The Guide #253: Once the season of surprise breakout hits, this summer’s TV has lost its heat
In this week’s newsletter: The release calendar is more shaped by award seasons than what viewers might be looking for, with even the big platforms
In this week’s newsletter: The release calendar is more shaped by award seasons than what viewers might be looking for, with even the big platforms offering little to get excited about Back in 2015, when I worked on the old print version of the Guide, we ran a cover calling on readers to “Stay inside this summer”.
Our argument went that, such was the amount of great TV airing in the months from June to August that year (True Detective, My Mad Fat Diary, Veep and, err, a show about Abz from the boyband 5ive’s new career in farming), you’d be a fool to head outside for some vitamin D.
This wasn’t a contrarian viewpoint. Streaming’s sudden rise had broken down the walls that had previously left the summer a parched, desolate wasteland and kept the good TV penned into the more viewer-friendly periods of spring and autumn. Now, great new shows would arrive all year round. In the years that followed, some of the most talked-about scripted TV would debut around or after the solstice: Stranger Things, Yellowstone, Euphoria, I May Destroy You, The Bear, and plenty more besides.
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