Premieres Wednesday: Penguin Town — Remember March of the Penguins? Here's an eight-episode series that shows a bunch of the tuxedoed little scamps descending upon an African resort to pair up and party. I'm hoping the show's a big enough hit to justify a second season, so we can see them all sent to Key West for Fantasy Fest. (Netflix)
Premieres Thursday: Black Summer — Season 2 of this series adds another challenge for its cast of humans as they try to survive a zombie apocalypse: the arrival of winter. Hey, there's a hardship that's going to play well with the Florida viewing audience in the middle of June. I think I left my sympathy in that hooded sweatshirt I get to wear three days out of the year. (Netflix)
iCarly — This revival of the Nickelodeon hit about teen internet stars faces an obvious challenge: What kid these days doesn't have their own web show? You want to take risks, you show that they've all moved over to Onlyfans. But I'm not holding my breath for that kind of relevance. (Paramount+)
Katla — Iceland sends us a sci-fi series in which the eruption of a volcano releases weird and mysterious forces that have been lurking below the Earth's surface. Just as Black Summer is a prequel to Z Nation, I'm assuming this show is a prequel to the entire existence of Björk. (Netflix)
Summer Camp Island — Season 4 of the whimsical animated hit finds pals Oscar and Hedgehog having new adventures on that magical island where anything can happen. Listen, I didn't think anybody could get a viable family show out of Rikers Island either, but there it is. (HBO Max)
Superdeep — A Russian urban legend provides the jumping-off point for this horror flick, in which a research team discovers something sinister at the bottom of the world's largest borehole. To these ears, "the world's largest borehole" sounds like something your 13-year-old niece would call Rand Paul. But far be it from me to throw shade on what must have been a traumatic experience indeed for the bored Muscovites who totally made it all up. (Shudder)
Premieres Friday: Chivas: El Rebaño Sagrado — A Mexican football club tries to come back from a multiseason losing streak in a four-episode docuseries that seems noticeably out of step with this week's other international offerings. I mean, unless the ground beneath the soccer field opens up at some point and Cthulhu comes slithering out. (Amazon Prime)
Fatherhood — In real life, Kevin Hart divorced one wife and cheated on another while she was pregnant. In this movie, his onscreen spouse dies a day after giving birth to their child. See, that's the great thing about streaming: You can make life turn out the way you've always wanted it to! (Netflix)
Jagame Thandhiram — Fans back in India are upset that this dramatic portrait of a gangster's crisis of conscience isn't being released to theaters. But let's be realistic. Going to a theater in India when there's a pandemic raging is only slightly less dangerous than going to the Central Florida Fair when there isn't. (Netflix)
Luca — Pixar's latest is a sun-drenched character study of two young boys enjoying a summer together on the Italian Riviera. The twist: They're both actually sea monsters from the world below. Jesus, who programmed this week, anyway? The Mole Man? (Disney+)
Premieres Sunday: Evil — When we left forensic psychologist Kristen Bouchard at the end of Season 1, signs were strong she had been possessed by demonic forces. The smart money says it was Agatha all along — but keep watching the boreholes! (Paramount+)
