Summer on HBO starts July 10th
HBO’s current three biggest shows all air around the same time, and are all currently over. That list includes Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, and Veep. There are many months to fill until they come back, so it’s a good thing that there are some interesting shows coming up in just a few short days.
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The recent cancellation of Vinyl doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in HBO’s programming choices. Whether or not the network will allow some of the new shows the proper time to grow is far from a sure thing. New shows, however, aren’t the only thing that HBO has in its salvo.
1. The Night Of
First up is The Night Of, which showrunner Steven Zaillian recently sat down to talk about. The Night Of is about the criminal justice system, specifically about how it runs in New York. The new series looks to be quite dark and takes more than a few pages out of the True Detective handbook. For those that haven’t seen it, here is the most recent trailer:
The Night Of will premiere on July 10th, though the first episode has been available on demand and to stream for the past few weeks. It’s impossible to ignore the True Detective vibe, especially in the above trailer. If the series can capture even half of the success of True Detective’s first season, there will be little to worry about.
2. Ballers
Next is Ballers. You know, that male fantasy series that stars The Rock. Ballers is moving into its second season after a moderately successful first outing. Ballers is very much the replacement show for the Entourage crowd. Check out the trailer for the second season:
Ballers will premiere on July 17th. Everything about Ballers screams summer, so you can’t say HBO didn’t do its job in that department. According to Variety, Ballers closed out its first season as one of HBO’s most watched comedies in the past six years. That’s something, alright. Over on Metacritic, the ratings aren’t stellar, though they aren’t exactly poor, either.
3. Vice Principals
Coming the same night as the season premiere of Ballers is the series premiere of Vice Principals. Vice Principals is the next series from he team behind Eastbound & Down, and there is some serious hype around this one. Walton Goggins recently took to the late night circuit to promote the series, and, oh yeah, did we mention that it features Bill Murray?
Vice Principals is about two dueling vice principals vying for control of a high school. It could be the breakout comedy of the summer. It will be interesting to see how it does paired up with Ballers. Though the two series may share a similar sense of comedy, they aren’t all that similar.
4. Looking: The Movie
While not technically a series, Looking: The Movie will wrap up all of the loose ends from Looking’s second season. It’s rare that a series gets a chance like this, and it’s impressive that HBO allow the team to go ahead with it. The cast recently talked about the emotion behind the movie in a short featurette.
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Looking: The Movie caps off HBO’s summer premieres, and it will unfortunately be the final time we’ll see these characters. All in all it looks like HBO will be able to offer something for everyone this summer, though its fall schedule is really the one to look out for.