“Queen Of The South” (Season 1)
Startdate/Slot: June 23rd/Thursdays at 10, USA
Synopsis: A young Mexican woman attempts to bring down the drug cartel that killed her boyfriend, but finds herself rising through its ranks instead.
What You Need To Know: Best known for amiable procedurals that your parents enjoy like “Burn Notice” and “Suits,’ USA had a pretty successful attempt at drawing a new audience with last summer’s “Mr. Robot,” one of the most acclaimed new shows of last year. Their first real hope to build on that success is “Queen Of The South,” an adaptation of Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s novel “La Reina Del Sur,” which itself was turned into a hugely successful Spanish-language telenovela for Telemundo. The new adaptation is penned by the team behind well-liked horror comedy “The Final Girls,” and toplines “City Of God” actress Alice Braga in the kind of role that she’s long deserved, but rarely gotten. The tone seems to be a sort of mix of “Breaking Bad” and Catherine Zeta-Jones’ storyline in “Traffic,” and has the potential to be a compelling and gritty change of pace for the network, one that could keep fans of “Narcos” happy before their next dose, at least if the execution is up to scratch. Trailers look promising, if a little over-the-top, but we’ll give it a shot if only for Braga.
“Roadies” (Season 1)
Startdate/Slot: June 26th/Sundays 10pm, Showtime
Synopsis: A bittersweet comedy following the lives and loves of a squad of dedicated roadies as they bond into a kind of family unit over their shared love of music and their undersung role in bringing an arena-level band, complete with egos and indiscretions, on a US tour.
What You Need To Know: From “Singles” and “Almost Famous” director Cameron Crowe, it’s perhaps not surprising that “Roadies” takes the music business as its backdrop. And he has certainly attracted a high-profile cast — Luke Wilson, Carla Gugino, Imogen Poots, Rafe Spall and Keisha Castle-Hughes are all part of the ensemble. A very different take on the music biz from Terence Winters‘ disappointing “Vinyl,’ ‘Roadies’ has a tone set determinedly to a nostalgic “love, laughter and life on the road” vibe, so the real challenge will be to see if the oddly old-fashioned-looking show can grab an audience amid much edgier fare. It does look potentially oversweetened, bordering on the twee, but we very much hope to be proven wrong, and that “Roadies” will be a refreshingly good-natured alternative to the season’s gritter fare, and will see Crowe regain his mojo after the big-screen mishap of “Aloha.”
“The Night Of” (Season 1)
Startdate/Slot: July 10th/Sundays at 9pm HBO
Synopsis: Miniseries following the investigation, and the accused, of a high-profile New York murder case involving a Pakistani-American cab driver accused of killing a young woman.
What You Need To Know: Despite the glittering names associated with it, “The Night Of” has had a long and troubled path to the screen that finally comes to an end this summer. The show is based on the BBC drama “Criminal Justice,” which starred Ben Whishaw and Pete Postlethwaite, and was originally set to mark James Gandolfini’s return to HBO before his sad death three years ago. A pilot was filmed with him, but producers pushed on, with John Turturro eventually taking over from Gandolfini, while the great Riz Ahmed (“Nightcrawler”) plays the accused, and familiar HBO names like Bill Camp, Paul Sparks and Max Casella cropping up in the cast too. Expect a show that spends as much time in prison with the accused as with the lawyer defending him and the cops investigating him, a mix of “The Wire,” “Law & Order” and “A Prophet,” and with great crime writer Richard Price penning the scripts, and Steve Zaillian and James Marsh directing, this could fill the nutritious summer HBO miniseries hole left by “Show Me A Hero.”
“Mr. Robot” (Season 2)
Startdate/Slot: July 13th/Wednesdays 10pm USA
Synopsis: The continuing adventures of Elliot Alderson, a cybersecurity engineer who becomes caught in a war between giant conglomerate E Corp, and a secretive, anarchist group of hackers known as F Society, led by the mysterious Mr. Robot.
What You Need To Know: Perhaps the biggest small-screen surprise of last year was “Mr. Robot,” which had a little-heralded debut on USA but proved to be one of the most visually-distinctive and daring series on air. It was an imperfect object — it’s sometimes a little too in thrall to its influences (mostly David Fincher), and brushes close to silliness in places — but at its best, which was most of the time, it was as aesthetically, sonically and thematically ambitious as anything on TV, and came very close to achieving those ambitions. For the second season, showrunner Sam Esmail will be directing every episode, making it even more auteurish than before, while the major plot twists from the end of the first run make it unlikely that this’ll be a rerun of what we’ve already seen. The excellent Michael Kristofer is upgraded to a regular for the second season, while Grace Gummer, Craig Robinson, Aasif Mandvi and rapper Joey Bada$$ are the intriguing new additions to the cast.
“Stranger Things” (Season 1)
Startdate/Slot: July 15th/Netflix
Synopsis: In Hawkins, Indiana in the 1980s, a young boy goes missing and his mother (Winona Ryder) embarks on a perilous investigation into his disappearance encountering high-level governmental conspiracies and supernatural forces alike.
What You Need To Know: With all eight hour-long episodes of this period-set supernatural thriller set to drop simultaneously in Netflix’s patented binge-encouraging model, it’s safe to say that July 15th will be make-or-break day for this original show from Matt and Ross Duffer and producer/director Shawn Levy. And if in outline it sounds a little familiar, perhaps that’s to be expected: the Duffer brothers were previously writers on Fox’s “Wayward Pines” with which “Stranger Things” seems to share at least a little DNA. However, with a hugely welcome starring role for a ripe-for-renaissance Winona Ryder, and a supporting cast that includes Matthew Modine, TV Stalwart David Harbour and “Mad Men“s Cara Buono, the hope will be that this can rise above the various other supernaturally-inflected shows set to air around the same time (the ’80s setting, apparently showing the influence of the cult TV shows of that era, should also go some way toward differentiating it) and carve out a niche within an increasingly overpopulated subcategory.
