Summer TV Preview 2025: 16 Shows You Won’t Want to Miss

Watch the very best TV of the sunny season

Tim Appelo,

AARP

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Published May 23, 2025

Julianne Moore and Kevin Bacon in 'Sirens'

Sirens. (L to R) Julianne Moore as Michaela, Kevin Bacon as Peter Kell in episode 105 of Sirens.

Macall Polay/Courtesy Netflix

Remember when summer television was all about reruns? With streaming giants in the mix, those doldrums are a thing of the past. Along with backyard cookouts and beach days, mark your calendar for these 16 top-flight premieres.

Sirens (May 22, Netflix)

Charismatic high-society philanthropist Michaela Kell (Julianne Moore, 64) holds the guests at her luxurious island estate under some kind of strange psychic spell, especially her employee Simone (Milly Alcock). So one Labor Day weekend, Simone’s alarmed sister Devon (The White Lotus’ Meghann Fahy) tries to intervene — but she has no idea what she’s getting herself into. Kevin Bacon, 66, plays Michaela’s billionaire stoner husband, and brilliant Bill Camp, 63, plays Devon and Simone’s dad, who has early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Stick (June 4, Apple TV+)

In a comedy that Apple hopes will be its next heartwarming, Ted Lasso-like hit, Owen Wilson, 56, plays a washed-up golfer encouraged by a pal (Marc Maron, 61) to get a new lease on life 20 years after blowing his career. So he makes a comeback mentoring a teenage golf prodigy (Peter Dager). Costars include Judy Greer, Timothy Olyphant, 57, and some of the greatest golfers alive.

***FUBAR*, Season 2 (June 12, Netflix)**

CIA spy Luke (Arnold Schwarzenegger, 77) had always kept his family in the dark about his hush-hush job, but found out last season that his daughter (Monica Barbaro) is secretly a spy too. So they became partners on his last anti-terrorism mission. The new wrinkle in this go-around: Luke’s old flame Greta Nelson (The Matrix’s Carrie-Anne Moss, 57), an ex-East German spy, is back in his life.

Outrageous (June 18, BritBox)

Anna Chancellor, 60, who played the footman’s seducer on Downton Abbey, plays the upper-crust mother and James Purefoy, 60 (Rome), the father of the Mitford sisters, who scandalized England and the world in the 1930s. The real-life sisters included famous novelist Nancy (Bridgerton’s Bessie Carter), fascist Diana (Joanna Vanderham), Hitler pal Unity (Shannon Watson) and Communist Jessica (Zoe Brough).

The Waterfront (June 19, Netflix)

In a fact-inspired story by Kevin Williamson, 61 (Scream), Emmy nominee Maria Bello, 58 (Beef, NCIS) plays a desperate woman trying to save her family’s disintegrating North Carolina fishing business by increasingly dangerous means.

***The Gilded Age*, Season 3 (June 22, HBO Max)**

Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes, 75, premieres the new season of his drama of old and new money clashing in 19th century Manhattan on June 12 at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival, then on your home screen. Carrie Coon stars as upwardly mobile Bertha, trying to marry off her daughter — but the youngster has silly newfangled ideas about marrying for love. Joining the cast: Phylicia Rashad, 76, and Leslie Uggams, 81, as snooty Newport matriarchs and Andrea Martin, 78, as Madame Dashkova, who speaks to (and maybe for) the dead.

The Countdown (June 25, Prime Video)

After a Homeland Security officer is murdered, an LAPD officer (Jensen Ackles, Supernatural) joins the secret task force of Nathan Blythe (Eric Dane, 52, Euphoria, “McSteamy” on Grey’s Anatomy) to catch the killer and prevent mass disaster. (In real life, Dane was recently diagnosed with ALS.)

***Squid Game*, Season 3 (June 27, Netflix)**

After his Season 2 rebellion failed to stop the wicked, sadistic Squid Games that killed his best friend and others, our hero Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) is in handcuffs and despair. But in the final season of Netflix’s Korean smash hit, will he beat the bad guys at their own game at last?

Smoke (June 27, Apple TV+)

In Dennis Lehane’s miniseries inspired by the popular true-crime podcast Firebug, Taron Egerton and Jurnee Smollett play investigators on the trail of two notorious arsonists. Greg Kinnear, 61, and John Leguizamo, 64, costar.

Too Much (July 10, Netflix)

A suddenly single New York workaholic (Megan Stalter, Hacks) flees to London and connects with a guy she maybe shouldn’t (Will Sharpe, The White Lotus). The rom-com features Cheers’ Rhea Perlman, 77, Saltburn’s Richard E. Grant, 67, and Sleepless in Seattle’s Rita Wilson, 68.

Dexter: Resurrection (July 11, Paramount+)

The beloved serial killer Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall, 54) got shot, apparently fatally, in the last episode of Dexter: New Blood in 2022. Evidently it was just a flesh wound, since he’s back in action in New York. Uma Thurman, 55, joins the cast as the security chief for a shadowy billionaire (Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage, 55), Dexter’s new nemesis.

Code of Silence (July 24, BritBox)

Catherine Moulton used her own experience of hearing loss to create a thriller about a deaf barmaid (Rose Ayling-Ellis) hired by cops to read the lips of gangsters — risky, especially when she finds herself wanting to kiss one of them.

Chief of War (Aug. 1, Apple TV+)

Jason Momoa stars in, co-writes and produces what could be a Shogun-like historically accurate hit series about Ka‘iana (Momoa), who conquered and united Hawaii’s warring tribes from 1782 to 1810, just before colonization.

***Wednesday*, Season 2 Part 1 (Aug. 6, Netflix)**

Wednesday of the Addams family (Jenna Ortega) is back at Nevermore Academy, with Steve Buscemi, 67, as principal. AbFab’s Joanna Lumley, 79, joins as Grandmama Hester Frump, and Fred Armisen, 58, returns as Uncle Fester. And has there ever been a better Morticia than Catherine Zeta-Jones, 55?

Alien: Earth (Aug. 12, FX)

Timothy Olyphant, 57 (Justified, Deadwood), stars as an android mentoring a young synthetic hybrid (Sydney Chandler) and contending with slimy monsters. Here’s hoping showrunner Noah Hawley, 58, is as good at making a TV series out of the Alien film franchise as he was at turning the movie Fargo into a marvelous TV miniseries.

Unspeakable: The Murder of JonBenét Ramsey (Summer 2025, Paramount+)

Several documentaries about the mysteriously murdered 6-year-old beauty pageant winner have been hits. Here’s a rare dramatization of the story, with Melissa McCarthy, 54, and Clive Owen, 60, as her parents.

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Tim Appelo covers entertainment and is the film and TV critic for AARP. Previously, he was the entertainment editor at Amazon, video critic at Entertainment Weekly, and a critic and writer for The Hollywood Reporter, People, MTV, The Village Voice and LA Weekly.