Premieres Wednesday: Breathe: Into the Shadows — Now that we know Avinash was his own tormentor due to dissociative identity disorder, what's left for this thriller to accomplish in Season 2? It sure would be rotten timing if he indulged his illness by going "death con 3" on Mrs. Maisel. (Amazon Prime)
The Crown — Imelda Staunton takes over the role of Queen Elizabeth II for Season 5, which focuses on the scandalous 1990s. Yeah, yeah; wake me when they get to Liz Truss. (Netflix)
FIFA Uncovered — Days before the World Cup begins in Qatar, learn just how corrupt the entire affair is, in areas ranging from bribes to extortion. That's a pretty strong stance, coming from a streaming service that's about to start fining you for sharing your password. (Netflix)
The Montaners — Latin music phenom Ricardo Montaner and his family open up their lives to the cameras for a 10-episode reality series that’s said to follow a “nonlinear narrative.” Hey, your life too, huh? (Disney+)
Save Our Squad With David Beckham — The legendary footballer goes back to his hometown to help a team of tweens turn their record around. The show gets off to a bit of a slow start because Beckham is stuck in line waiting to see the corpse of Imelda Staunton. (Disney+)
The Soccer Football Movie — Jesus, more soccer programming? And a kids’ cartoon at that? At least it has voice work by Weird Al Yankovic to help sell its story of sports stars brought low by a mad scientist. Now if only FIFA would bribe us to watch. (Netflix)
Tatami Time Machine Blues — This Japanese anime series depicts the chaos that ensues when a couple of boarding-school students go back in time to prevent damaging the remote control to their air conditioner. The second option was killing baby Hitler, but you don't wanna know how hot Kyoto gets in August. (Disney+)
Premieres Thursday: The Big Brunch — Dan Levy created and hosts a cooking competition that focuses exclusively on brunch. Great, the one thing you have to wait in line for longer than Imelda Staunton's corpse. (HBO Max)
The Calling — The latest series from TV legend David E. Kelley chronicles a NYPD detective's realization that relying on his faith might not be the best way to get the job done. He's just tumbling to this now? After one day on the job, most NYC cops renounce their belief in physics. (Peacock)
Falling for Christmas — Lindsay Lohan plays a woman who finds romance after a skiing accident robs her of her memory. In an added windfall, it's only her memory of everything that happened after 2006. (Netflix)
Love Never Lies: Destination Sardinia— Another season’s worth of Spaniards subject themselves to lie-detector tests to win money and (hopefully) preserve their relationship. So basically, it’s **The Newlywed Game** with a Gitmo sheen. (Netflix)
Mandrake — Northern Ireland is the setting for tense suspense, as a probation officer begins to suspect her current client may have resumed his murderous ways. The first clue: He asks her which part of Dahmer she found the funniest. (Shudder)
State of Alabama vs. Brittany Smith — The unequal treatment of men and women by the courts is the subtheme of a documentary that follows Smith's unsuccessful attempt to claim Stand Your Ground in the killing of her rapist. But that was two years ago, and now we know better. Now we extend the full protection of the law to the rapist's baby. (Netflix)
Warrior Nun — In Season 2, Sister Ava and her order of ass-kickers rise to a challenge no one before them has met: beating the devil. If they fail, it'll probably because they didn't get any support from the Democratic National Committee. (Netflix)
Premieres Friday: Ancient Apocalypse —British pseudoscientist Graham Hancock just happens to have a son who’s a senior manager of unscripted originals at Netflix. And some folks think that’s why he was given this docuseries to spout his crackpot theories about a 12,000-year-old civilization that allegedly disappeared without a trace. But you need more than one generation of family to take on Big Archeology! (Netflix)
Capturing the Killer Nurse — Following the usual streaming cycle of "First the dramatization, then the documentary," here's the true story of hospital killer Charles Cullen that inspired last month's The Good Nurse. Now we just wait for the inevitable third stage in the process, which is the release of the official Funko Pops. (Netflix)
