‘Brave New World,’ ‘Lovecraft Country’ & More New Shows on the Way
Fans of The Twilight Zone and The Politician have plenty to look forward to this summer and fall, but those on the hunt for something new to watch are also in luck.
HBO and Showtime both have must-see dramas you’ll want to keep an eye out for in the coming months with a new take on Perry Mason and a series adaptation of the comic novel The Good Lord Bird, respectively. And with the the launch of NBC’s streaming service Peacock comes the highly-anticipated Brave New World, based on the 1932 dystopian classic.
Scroll down to find out more about these dramas and two more that are sure to have viewers buzzing this summer and fall.
Beecham House
In this lush Masterpiece drama set in 1795 India, ex-soldier John Beecham (Tom Bateman) buys the titular manse to start a new life after quitting the greedy British East India Company. His extended family and household staff are soon caught up in shared secrets, lies, love and political intrigue. “I wanted a home where Indians and Brits lived together and interacted in a meaningful, surprising way,” says creator Gurinder Chadha. “It transcends usual upstairs/downstairs hierarchies.”
Beecham House, Series Premiere, Sunday, June 14, 10/9c, PBS (check local listings at pbs.org)
Perry Mason
This Perry Mason “is not the courtroom drama my granddad loved,” says Matthew Rhys, who plays the title character pre–legal career in the eight-episode limited series. A low-rent PI in Depression-era L.A., “he’s on the outside looking in,” Rhys says, but a window may open when lawyer E.B. Jonathan (John Lithgow) hires him to clear a grocer of his infant son’s murder. (For more, read our cover story next issue.)
Perry Mason, Series Premiere, Sunday, June 21, 9/8c, HBO
Brave New World
“Would we rather be happy or be free?” asks this drama’s showrunner, David Wiener. Aldous Huxley posed the question in his 1932 dystopian classic, updated here for the 21st century. Two societies are about to collide: New London, a supposed utopia where citizens like Bernard (Harry Lloyd) and Lenina (Jessica Brown Findlay) pop happy pills within a strict hierarchy, and the brutal Savage Lands, home to John (Alden Ehrenreich) and mom Linda (Demi Moore).
Brave New World, Series Premiere, July, Peacock
The Good Lord Bird
Ethan Hawke stars as radical abolitionist John Brown in this seven-part adaptation of James McBride’s 2013 comic novel. The real-life figure — “a character as rich as King Lear,” Hawke says — battles pro-slavers, with his fight culminating in the seminal 1859 Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, armory raid. The tale is told by the fictional Onion (Joshua Caleb Johnson), a young boy Brown liberates and fatefully mistakes for a girl. Hawke, who cowrote the series, compares Bird to Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn if, instead of floating down a river, Huck and Jim “were on horseback, guns blazing.”
The Good Lord Bird, Series Premiere, Sunday, October 4, 9/8c, Showtime
Lovecraft Country
Historic injustice and supernatural horror collide as Korean War vet Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors) road trips across 1950s America to find his dad. He, childhood friend Leti (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) encounter the twin terrors of Jim Crow–era racism and monsters similar to those in stories by H.P. Lovecraft. The drama is based on Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel and, exec producer Misha Green says, characters “deal with the metaphorical monsters of their pasts…to [confront] physical ones in their present.”
Lovecraft Country, Series Premiere, August, HBO
