A glance ahead at July and summer
The Fourth of July weekend may mean fireworks for some, but it’s normally a quiet weekend for original television. It’s right up there with the days after Christmas and Thanksgiving, a rare admission by broadcasters and streamers that there may be better things to do.
Does anything say “slow weekend” better than a 25.5-hour marathon of “Gilligan’s Island” (4:30 a.m. Sunday, Sundance) episodes? But wait, it gives way to “Hogan’s Heroes” (6 a.m. Monday, Sundance)! Sundance? Robert Redford must be so proud.
And it’s not just a slow weekend. In some ways the biggest and most anticipated series of July have already begun. Netflix launched the second half of the fourth season of “Stranger Things” on Friday, the same day Prime Video debuted the Chris Pratt military thriller series “The Terminal List.”
If you’re waiting for summer’s most anticipated event, the “Game of Thrones” sequel “House of Dragons,” you’ve got a while. It makes its HBO and HBO Max premiere on Aug. 21. A similar big-budget fantasy, the Prime Video Tolkien adaptation “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” debuts on Sept. 2.
It may not feature dragons, but the Netflix documentary series “The Most Hated Man on the Internet” shows promise. Premiering on July 28, it recalls Hunter Moore, a man who described himself as a “professional life ruiner.” He founded a site called Is Anyone Up? in the 2010s, a hub for so-called “revenge porn” imagery.
“Hated” interviews multiple women who spent years trying to get unauthorized images removed from his site as well as crusaders who eventually brought Moore down.
Sometimes it seems that true-crime docudramas are in a competition to find the most odious characters imaginable. “The Most Hated Man on the Internet” looks like it may be hard to top — for now.
No summer, or July, is complete without Shark Week, a basic-cable tradition since the late 1980s. This week’s festival of deep-sea predators runs from July 24-31 on Discovery.
Viewers can also catch it on the subscription streaming service Discovery+. Committed cord-cutters can also stream Shark Week on FuboTV and use a seven-day trial to watch it for free.
And July is also the month when Hallmark reminds us that Christmas — and an onslaught of Christmas movies — is just a few warm months away.
The odd-couple buddy-cop drama “We Hunt Together” (7:30 p.m. Sunday, Showtime, TV-MA) returns after nearly two years. The U.K. import stars Eve Myles (“Broadchurch,” “Keeping Faith”) as a no-nonsense female detective, Lola Franks, partnered with the bookish Jackson Mendy (Babou Ceesay), a veteran of the British version of internal affairs. To Lola, he’s a cop who used to bust cops — a natural enemy. They both have problems of their own and a mutual distrust that they set aside to search for the sickos and predators who come their way.
SATURDAY HIGHLIGHTS
› TNT embarks on a “Star Wars” marathon, beginning with “New Hope” (noon Saturday, TV-PG) through “Return of the Jedi” (6 p.m. Sunday, TV-PG). ›
Paramount begins a three-day “Yellowstone” (11 a.m. Saturday, TV-MA) marathon, unspooling every episode of the first three seasons of the Dutton family saga. ›
Check local listings for regional coverage of Major League Baseball (7 p.m., Fox). ›
Classic cars go to the highest bidder at the Barrett-Jackson Live Auction (8 p.m., FYI), taking place in Las Vegas.