Sizzling Summer: Our Top 10 Picks for the Season’s Hottest Shows (PHOTOS)
Summer’s on the way, and with it comes a slate of TV premieres we can’t wait to see.
It promises to be an exciting time for fans of two of TV’s long-running titles. Outlander returns for Season 7 in June 2023, and The Walking Dead universe expands with the Maggie and Negan show, The Walking Dead: Dead City.
Some of 2022’s hits like The Bear and The Afterparty come back for their second seasons soon, and fans can look forward to two new reboots on the horizon in The Full Monty series and the Justified spinoff, Justified: City Primeval (each from FX/Hulu).
Here, TV Guide Magazine’s Emily Aslanian, Kate Hahn, Jim Halterman, Ileane Rudolph, and Diane Snyder share their top picks for shows premiering in summer 2023 (in no particular order). With stories and casts like these, it’s sure to be a scorcher of a season.
1. The Crowded Room
Friday, June 9, Apple TV+
Tom Holland may be best known as Spider-Man in the Marvel movie franchise, but in this taut thriller based on Daniel Keyes’ novel The Minds of Billy Milligan, he plays troubled young man Danny Sullivan. Viewers meet Danny in the opening moments of the 10-part series (three episodes drop first, with subsequent installments each Friday), just before a shooting occurs in 1979 New York City. The mystery begins once Danny is apprehended for the crime. As he’s questioned by sympathetic interrogator Rya Goodwin (Amanda Seyfried), he shares pivotal moments in his life—and the revelations are shockers. They would probably make even Peter Parker run and hide.
2. The Full Monty
Wednesday, June 14, Hulu (from FX)
Some 25 years after the pants-dropping feature film, the original cast returns in this comedic series that revisits everymen Gaz (Robert Carlyle), Horse (Paul Barber), Lomper (Steve Huison), Nathan (Wim Snape), Gerald (Tom Wilkinson), Dave (Mark Addy) and Dave’s wife, Jean (Lesley Sharp), who are still residing in the north of England. But stripping down to their birthday suits (hence the title) is in their past.
“We were never trying to mimic the original film,” says executive producer Uberto Pasolini, who also produced the movie. “Our characters are now 25 years older, with children and grandchildren, but the theme of male friendship is apparent.”
Other themes include healthcare and education cutbacks along with “intergenerational issues at play” as the older crowd learns from the young’uns (like Gaz’s teenage daughter Destiny, played by Talitha Wing), and vice versa.
3. Outlander
Friday, June 16, 8/7c, Starz
The saga of time-traveling 20th century surgeon Claire Fraser (Caitríona Balfe) and her Scottish Highlander husband Jamie (Sam Heughan) continues with adventures based on An Echo in the Bone, the seventh novel in Diana Gabaldon’s bestselling series. Promises Balfe, “It’s really epic, expansive.” The cast teases lots more in TV Guide Magazine’s next cover story!
4. Endeavour
Sunday, June 18, 9/8c, PBS
A prequel to the beloved Inspector Morse series, Endeavour enters its ninth and final season with the distinction of being the longest-running current show on the network’s Masterpiece roster. Detective Sergeant Endeavour Morse (Shaun Evans), an Oxford University dropout with a brilliant mind and a taste for opera and crossword puzzles, continues to transform into the heavy-drinking curmudgeon created by author Colin Dexter.
“I think Endeavour’s aloneness and isolation is cemented in this series,” Evans says of his character’s journey. “What we discover is that, for one reason or another, he cannot reach out.”
5. The Walking Dead: Dead City
Sunday, June 18, 10/9c, AMC
Two of Dead’s fan-favorite characters—former Hilltop leader Maggie Rhee (Lauren Cohan) and reformed Saviors boss Negan Smith (Jeffrey Dean Morgan)—are headed into post-apocalyptic New York City.
In the first of the franchise’s three new spinoffs, the badass pair team up on the hunt for Maggie’s son, Hershel. Not only are we excited to see a rotted-out Big Apple, but the six-episode series also amps up the conflict between Maggie and Negan, who killed her husband and Hershel’s father, Glenn (Steven Yeun).
6. LA Fire & Rescue
Wednesday, June 21, 8/7c, NBC
If you’re missing new episodes of Chicago Fire during the summer, the show’s producers have you covered. In this on-the-edge-of-your-seat docuseries, real lives are at risk, and the first responders are actual members of the L.A. County Fire Department. Tasked with protecting a population of four million spread over 2,300 square miles, the rescue team does it all: conduct daring helicopter mountain rescues, don hazmat suits to tackle chemical blazes and respond to lifeguards’ SOS calls.
7. The Bear
Thursday, June 22, Hulu (from FX)
We last saw genius chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Golden Globe winner Jeremy Allen White) hanging a window sign that read “The Bear Is Coming Soon”—a move that signaled the end of The Beef, his family’s struggling Chicago restaurant. But, warns creator Christopher Storer of Season 2, “a [new] restaurant just creates the same amount of problems.” So will Bob Odenkirk’s (Better Call Saul) mystery guest character prove to be an ally or adversary for Carmy and the gang?
8. The Afterparty
Wednesday, July 12, Apple TV+
The comedy-mystery’s core cast returns to solve a new murder when a groom is killed after his swanky marriage ceremony. Sweet Aniq (Sam Richardson), a guest at the nuptials with his girlfriend Zoë (Zoë Chao), calls on savvy Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish) to take the case.
As in Season 1, each episode explores a different character’s account, told in the style of popular film genres to match the storyteller’s personality (Jane Austen romance, Wes Anderson indie, even a ’90s erotic thriller). The new ensemble cast includes Zach Woods, Elizabeth Perkins, John Cho, and Ken Jeong.
9. Justified: City Primeval
Thursday, July 18, FX
Eight years after the conclusion of Justified, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) returns in this limited series that takes its inspiration from Elmore Leonard’s novel City Primeval. A run-in with would-be carjackers on his home turf in Florida sends Raylan and his 15-year-old daughter Willa (Olyphant’s real-life daughter Vivian) to Detroit for a trial. There, he gets involved in a case that will bring in one of Leonard’s nastiest antagonists: thrill killer Clement Mansell (Boyd Holbrook).
“He’s kind of a supreme nihilist that’s a scary character to [Raylan],” executive producer Michael Dinner promises.
10. The Lincoln Lawyer
July, Netflix
The sophomore season of the drama, drawn from Michael Connelly’s 2011 novel The Fifth Witness, finds intrepid Los Angeles attorney Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) in an unusual spot: winning. Whether that escalates or crashes down depends on a big case involving a chef, Lisa Trammell (Lana Parrilla), accused of murdering a real estate developer. As for Mickey’s relationship with his ex-wife Maggie McPherson (Neve Campbell)?
“They love each other,” says Garcia-Rulfo. “But with all the circumstances, it’s hard.”
