Ted Lasso to The Shards: 10 of the best TV shows to watch this August

From the comeback of Apple TV's hit football comedy to a dark teen thriller from Ryan Murphy, and new DC superhero series Lanterns – these are the best series to watch and stream.

Set in the worlds of boxing and drug cartels, this revenge drama has Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson as an executive producer, as he was on Power, a show so successful it has led to five spin-offs. Fightland shares a similar gritty style. British boxer Duke Kilroy (Howard Charles, best known for Top Boy) becomes world heavyweight champion, only to spend the next eight years in a US prison for his brother's murder. On his release, he heads back to London determined to get vengeance on the man he is certain set him up for a crime he didn't commit: Kingsley Marshall (Nicholas Pinnock), a drug lord living a lush lifestyle. Duke decides to infiltrate his crime syndicate. Kingsley sets the series' tone in the teaser trailer, looking polished and ominous as he says, "Boxing is a criminal enterprise. Always has been and always will be."

Fightland premieres 31 July on Starz in the US and 27 August on Sky and NOW in the UK

Three years after it ended, supposedly for good, this warm, funny hit series returns with a twist. Former AFC Richmond football coach Ted (Jason Sudeikis) is lured back to the UK from Kansas City to coach a Richmond women's team that Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) has just created. The first episode sets up his choice too obviously, but by episode two he's back in London and the old show is reinvigorated with its new female-empowerment theme. Much of the lovable cast returns, including Jeremy Swift as director of operations Leslie Higgins, Juno Temple as marketing guru Keeley Jones, and Brett Goldstein as Roy Kent, now in Ted's old job but still a wonderfully acerbic character with a marshmallow heart for Keeley. Tanya Reynolds (from Netflix's Sex Education) plays a deadpan, talented coach for the women's team. With its motto "Believe", the show was embraced as pandemic-era comfort food when it began in 2020. Now that it's familiar, it may be even more comforting today.

Ted Lasso premieres 5 August on Apple TV internationally

Produced by Ryan Murphy, like a gazillion other series, this drama is set in 1981 Los Angeles and based on Bret Easton Ellis's 2023 semi-autobiographical novel. The conspicuously named Bret (Igby Rigney) is an aspiring writer and closeted gay man in his senior year of high school, when a new student, Robert, played by Homer Gere (yes, son of Richard) arrives. At the same time, a serial killer called The Traveler begins piling up victims. Kaia Gerber (daughter of Cindy Crawford) also stars as Bret's friend, Susan. The three are caught up in a world of rich, beautiful people and themes typical of both Murphy and Ellis: sexual identity, jealousy and suspicions. When The Shards was published, the New York Times review said the author had returned "to his old tropes: gruesome murder, lonely teenagers and 1980s Los Angeles".

The Shards premieres 5 August on Hulu in the US and 6 August on Disney+ internationally

Megan Park, writer and director of the coming-of-age comedy My Old Ass, created this teenage melodrama fraught with family secrets. Seventeen-year-old Annie (Ella Rubin) and her twin brother, Connor (Keen Ruffalo), live in New York City with their father (Jay Duplass). Out of nowhere, the twins inherit a Canadian island called Sterling Point from the grandfather they barely knew, the father of their late mother. The trailer gives away part of a key secret. We see Annie arriving at her grandfather's cottage on the island, meeting a girl around her age named Ramona (Amelie Hoeferle) and frantically calling Connor to say, "I'm freaking out. There's a girl here who looks just like Mom." But there are more twists after that, along with romance for Annie. Teen Vogue, previewing the show, praised the way it leans into young adult tropes, saying, "Dead-slash-absent parents, secret-sibling reveals, love triangles – this series has it all."

Sterling Point premieres 5 August on Prime Video internationally

Ricky Gervais created and is the main voice in this decidedly adult, British animated comedy about a group of stray city cats making mischief, sitting around asking existential questions, and using language that would be bleeped for a children's audience. Gervais plays Gus, the gang's leader. Diane Morgan (Motherland and Ann Droid) is the voice of the lead female cat, Olive, and Tom Basden is Ponce, the only posh member of the group. Netflix categorises the show as "raunchy, quirky, irreverent", and Deadline has called it "riotously politically incorrect yet philosophical", which is very on brand for Gervais. When it was shown at the Annecy International Animation Festival, Gervais said: "It's a sitcom. I don't even like the term 'adult animation' because it's a family of cats – just like in a sitcom." He added, "I hope you like cats. And swearing." 

