The 10 TV Shows We’re Watching in August

5 min readWith record-breaking heatwaves and the resulting torrential downpours turning venturing outside into a complete guessing game, one place remains a reliable success: indoors! After all, there’s no need to roast in the sun watching soccer now that the World Cup is over. It’s time to get your sports fix back on inside, in front of the TV, to welcome back America’s favorite coach: Ted Lasso.Jason Sudeikis returns this month to star as AFC Richmond’s soccer coach in the Apple TV comedy series. It has been arguably the most anticipated season of TV on the calendar this year since the former Saturday Night Live star first announced the speedy fourth-season renewal in March 2025. Lasso will helm the club’s new women’s soccer team this time, as the series seeks to recapture the magic that once warmed everyone’s hearts following the Covid-19 pandemic. Can Lasso’s brand of unflinching kindness still work in 2026? We’ll find out soon.Same goes for Lanterns, an exciting and highly promising new take on the DC Comics superheroes for HBO Max that pits a duo of space cops as detectives out to solve a suspiciously extraterrestrial murder in Nebraska. Will the mystery prove to be the True Detective meets The X-Files meets Batman & Robin summer juggernaut, or will it reek as much as the giant CGI gas cloud that Ryan Reynolds’s Green Lantern fought in 2011?Either way, we’ll also have Taylor Sheridan’s third season of Lioness. The CIA drama starring Zoe Saldaña and Nicole Kidman returns for another season that will move from side plot to side plot even faster than our current TikTok-induced brains can handle. Also, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia will return for a record-setting eighteenth season, and Ryan Murphy will set his sights on a summer of teenage murder mysteries in Bret Easton Ellis’s The Shards. For more of the TV shows we’re watching in August, follow along below.Lioness (Season 3) Taylor Sheridan’s CIA action series returns for what looks like its most explosive season yet. Trailers for the Zoe Saldaña and Nicole Kidman-starring series show hideouts being blown to bits, plenty of screaming, and all the turbo action that made the covert thriller yet another one of the Yellowstone creator’s massive successes. According to Paramount, season 3 will follow “enemies operating in the shadows, leaving [Joe] to reckon with a war that now reaches into every part of her life.”Release Date: Sunday, August 2 (Paramount+)Futurama (Season 14)The long-running adult animated series from the creator of The Simpsons will enter its fourteenth season, continuing its Hulu run with consistent and nostalgic humor. The series follows a futuristic delivery company and its idiotic crew across the galaxy, complete with “a non-stop onslaught of swaggering space pirates, lab-grown meats, and sexy scams,” per Hulu. Season 14 will also add three extra-sized specials this season, including a Christmas episode.Release Date: August 3 (Hulu)Ted Lasso (Season 4)The over-delightful Kansas City football coach who carries around a poster card with “BELIEVE” written on it in all caps returns for something of a fourth season and a spinoff combined this month. Where he was once hired as a prank, Ted (Jason Sudeikis) is now brought on to coach AFC Richmond’s new women’s team for all the right reasons. Nearly the entire cast is back as well—including Hannah Waddingham, Brett Goldstein, Juno Temple, and Brendan Hunt—though we’ll have to wait to meet the new squad (and potentially recapture that Covid-19 pandemic TV magic) when Ted Lasso returns.Release Date: August 5 (Apple TV)The ShardsThe latest Ryan Murphy (Monster) drama is here. Based on the bestselling novel by Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho), The Shards is about a group of prep school teens who are introduced to a strange new student around the same time that a serial killer who murders people alongside their pets terrorizes the neighborhood. The story is a “fictionalized memoir” of Ellis’s final year in high school in Los Angeles in 1981, according to the author, who co-created this adaptation for FX starring Igby Rigney (Midnight Mass), Kaia Gerber (Bottoms), and Evan Rachel Wood (True Blood).Release Date: August 5 (FX/Hulu)Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Seattle SeahawksSuper Bowl LX’s actual football game may have been overshadowed by Bad Bunny’s historic halftime show, but bookending the musical performance was a hard-earned victory from Sam Darnold and the Seattle Seahawks over the New England Patriots. However, defending your title is arguably harder than earning your first. So, the documentary series spent its latest season with the champs as they attempt to retool following Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker’s departure to the Kansas City Chiefs during the offseason.Release Date: August 11 (HBO Max)Reacher (Season 4)2026 is a big year for Reacher. The Prime Video action series featuring Alan Ritchson returns with the tactically trained mountain man out to solve a new case, while every organization under the sun wants him dead. The latest annual adventure also precedes the upcoming spinoff, Neagley, which will follow Maria Sten’s character on a new case of her own.Release Date: August 12 (Prime Video)LanternsTrue Detective meets magical rings in an experimental new DC Comics adaptation of Green Lantern for HBO, brought to you from the minds of Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers), True Detective producer Chris Mundy, and acclaimed comic book writer Tom King (Visions, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow). Starring Kyle Chandler as Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre (Rebel Ridge) as trainee John Stewart, the detective mystery series looks to blend sci-fi action with True Detective’s rural crime spookiness.Release Date: August 16 (HBO Max)It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Season 18)It’s hard to follow up Danny DeVito on a parody version of The Bachelor and a two-episode crossover with the cast of Abbott Elementary, but don’t count out the longest-running sitcom of all time from learning even more new tricks. Case in point? So far, all we know about the upcoming season is the name of the premiere episode: “Frank Marries a Corpse.”Release Date: August 17 (FX/Hulu)Outer Banks (Season 5)The final season of Netflix’s teen drama has come a long ways from the group’s original treasure hunt along the banks of North Carolina. According to the streamer, the final episodes “finds the Pogues at their absolute breaking point following the tragic loss of JJ (Rudy Pankow) in Morocco [during the season 4 finale].” So although the group continues to fight for their freedom, they’re now also out to avenge their fallen friend and reclaim the Blue Crown.Release Date: August 20 (Netflix)Dark Matter (Season 2)Quantum physicist Jason Dessen invented a terrifying device in this Apple TV sci-fi thriller that acts as a portal to other realities. But those who step in the magical box are quickly disillusioned by the horrors of becoming stuck in the multiverse. An alternate Dessen threatens to take over his life, while rival organizations seek to claim the box for their own selfish desires. Season 2 looks to up the doppelgänger count, the paranoia, and all the twists that proved that multiverse stories can prevail outside of superhero blockbusters.Release Date: August 28 (Apple TV)