zealand, focusing on a pair of bumbling Wellington cops who appear briefly in the film, and now have to make like off-brand Mulder and Scully. While multiple seasons have run in New Zealand, its arrival in the States will be shared between the CW and HBO Max (which will have the episodes available a day after they’re on the CW).
-
‘Ted Lasso’ Season 2 (Apple TV+, July 13)
Apple doesn’t release any kind of viewership numbers, but Ted Lasso sure felt like one of the biggest hits of quarantine, didn’t it? Last summer, this comedy about a superhumanly nice American football coach (Jason Sudeikis) being hired to lead a Premier League club in England was one of the most beloved and talked-about shows. Season One ended with Ted’s club falling victim to relegation, which means they’ll have to spend Season Two fighting their way back into the EPL. Can they do it? Like the signs Ted posts in the locker room says, “Believe.”
-
‘Schmigadoon!’ (Apple TV+, July 16)
The earnestness of musicals is easy to lampoon, but trust that it’ll be done with affection in this series from executive producer Lorne Michaels and director Barry Sonnenfeld. Cecily Strong and Keegan Michael-Key star as a bickering couple on a backpacking trip who suddenly find themselves in a small town — Schmigadoon, a play off of the 1947 Broadway hit Brigadoon — where everyone constantly bursts into song. With musically gifted actors like Kristin Chenowith and Alan Cumming rounding out the cast, we expect Tony-level performances on top of big laughs.
-
‘Mr. Corman’ (Apple TV+, August 6)
When Joseph Gordon-Levitt was promoting his 2013 directorial debut Don Jon, the 500 Days of Summer star talked a lot about his filmmaking ambitions, but he’s barely directed anything in the years since. He’s finally back in hyphenate mode for this dramedy about a guy in his thirties who never fulfilled his dreams of making it in the music business, and now teaches fifth grade. It’s also JoGo’s first regular TV acting job in 20 years, since his child star days on 3rd Rock from the Sun.
-
‘Reservation Dogs’ (Hulu, August 9)
Taika Waititi and Native American filmmaker Sterlin Harjo co-created this comedy about a group of quartet of indigenous teenagers in Oklahoma determined to get out of the rez by any means necessary — even criminal ones. Native American stories are still largely uncovered territory on television, and comedies even more so. Waititi has more or less left Jemaine Clement and others to run What We Do in a Shadows as a TV series, so it’s good to have him belatedly joining the FX family.
-
‘Heels’ (Starz, August 15)
Arrow star Stephen Amell is a lifelong wrestling fan who managed to find his way into the WWE ring a while back. Now he gets to combine his day job with his obsession, playing one half of a brother-brother wrestling duo on the independent circuit, in a show from Loki head writer Michael Waldron. Can the defining star of the DC TV universe mesh well with the latest creative voice from the MCU? Hey, Superman and Spider-Man successfully teamed up a few times over the years.
-
‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ Season 8 (NBC, August 18)
For its first seven seasons, Nine-Nine was one of the most consistent comic delights television had to offer. But the long-delayed final season will be premiering in a very different world, in which perception of police has changed radically in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and other incidents of black people being killed by police. The series is reportedly going to attempt to address this change head-on. We’ll have to see whether its progressive worldview can still be funny given the harsh realities of modern policing in America.
-
‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ (Hulu, August 18)
Yes, after Top of the Lake, Big Little Lies, and The Undoing, it’s a bit less of an event for Nicole Kidman to be appearing in a TV series — especially another one adapted from a book by Big Little Lies author Liane Moriarty (and by Big Little Lies showrunner David E. Kelley, no less). But this show, with Kidman as the director of a fancy health-and-wellness resort, also happens to feature Melissa McCarthy, Michael Shannon, Regina Hall, Samara Weaving, Bobby Cannavale, and Manny Jacinto from The Good Place, among others. That combined star power is enough to get us over any tinges of Kidman fatigue.
-
‘The Chair’ (Netflix, August 27)
This dramedy starring Sandra Oh as the English department chair of a prestigious New England college — trying to drag a biased, old-world institution into the 21st century — seems like an odd follow-up for Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. At least, until you realize that the show was actually co-created by Benioff’s wife, actor Amanda Peet (who has written several plays, but is making her TV writing debut here). It’s also a reunion from Peet’s last big TV project, HBO’s Togetherness, with her old co-star Jay Duplass now playing a colleague of Oh’s.
-
‘Only Murders in the Building’ (Hulu, August 31)
At the very beginning of his career, Steve Martin was a writer and featured sketch performer on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. Between stints hosting Saturday Night Live and the Academy Awards, he hasn’t exactly hidden from the small screen; but it’s taken him nearly 50 years to take another regular role, this one on a show he co-created, starring him, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez as three strangers who start up a true-crime podcast. The two Martins are always a treat together, and the podcasting world seems more than ripe for some satire.