Alley Cats premieres 7 August on Netflix internationally

Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson), the former US Army officer and current itinerant crime-solver, is often seen drifting through small towns, but in this fourth season of the popular action-thriller he moves to the city, a change likely to inject freshness into the sturdy premise. The plot is based on Lee Child's 2009 novel, Gone Tomorrow, the 13th in his Reacher series, and the show transplants the action from New York to Philadelphia, where Reacher witnesses a woman take her life on the subway. When he investigates, the trail leads to government agencies and intelligence networks, but that doesn't tamp down the action. Ritchson has said of this season, "It's just a labyrinth of fights." The series has become so reliable that a fifth season has already been ordered, and Neagley, a spin-off about Reacher's former military colleague Frances Neagley, is set to arrive next month.

Reacher premieres 12 August on Prime Video internationally

This Australian period drama is based on the classic 1901 novel by Miles Franklin, which was also the source for Gillian Armstrong's still-resonant 1979 film starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill, the beloved actor who died on 13 July. In the new series, Philippa Northeast plays Sybilla, a young woman who dreams of becoming a writer and defiantly resists marriage in favour of pursuing a career. Her plan becomes more complicated when she falls in love with a perfect match, the rich landowner Harry. Christopher Chung plays the romantic hero, a radical shift from his role as the computer-savvy, socially-inept Roddy Ho in Slow Horses. Set and shot amid the awe-inspiring South Australian countryside, the series includes the kind of scenes that make period dramas so popular, including the heroine riding a horse across the screen, an elaborate ball with dancing, and a shirtless hero. But the story remains timely. Northeast has said about Franklin's novel, "More than a century later, her words still remind us that ambition is not arrogance."

My Brilliant Career premieres 13 August on Netflix internationally

The cast and creators alone make this latest addition to the DC screen universe a standout among comics-inspired series. Kyle Chandler plays Hal Jordan, about to retire as one of the Lanterns, the intergalactic cops whose glowing green rings give them extraordinary powers. Aaron Pierre co-stars as John Stewart, whom Hal is training as his replacement. Hal believes a murder 10 years ago in Nebraska has extraterrestrial written all over it, and the story moves back and forth between 2016 and today. Kelly Macdonald plays the sheriff of the Nebraska town, while Laura Linney will appear as a character still being kept under wraps. The show was created by Chris Mundy (a producer of Ozark), Damon Lindelof (Lost and Watchmen) and comics writer Tom King. Mundy has said he was inspired by some sophisticated series, including the first season of True Detective, which also had dual timelines and hinged on the friendship of Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey's characters. "We think of this as a relationship show between John and Hal," he told EW.

Lanterns premieres on HBO Max on 16 August in the US and 17 August in the UK

Now on its third series, this delightfully silly, thoroughly comic travel show sees Conan O'Brien meet fans across the world, and put himself in ridiculous situations. This season's four episodes take him to Morocco, India, the Philippines and the Netherlands. Shooting in Amsterdam, he was photographed in an orange hat and scarf and enormous rhinestone-rimmed orange sunglasses, which is funny enough in itself. While there, he hinted at one of his adventures for the show in a radio interview. "One of my fans is a high-fashion model here in Amsterdam and she said she could teach me how to be a male model," he said. "I showed up, I met with her, and she told me at the end, 'This isn't going to work.'" In the same interview he gave a pithy explanation of his goal. "We've all seen travel shows – they try to teach you about the country," he said. "I want you at the end of my program to know nothing about the country. I want you to be maybe even dumber than you were at the start of the show."

Conan O'Brien Must Go premieres 21 August on HBO Max in the US and 22 August in the UK

Joel Edgerton once more plays all the Jasons in this mind-bending series. In the first season, Chicago physicist Jason Dessen was abducted into an alternate universe, landing in different versions of his life and accidentally releasing hundreds of versions of himself as he tried to make his way home to his wife, Daniela (Jennifer Connelly), and teenaged son, Charlie (Oakes Fegley). He made it back, and the family seemed settled until hordes of variant Jasons came after them. Now in season two they are on the run. Blake Crouch created the show based on his own novel but used up the book's plot in the first season, so who knows where he will send the family next? Beneath all the sci-fi and suspense, the series raises questions about the big what-ifs of life as Jason One grapples with his choices.

Dark Matter premieres 28 August on Apple TV internationally

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