Down to Earth with Zac Efron: Down Under— The show’s second season follows Efron and “wellness specialist” Darin Olien to Australia for fun, food and more of the alternative-health advocacy that the Office for Science and Society has called “insidious nonsense.” Oh, well; if the fallout from the series gets too heavy, they can always represent Pennsylvania in the Senate. (Netflix)
The English — Emily Blunt plays an Englishwoman of the 1890s who's in the American West to avenge the death of her son. Helping her out is a former member of the cavalry (Chaske Spencer) who also happens to be Pawnee. Nothing against the British per se, but on behalf of my Indigenous relatives, I'm still kind of hoping he goes all Wednesday Addams on her ass. (Amazon Prime)
Is That Black Enough for You? — Film critic Elvis Mitchell hosts a retrospective of Black cinematic representation in the 1970s. Not only is the subject matter compelling, but given Mitchell's history of leaving jobs under an ethical cloud, it'll be fun to see who'll be occupying his chair by the end of the doc. Frank Swietek at One Guy's Opinion, this is your big chance! (Netflix)
Mammals — James Corden and Sally Hawkins are husband and wife in a six-episode exposé of the secrets one marriage can hide. Corden, whose abusive behavior toward waitstaff is currently getting him barred from just about every good restaurant in New York ... plays a chef. Email us the gag you think would work best here, and maybe we'll run your picture next week. (Amazon Prime)
My Father’s Dragon — A children’s novel from 1948 becomes a modern-day animated fantasy in which a young runaway tries to rescue a captive dragon from a remote island. Oddly, this is also Alan Dershowitz’ explanation of what he was doing with Epstein. (Netflix)
Mythic Quest — As the acclaimed comedy about video-game developers enters Season 3, Ian and Poppy have struck out on their own to form a new company. Worked for Don Draper, right? He got four more seasons out of it, and all he had to sacrifice was his marriage and Bobby Kennedy. (Apple TV+)
Premieres Sunday: Luna's World — In a series based on Brazilian author Carina Rossi's novel No mundo da Luna, a struggling young journalist (Marina Moschen) agrees to write a horoscope column, only to discover the magical hugger-mugger she's writing about is real. From what I understand, this is the opposite of what happens to political reporters. (HBO Max)
Slash/Back — Teenagers living in the Arctic have to protect their village from an alien invasion in an '80s throwback flick that requires a serious suspension of disbelief. It's like, come on, guys. We all know there's no Arctic anymore. (Shudder)
Tulsa King — If the loss of Ozark left a hole in your schedule for stories of crime and corruption in the flyovers, here's Sylvester Stallone as a recently paroled New York mafioso who has to start all over again in Oklahoma. See, they had to skip over Arkansas, because the Huckabees wouldn't agree to license their images. (Paramount+)
Premieres Monday: Stutz — Jonah Hill shines the spotlight on his therapist, Dr. Phil Stutz, in an intimate documentary that's meant to advance Stutz's techniques of positive visualization. The acid test: imagining a world where nobody made Sausage Party. (Netflix)
Teletubbies — Revisit one of the most fatuous controversies of the ’90s with a reboot of the show that convinced a fearful nation the gays were coming for their children. Fortunately we’re all much smarter than that now, so we can just sit back and relax as Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po are joined by their new friend … **checks notes** … “Groomer.” (Netflix)
Premieres Tuesday: Deon Cole: Charleen's Boy — The comic and actor pays tribute to his mother with a stand-up set that covers topics like "racist hotel showers" and "post-coital bedtime prayers." Apparently, Charleen's favorite child-rearing tool was Cards Against Humanity. (Netflix)
Once Upon a Time in Londongrad — Follow BuzzFeed News reporter Heidi Blake as she traces the malign influence of Russian oligarchs across the globe. For balance, the show will end with seven minutes of Randy Quaid making armpit farts. (Peacock)
Run for the Money — Celebrities and wannabes try to avoid a team of pursuers in a Japanese game show that's essentially an elaborate version of Tag. There's also a Japanese version of Red Rover, which you can learn about by ordering Our Call to Arms: The Attack on Pearl Harbor from Time-Life Books. (Netflix)
