From a wholesome reality dating show to a David E. Kelley legal thriller, here’s what to add to your summer watch list.
We get it: There’s an overwhelming number of television shows right now. The streaming landscape is an impractical maze, and the good stuff easily gets lost in the shuffle. But most of us can still find one show that cuts through the noise. We call this “appointment viewing” — or the time you carve out in your busy schedule to watch the show you’ll want to unpack the next day with your friends while it’s still on your mind. Tune in here each month to read what writer Michel Ghanem, a.k.a. @tvscholar, deems worthy of a group-chat deep dive.
So far this year, we’ve covered recently Emmy-nominated series like Shōgun and True Detective: Night Country, and rooted for underrated gems like Big Mood and Interview with the Vampire. Summer typically comes with a lighter television release schedule, particularly in an industry still reeling from the strikes, but there are a few exciting options you shouldn’t miss out on between your beach trips and escapes from the city. Our round-up includes a wholesome Netflix reality dating show, a Detroit-based BET+ mystery comedy, a David E. Kelley legal murder mystery on Apple TV+, and more.
Watch The Boyfriend (Netflix) if you’re craving a wholesome dating reality show.
We haven’t yet covered reality TV in this column, but Netflix’s The Boyfriend stands out as something special. Reminiscent of Terrace House, this Japanese-language series follows a group of queer men in their twenties and thirties as they move into a vacation home in the seaside town of Tateyama, where they hope to fall in love and create new connections. The Boyfriend is a soothing alternative to Scandoval levels of drama or the drunken Real Housewives quarrels you’ve come to expect from Western reality television. The queer men on The Boyfriend are often depicted as having vulnerable conversations about dating and relationships that put their hearts on their sleeves. The “drama” stems mostly from determining who will choose to work together each day at the coffee truck they run as a household. A panel of five guests also watch the episodes alongside the viewer, adding depth through surprisingly nuanced discussions about the house’s dynamics, plus quippy jokes along the way (like poking fun at the nauseating chicken smoothies Usaq drinks to maintain his go-go dancer physique).
It feels particularly progressive for Netflix to air a reality series about queer men in Japan, a country where legal protections for LGBTQ+ folks are minimal and same-sex marriage is not recognized. The Boyfriend might feel slightly over-produced at times (it’s like you can almost hear a producer telling the cast to stand in a line and look solemnly into the distance for a shot), but most of what we see feels authentic and heartwarming, making this wholesome ten-episode reality show one you shouldn’t miss.
Watch Diarra from Detroit (BET+) if you want your mystery served with a side of comedy.
Sadly snubbed from the 2024 Emmy nominations, writer and actress Diarra Kilpatrick’s auteur television turn shouldn’t be slept on. Diarra from Detroit is an addictive BET+ eight-episode mystery comedy series recommended by Maura Tierney and beloved by critics that stars Kilpatrick as Diarra, a school teacher who goes on a magical Tinder date during a nasty divorce. Unfortunately, Diarra gets ghosted the day after. Instead of letting bygones be bygones, she starts investigating her ghost, only to find out he may be a grown-up missing child from the 90s. Diarra frequently puts herself right in the middle of ever-expanding conspiracies and pursues red herrings with her group of friends, kind of like a more realistic Search Party meets Insecure and Only Murders in the Building. As the plot thickens, Diarra’s own search for who she wants to be post-separation also deepens with the help of an insightful voice-over of the character’s inner monologue throughout the season.
Watch Fantasmas (HBO) to escape to a dreamlike world.
If you’ve been resistant to sketch comedy television, HBO’s Fantasmas is your ticket to entry. Fantasmas’ six episodes has more plot cohesion and structure to it than something like Portlandia. It reminds me a little bit of High Maintenance and Random Acts of Flyness in the way it intimately examines how identity functions in contemporary life. We follow Julio (Julio Torres, who stars, directs, and writes) on his search for a lost pearl earring that he hyper-fixates on instead of facing his real problem: his resistance to signing up for Proof of Existence, the primary form of identification in this surrealist alternate reality version of New York City.
During his hunt, the story veers towards the sketch element of the series, embarking on small detours from the plot to follow minor characters — some eyebrow-raising cameos — as they navigate hyper-specific circumstances. Let Aidy Bryant convince you to buy a custom outfit for your toilet, or watch Rosie Perez try to escape a Real Housewives-The Truman Show hybrid parody. Just like some of your weirdest dreams, the show’s sets are only partly constructed, giving scenes an eerie quality like something out of a Maya Deren experimental film but pulled back down to Earth for an HBO audience. In a television landscape that relies too much on franchises, thank goodness there can still be shows as wondrous and creative as this one.
Watch Presumed Innocent (Apple TV+) if you’re craving a whodunnit.
Apple TV+ has a habit of snatching notable actors to star in their series, and Presumed Innocent is no exception, with Jake Gyllenhaal making his starring television debut in the remake of the 1990 film. The legal mystery series might feel eerily similar to The Undoing, another David E. Kelley project that unravels through a courtroom narrative. Here, we follow Rusty (Gyllenhaal), a prosecution lawyer who is accused of murdering his colleague Carolyn (The Worst Person in the World’s Renate Reinsve) with whom he was having an affair. The show keeps its cards close to the chest over eight episodes by letting every character seem like a possible suspect, including Rusty’s wife (an always excellent Ruth Negga) and the hungry prosecuting lawyer who happens to be Rusty’s rival at work (Peter Sarsgaard). The show’s scandalous reveals give it a titillating true crime feel that makes for a delicious summer binge.
Watch Sunny (Apple TV+) if you miss Severance.
While waiting impatiently for the next season of Severance, you may want to get lost in the mystery of Sunny. The half-hour, ten-episode dark comedy follows Suzie (Rashida Jones), an American woman living in a somewhat futuristic Kyoto during the aftermath of a plane crash that killed her husband and son. Amidst her grief, she starts to realize her husband may not have been simply a refrigerator technician, unveiling a deeper conspiracy at the tech company that employed him. Jones is in top form here in possibly a career-best performance for the Parks and Recreation actress.
Despite the show’s darker tone, Jones still gets to utilize her laid-back comedic timing alongside Sunny (voiced by Joanna Sotomura), a robot gifted to her from her late husband’s workplace. Sunny is programmed with uncanny human-like empathy to help Suzie navigate her grief. The robot’s design and the production aesthetic as a whole is fascinating in its own right; in this version of Japan, live-translating earpieces are worn across the country to help facilitate conversation (Suzie is dyslexic and can’t learn languages very easily), adding to the list of bilingual shows Apple has on its roster and the infusion of recent American-produced Japanese-language series. So will Sunny end up being a murderous robot like M3GAN? Is Suzie’s husband actually alive? What is actually going on at this mysterious tech company? We’ll have to watch and find out, before the finale airs September 2.
