The best new TV shows to stream in July
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize upon release in 2018, Esi Edugyan's Washington Black was a 19th century coming of age tale that transcended historical fiction in telling the story of a brilliant boy born into slavery in the Caribbean and his journey of discovery seeking freedom. This adaptation, from Jordan Peele protégé Selwyn Seyfu Hinds (The Twilight Zone) leans into wonder, love, and resilience in the face of horror. Eddie Karanja and Ernest Kingsley Jr play Washington as a child and young man respectively, while the supporting cast is headlined by executive producer Sterling K. Brown (Paradise) as a mentor on a journey that stretches from the tropics to the desert to the bottom of the sea.
June highlights: That's what Friends was for – Adults hit the spot as a chaotic twentysomething comedy for the 21st century, plus The Bear took risks and evolved with its fourth season.
ABC iview
My top iview recommendation is Patience (July 4).
Production for the second season of this British detective drama is already under way, following on from a first season that introduced an eclectic pair of sleuths. Detective Inspector Bea Fraser (Laura Fraser) is a Yorkshire police officer who discovers that a young woman on the autism spectrum working in the archives, Patience Evans (Ella Maisy Purvis), has extraordinary insights. When the two team up, Patience has to contend with a complicated world. Screen depictions of autism vary greatly in terms of authenticity and detail, but it's worth noting that Purvis herself is on the spectrum. Done right, this could be a valuable addition to a familiar genre.
June highlights: The mordant Australian crime drama Bay of Fires returned for a tense second season, and the demands of new motherhood underpinned the British thriller Little Disasters.
SBS On Demand
My top SBS On Demand recommendation is Smilla's Sense of Snow (July 30).
A deeply nuanced detective thriller, Danish author Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow was a literary hit in 1992, following the titular young woman who suspects foul play in the death of a young boy from Greenland she has befriended in her Copenhagen apartment building. A Hollywood adaptation followed in 1997, with Julia Ormond in the title role, but Hoeg's evocative writing still has purpose. A new version, from British filmmaker Amma Asante (A United Kingdom), moves the story into an uneasy 2040 of energy crises and state surveillance. The role of Smilla goes to Danish actress Filippa Coster-Waldau, the daughter of Game of Thrones star Nikolaj.
June highlights: Climate change upheaval becomes a stark reality for a Danish family in Thomas Vinterberg's near future drama Families Like Ours, plus the Indigenous health documentary series Our Medicine debuted.
Other streamers
My top recommendation for the other streaming services is Paramount+'s Dexter: Resurrection (July 11).
The Dexter franchise is, well, unkillable. Michael C. Hall's note-perfect depiction of the Florida forensics analyst and vigilante serial killer Dexter Morgan is up to its third incarnation – 2006's long-running Dexter, 2021's revival Dexter: New Blood, and now Dexter: Resurrection. Resurrection picks up a few weeks after New Blood 's conclusion, where Dexter was shot by his own son, Harrison (Jack Alcott). But the father-son bond is stronger than ever, with Dexter following Harrison to New York to attempt a reconciliation. Will Dexter kill some creepy killers along the way? Almost certainly so. The Dexter universe knows that the fans are out for blood.
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Also: British society had never seen anything like the Mitford sisters. In the 1930s the six aristocratic siblings were a magnet for newspaper headlines, scandal, enduring art, and terrible wrongs. They were a lot. BritBox's Outrageous (July 24) looks to capture the social and household dynamic that led the sisters down a series of contradictory paths: Nancy (Bessie Carter) was a writer who used her family as barely disguised source material; Diana (Joanna Vanderham) was a great beauty who married a fascist; Jessica (Zoe Brough) was a communist; and Unity (Shannon Watson) became an ardent Nazi. Getting the right tone will be everything with this limited series.
June highlights: First love, classic tunes, and second chances set up Binge's Mix Tape as a melodic romantic drama, plus an A-list cast updated the Agatha Christie model in BritBox's Towards Zero.
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