Bye bye Spring, hello summer! Even if you’re experiencing some residual June gloom, the gates of the summer season have opened up. There’s going to be just as much television to look forward to after May Sweeps, but there’s actually going to be more to see in the Returning Shows category. If you want to quench your summer thirst with some new material, here are a few shows in calendar order which are premiering this month. Pay close attention, because the list is as original and varied as it gets.
–I’m Dying Up Here (June 4-Showtime)
Based on the William Knoedelseder book of the same name, this show takes a close-up look at the on and off-stage stories of aspiring comedians in the 1970s. When comedy clubs were the go-to cutthroat arenas, they were the places where people traveled to live, breathe, and sweat the funny (sometimes literally). For a show about comedians, it sometimes misses the funny mark. Don’t be discouraged because that is sometimes the point. As the show itself says “sometimes you kill, sometimes you bomb.” That didn’t stop a generation of comedians from coming out every night and using every tragic, ironic, happy, crazy thing they saw as something worthy of comedy to be shared with the world. Jim Carrey serves as Executive Producer on this project obviously very close to his heart, given the world famous comedian got his start at notable comedy clubs such as The Comedy Store on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard. You can watch the full pilot on YouTube now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kye0QwGX9E
Claws (June 11-TNT)
Everyone knows the second most popular place to gossip besides the hair salon is the nail salon. Oh the secrets that are exchanged over a mani-pedi! Except this time it is the manicurists who have the most to hide. For reasons you’ll see during the premiere, these women decide to take charge of their own futures and enter the money laundering business. Just watch the previews to see how these women handle carving out their place in one of the most cutthroat illegal businesses. It could all go wrong, but then again, it takes a certain kind of wacky to make these kinds of plans. Would you want to be caught on the wrong end of these women’s Claws?
Blood Drive (June 14-Syfy)
If you’re missing a show which features the most depraved, gory, graphic sights you can think of, Syfy’s Blood Drive is the show for you. Though the premise is a dystopia where a fuel shortage forces the femme fatale (Christina Ochoa) to use human blood to fuel cars, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Truly, just watch the trailer, and imagine just how many buckets of fake blood there must have been on set.
The Mist (June 22-Spike)
Follow up the gore with the suspense and horror audiences around the world have come to fear from bestselling novelist Stephen King. Adapted from his 1980 novel, the story’s monsters come from the impenetrable fog which overtakes a New England town. With no hope of escape, a growing fear of the unknown secrets on the outside, everyone slowly loses their grip on what is real in their living nightmare.
GLOW (June 23-Netflix)
Women’s wrestling is a huge market now, but what did it look like when it was first breaking ground in the United States? GLOW is the fictional recreation of the 1980s series filmed on the Las Vegas strip. In this story of a group of women, including a struggling actress, trained to become famous female wrestlers. Not afraid to call out the stereotypes and misogyny, GLOW promises to be funny and raw as it shows how a dream can evolve. How you think you’re going to get to the top is ever rarely the way it actually happens. Nevertheless, she persisted.
Gypsy (June 30-Netflix)
Naomi Watts returns to television for the first time in nearly a decade as a therapist who becomes dangerously over-involved in her patients’ lives. This kind of obsession isn’t just unhealthy for therapist and her patients, it heads down the rabbit hole of sociopathic. Per usual protocol, Netflix is keeping tight-lipped about where this is going. We can guess it’s no place good for the characters, which means it’s nothing but good television.
Take your pick of these new crop of summer shows, then let us know which one you are most looking forward to.
Follow Us
