{"id":710224,"date":"2026-07-25T08:30:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T08:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/710224\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T08:30:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T08:30:11","slug":"the-guide-253-once-the-season-of-surprise-breakout-hits-this-summers-tv-has-lost-its-heat-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/710224\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guide #253: \u200bOnce the season of surprise breakout hits, this summer\u2019s TV has lost its heat | Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2015, when I worked on the old print version of the Guide, we ran a cover<\/a> calling on readers to \u201cStay inside this summer\u201d. Our argument went that, such was the amount of great TV<\/a> airing in the months from June to August that year (True Detective<\/a>, My Mad Fat Diary<\/a>, Veep<\/a> and, err, a show about Abz from the boyband 5ive\u2019s new career in farming), you\u2019d be a fool to head outside for some vitamin D.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t a contrarian viewpoint. Streaming\u2019s sudden rise had broken down the walls that had previously left the summer a parched, desolate wasteland and kept the good TV penned into the more viewer-friendly periods of spring and autumn. Now, great new shows would arrive all year round. In the years that followed, some of the most talked-about scripted TV would debut around or after the solstice: Stranger Things, Yellowstone, Euphoria, I May Destroy You, The Bear, and plenty more besides.<\/p>\n

But, if the Guide magazine still existed in 2026, its equivalent cover would be very different.<\/p>\n

\u201cTouch grass, not your TV remote\u201d.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s summer televisual offering, in the UK and the US, has rarely been worth eschewing the sun for. There may have been a few big returnees (The Bear for its final season, Silo, House of the Dragon) and a couple of interesting curios (the BBC\u2019s delicious premium trash series Two Weeks in August, or Apple TV\u2019s fantastic For All Mankind spin-off Star City), but buzzy, agenda-setting new shows have failed to materialise. If you were feeling generous you might stretch the criteria to include Widow\u2019s Bay<\/a>, which finished its much raved-about debut season on 17 June, but I\u2019m not feeling generous: that was inarguably a spring sensation; its shivery, low-lit charms incompatible with a June heatwave. And, discounting that show, the cupboard is severely bare.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a major mitigating factor here, of course: a bigger-than-ever World Cup, one that, as well as taking over the TV schedules of BBC and ITV in the UK, had by virtue of happening in North American timezones, eaten into the US primetime period where you\u2019d usually encounter big new summer series too. Still, I\u2019m not sure that alone is enough to excuse the dearth of shows this summer, especially when plenty will have been seeking some non-football counter-programming. And the situation hardly seems to be improving now that the World Cup is over. I can see only two upcoming series in the entirety of August that might fall into the \u201cbig new show\u201d bucket: Lanterns, an HBO superhero series that is mainly interesting for being Damon Lindelof\u2019s first show since the excellent Watchmen; and The Shards, an FX Bret Easton Ellis adaptation from Ryan Murphy (and given Murphy\u2019s recent<\/a> track record<\/a>, that has a more than slim chance of being a major disappointment).<\/p>\n

Making the effort \u2026 Apple TV\u2019s Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed. Photograph: Zach Dilgard\/Apple<\/p>\n

Where have the streamers \u2013 who don\u2019t have to worry about such notions as \u201cprimetime\u201d and \u201cschedules\u201d \u2013 been? Netflix, in particular, has endured a rotten summer so far, following on from a similarly miserable spring. Can you remember the last truly conversation-starting Netflix series? That inability to mint major new shows is said to be of serious concern to its higher-ups, according to Vulture\u2019s TV industry columnist, Joe Adalian<\/a>. Amazon has hardly fared any better \u2013 its most-discussed show, the Legally Blonde prequel Elle<\/a>, has mainly prompted conversations over how wretched it is. Disney+ can only really point to the final season of The Bear as a qualified success this summer (Mindy Kaling\u2019s Not Suitable For Work<\/a> having been swiftly memory-holed), while HBO have produced little aside from the dreary House of the Dragon and a Larry David historical sketch show that landed with a thump. Only Apple TV seem to be at least making an effort this summer, with a regular drip-drip of programming: Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, Star City, Lucky, Cape Fear<\/a>, Silo, Sugar<\/a>, and, next month, the returning Ted Lasso.<\/p>\n

Moreover, this isn\u2019t a one-off aberration, 2025\u2019s summer season was also something of a washout. The only debuting series that hasn\u2019t been swiftly forgotten from that period was Alien: Earth. That suggests a larger tectonic shift away from the summer, and perhaps that\u2019s the result of a greater emphasis on Emmy awards, which streaming services in particular are keen to hoover. Voting for the Emmys closes on 31 May, and in recent years there has been increasing eagerness to launch the best new series right before that cut off point. And why drop new shows in June, July and August when most viewers will still be catching up with the deluge delivered in late spring? (Something similar could be said to happen the UK, where the Bafta TV awards cut off point is 31 December, causing an autumnal glut of series.)<\/p>\n

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It all means that TV-wise, summer is likely to be a washout for a while yet. Yes, you might have to go outside and enjoy the sunshine. Ghastly, I know.<\/p>\n

To read the complete version of this newsletter please subscribe<\/a> to receive The Guide in your inbox every Friday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in 2015, when I worked on the old print version of the Guide, we ran a cover…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-710224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}