Staying Fit
(Left to right) John Krasinski as Jack Ryan in "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan"; Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in "And Just Like That..."; Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens in "Justified: City Primeval."
Attila Szvacsek/Prime Video; Craig Blakenhorn/Max; Chuch Hodes/FX
To get the most out of the summer’s most promising TV, find out what’s up for the new season — but you’ll appreciate it more if you brush up on past seasons first. Here’s a guide to eight great shows and their backstories.
Happy Valley, Season 3, streaming now
You should definitely discover this wonderful show by Sally Wainwright (Last Tango in Halifax) upon its return to TV seven years after its last season. In the new Season 3, moody West Yorkshire policewoman Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire, 58), a flawed woman very like Mare of Easttown’s Kate Winslet character, is anticipating retirement and struggling to protect her 16-year-old grandson, Ryan, from his rapist father (James Norton), who’s in prison for life but still dangerous. But first, watch at least the last episode of Season 2, in which Ryan (Rhys Connah) is only 9. It will heighten the drama.
Watch it: Happy Valley, on AMC+, BBC America and Acorn TV
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The 10 contestants for Season 10 of "Alone."
A+E Networks
Alone (History Channel, June 8)
Bears, moose and wolves — oh, my! The History Channel’s smart survival show drops 10 contestants in beastly, frigid Saskatchewan, vying for $500,000 (and survival). To see how they measure up, watch what some consider the baddest contestant to date, Roland Welker, a trapper from Red Devil, Alaska, who survived 100 days (and killed an 800-pound musk ox with a belt knife) in Canada’s Northwest Territories during Season 7.
Watch it: Alone, on History Channel, or old episodes on Hulu
The Full Monty (FX/Hulu, June 14)
First, rewatch (or discover) the classic 1997 movie The Full Monty, about unemployed steelworkers turned strippers in Sheffield, England. Then check back on the same characters (and most of the cast) a quarter century later, when the dead-broke town is deader yet — but their gallows humor is intact. The Full Monty and Slumdog Millionaire writer Simon Beaufoy, 56, is back, along with Alice Nutter, 60, who cowrote Donald Sutherland’s 2018 series Trust with him — plus, she was in the one-hit band Chumbawamba (of “Tubthumping” fame), so she knows about downtrodden characters who get knocked down, but get up again.
Watch it: The Full Monty (1997), on Max or Prime Video, The Full Monty (2023) on FX/Hulu
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