July’s streaming queue is being packed by programmers with dragons, bunkers, mutants, Time Lords and Burning Man footage. WIRED’s latest monthly recommendations point to a TV market where summer is no longer filler season, and genre franchises are doing much of the work.
The list avoids some obvious current draws, including returning series such as The Bear and The Vampire Lestat, and the new series Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America. Instead, WIRED frames its picks around shows tied to technology, culture, science fiction and social anxiety. That is a grand way to say: the nerd shelf is busy.
Franchise machinery is running hot
HBO’s House of the Dragon returned for a third season on June 21. The Game of Thrones prequel, set about 200 years before that series, follows the Targaryen succession fight after King Viserys I names Princess Rhaenyra as heir over his brother Daemon. WIRED also notes George R.R. Martin has criticized some of cocreator Ryan Condal’s choices as “toxic.”
Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender put out all seven episodes of its second season on June 25. The series follows Aang, a 12-year-old Avatar who can control all four elements in a world split among the Water Tribe, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation and Air Nomads. A third and final season has been shot, though WIRED says release is unlikely before 2027.
My Adventures With Superman began its third season on Adult Swim on June 13 and streams on HBO Max. Jack Quaid voices Clark Kent opposite Alice Lee’s Lois Lane in the anime-influenced romantic comedy, which WIRED flags for its rare perfect Rotten Tomatoes score.
Old universes get new distribution
Doctor Who is scattered across services, because streaming rights apparently needed their own Tardis. WIRED says the original 26 seasons are on BritBox and Tubi, Ncuti Gatwa’s two seasons remain on Disney+ in the US, and the first 13 seasons of the modern era moved to AMC+ on June 11. The future of the show is uncertain after Gatwa and Russell T. Davies departed.
Disney+ adds more animation with Adventure Time: Side Quests, developed by original storyboard supervisor Nate Cash, which returns Finn and Jake to earlier-era adventures in the Land of Ooo. The service also has X-Men ’97, whose second season begins July 1 with three of nine episodes. The revival continues the 1990s animated series and brings back many original voice actors.
Dystopia, paranoia and desert mythmaking
Apple TV’s Silo starts its third season on July 3. Graham Yost’s adaptation stars Rebecca Ferguson as Juliette, an engineer in Silo 18, an underground bunker holding the last 10,000 people after Earth becomes toxic. A fourth and final season has been confirmed.
Starz is bringing The Listeners to the US after its BBC run in the UK. The five-part drama, adapted from Jordan Tannahill’s 2021 novel, stars Rebecca Hall as Claire, a teacher who hears a low-frequency hum others cannot detect until she finds another person who can.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns to Paramount+ for season four on July 23, with weekly episodes through September 24. The prequel and Discovery spin-off follows Anson Mount’s Captain Christopher Pike before James T. Kirk takes command of the Enterprise. A shorter fifth season will be its last.
The Criterion Channel adds all 17 episodes of Patrick McGoohan’s 1967 spy thriller The Prisoner on July 1. HBO’s The Man Will Burn, a four-part Burning Man docuseries from Jehane Noujaim and Vikram Gandhi, debuts July 9 with archival footage and interviews tracing the event from a San Francisco beach gathering to a Nevada festival drawing more than 80,000 people.
This story draws on original reporting from WIRED.
