5 best new shows premiering in August 2023 on Netflix, Max & More

A new month means that there are many new shows to try out. So if you’ve caught up on everything that came out in July, check out this list and see if anything premiering this month might end up being your new favorite show.

Painkiller – Netflix (August 10)

Do you remember when Netflix and Hulu both had documentaries about the Fyre Festival, covering the same events? It looks like they’re doing the same thing for the opioid epidemic. Hulu’s series Dopesick came out in 2021 with solid reviews, and Netflix’s series will be out this month.

Painkiller will focus on Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family who manufacture Oxycontin. Matthew Broderick plays Richard Sackler, the chairman and president of Purdue Pharma during this time period.

Dopesick won several awards when it came out including winning one Emmy and being nominated for five more. We’ll see if Painkiller is able to recreate that type of success or if it will struggle to feel as compelling as Hulu’s miniseries.

The Winter King – MGM+ (August 20)

This British series will be available on ITVX in the UK but on MGM+ in the United States. While MGM+ doesn’t have nearly the cultural status as other streaming services like Netflix and Disney+, they are slowly building up a list of original series. Their latest one is an epic retelling of the King Arthur story based on the Warlord Chronicles series of books by Bernard Cornwell.

The series plans to be a more gritty, realistic take on King Arthur. Ever since Game of Thrones, it seems like every streaming service has tried to find its own hit to be able to replicate the success of that show. Based on the look of the trailer, this show is clearly hoping to capture that feel as well, and become a flagship show for the service.

Ahsoka – Disney+ (August 23)

For the past few years, Disney has been filling out the years between the original trilogy and the sequel trilogy through various shows on Disney+ What started out as a single series with The Mandalorian, has expanded into a whole era of Star Wars will multiple connected shows and characters appearing across different series.

Ahsoka was announced in December 2020 and quickly became the most anticipated of the series that was planned to be set in this era. Ahsoka has become one of the most beloved Star Wars characters, first appearing in The Clone Wars animated series, and then returning for the series Rebels set between Episode III and Episode IV.

The character made the leap to live action in season two of The Mandalorian which almost immediately created buzz about a possible spinoff series focused on the character. The series is being created by Dave Filoni who was the supervising director on both of the previous animated series mentioned. Filoni has been building this character for fifteen years at this point so it’s exciting to see a show that can pull from all that Star Wars lore and history to create a show focused around this character.

Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake – Max (August 31)

Adventure Time was a massive success for Cartoon Network, running for ten seasons in total, and spawning a whole franchise. This is actually the second spinoff series, the first being Adventure Time: Distant Lands which started back in 2020. This new spinoff features a different set of main characters Fionna the human and Cake the cat.

These two characters are alternate versions of the main characters from the original series (Finn the Human and Jake the Dog) who first appeared in the third season of the show and then went on to appear in several more episodes due to the positive fan response to the characters. Now, the two are getting their own dedicated show. While the original show was intended to be a kids’ show (even though it was good enough to gain a large following of adult fans) this show is aimed more at a young adult audience.

The creators have noted that the original group of Adventure Time fans are older now, the show being over ten years old at this point, and this show can serve as an extension to those fans who watched the original series when they were younger.

One Piece – Netflix (August 31)

One Piece is genuinely one of the most popular pieces of media in the world right now, yet live-action adaptations of anime shows tend to be met with hatred from fans of the source material and are usually quickly forgotten by everyone else.

Still, One Piece has been an overwhelming success in every other format it’s been a part of (manga, anime, movies) so for better or worse, this is one of the most anticipated shows of the month. Of course, the manga started in 1997 and has another few years to go before it’s completed, and already runs over a thousand chapters, so there will have to be some edits and condensing somewhere for the live-action adaptation of the show.

Fans will be able to debate if too much was left out or if the right decisions were made later, but there will probably be a lot of eyes tuning into this one to see if it manages to capture the spirit of the original.