All or Nothing: Arsenal
Prime Video, from August 4th
Premiership action is guaranteed in this eight-part documentary series focusing the lens on the Emirates Stadium during a crucial season for the Gunners, as they hope to get back to elite European competition and achieve elusive success at home. The series follows the huge success of All or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur and All or Nothing: Manchester City, so get ready for thrills, spills and ringing tills as the Arsenal squad embark on their 2021-22 season and face the huge pressures and challenges of competing at the highest level and delivering football excitement for their fans. One of Arsenal’s biggest fans, the Oscar-and Bafta-winning actor Daniel Kaluuya, will narrate the series, the first three episodes of which stream from August 4th. Episodes four to six are coming on August 11th and the final two episodes will be streaming from August 18th. Can’t wait for future series All or Nothing: Accrington Stanley and All or Nothing: Tranmere Rovers.
The Sandman
Netflix, from August 5th
Fans of Neil gaiman’s classic comic-book series will be unable to sleep such is the anticipation for this Netflix adaptation. Tom Sturridge stars as Dream in this live-action take, which also stars Gwendoline Christie, Charles Dance, David Fulus, David Thewlis and Jenna Coleman. Dream, aka the Sandman, is a cosmic entity who’s in charge of everyone’s dreams, but he has been held captive by occult forces for the last 105 years. When he is finally freed he sets out to restore his kingdom of dreams. There have been a couple of failed attempts to turn The Sandman into a movie, but gaming has cold-developed this live-action series with help from DC Entertainment and Warner Bros television.
I Am Groot
Disney+, from August 10th
Who is Groot? He is of course the sentient tree-like creature from the Guardians of the Galaxy movie series, who appears to have only three words – I am Groot – in his vocabulary. But for anyone who understands Groot’s language, those three words speak volumes. Groot has gone through several stages in his cinematic career, from cutting to sapling to tree-nager, and here he is as Baby Groot, getting into all sorts of twists and tangles, in a series of five shorts, with Vin Diesel doing the voice honours, and lots of new and weird characters joining the animated fun.
A League of Their Own
Prime Video, from August 12th
Remember the 1992 movie directed by Penny Marshall and starring Geena Davis, Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell as the stars of the All-American Girls’ Baseball League during the second World War? Thirty years later we finally have the TV series, telling the story of the sassy ladies who went to bat for women in sports in an age when baseball was a manly sport played by manly men in a manly way. This series features all-new characters and storylines, but the basic premise is still there: can a professional women’s baseball team win games – and respect – in a changing US landscape? This will be a reminder of how far women have come in the US since the second World War, and how some bad players are now trying to shunt women back into the dark ages. There’s a nod to the original movie with a guest appearance by Rosie O’Donnell, this time playing a bartender.
Five Days at Memorial
Apple TV+, from August 12th
It’s August 2005, and Louisiana has just been battered by one of the biggest and most devastating hurricanes in US history, leaving more than 1,800 people dead and causing $125 billion worth of damage. For the staff and patients of a hospital in New Orleans, however, the nightmare is only just beginning, in this hard-hitting and special-effects-heavy drama based on real-life events, adapted from the book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sheri Fink. Vera Farmiga stars as a beleaguered healthcare worker who, along with her colleagues, is frantically trying to keep her patients alive under hellish conditions, with floodwaters rising, heat reaching unbearable levels and power totally knocked out. Over the next few days the staff are forced to make agonising decisions that will haunt them for the rest of her lives.
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law
Disney+, from August 17th
Here’s the latest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the story of a young lawyer trying to make her mark in the competitive field of law, but who invariably ends up making a dent in anything that gets in her way. You could say Jennifer Walters is pretty green – that’s because she’s apt to suddenly turn into a 6ft 7in green hulk who cannot only throw the book at criminals but the entire library building too. Bruce Banner, aka Hulk (He-Hulk?), takes her under his wing to show her how to harness her awesome powers (and keep them under control), but she’s determined to make it as an attorney, so she dons the suit and starts work as solicitor to the superhumans, who are on the increase, and increasingly in need of legal representation. Tatiana Maslany is Jennifer/She-Hulk, with Mark Ruffalo reprising his role as Hulk, and Tim Roth returning as Jennifer’s nemesis Emil Blonsky, aka the Abomination.
Bad Sisters
Apple TV+, from August 19th
Sharon Horgan’s latest TV series brings together a handful of fine young Irish women actors in a darkly delicious comedy about murder, power and family secrets. Horgan, Anne-Marie Duff, Eva Birthistle, Sarah Green and Eve Hewson star as the Garvey sisters, who are thick as thieves and always have each other’s backs. One of the sisters is married to an abusive, controlling monster (played with consummate menace by Claes Bang), and when he ends up dead, all five sisters become murder suspects. The fact that they’ve already tried to kill their horrible brother-in-law doesn’t help their case. Brian Gleeson and Daryl McCormack play the life-insurance men who come knocking and asking awkward questions (and snaffling the sandwiches), but though each sister clearly has a motive for knocking off the husband, did they actually do it? The 10-part series is co-written by Horgan and adapted from a Belgian TV series, Clan, but you can bet the Irish black humour and eye for the absurd will be present and correct. Two episodes stream from August 19th, with one episode added every week until October 14th.
Welcome to Wrexham
Disney+, from August 25th
Help! We bought a football team. The Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds can currently be seen in the time-travelling sci-fi film The Adam Project, but here’s another project that’s taking up his time: owning and caring for a fifth-tier English soccer team and trying to turn this underdog club into serious league contenders. Jeez, it’s like the plot of a Hollywood movie. Reynolds co-owns Wrexham with his mate Rob McIlhenny, star of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and the pair have quite the challenge to prove that they are the right people to steer the club into the winning zone. Neither has a clue about soccer or how to run a club, so they’re going to have to learn some very special skills as owners of one of the world’s oldest teams, and gain the respect of the fans and the townspeople of Wrexham, whose fate is closely bound up with the club’s fortunes. Can two Hollywood players reignite the Red Dragons and turn them into box-office gold?
See: The Final Chapter
Apple TV+, from August 26th
Jason Momoa returns for one more post-apocalyptic adventure in the third and final season of the dystopian sci-fi series, set in a future where everyone is blind, and where those who can see must be hunted down as witches and destroyed. Somewhere in the distant past (around the 21st century) most of humanity was wiped out by a virus, and the descendants of the survivors soon lost the ability to see. The very idea of seeing has now become a myth, and mention of this fifth sense is considered heresy. Momoa plays fearless tribe leader Baba Voss, who vows to protect his adopted children – who are “sighted” – from Queen Sibeth’s witch-hunters. In season three, Baba Voss is living remotely in the forest after defeating his brother Edo, but when a new kind of weapon emerges to threaten humanity, Baba has to go back to his old job protecting his tribe from all attackers. With many of the cast and crew having some form of visual impairment, this series never loses sight of inclusivity.
Star Wars: Andor
Disney+, from August 31st
You wait years for one live-action Star Wars spin-off series to land, and suddenly a whole fleet of them come along at once. Following the success of The Mandalorian, Lucasfilm clearly asked itself: Why didn’t we do this years ago? Now it’s making up for lost time (and dime) by churning out the spin-off series faster than Han Solo can spin out a smart one-liner. With season one of Obi-Wan Kenobi done and dusted, it’s now time to tell the story of Andor – sorry, who? Er, just a minute while I check my Wookieepedia. Ah, here it is. Cassian Andor is of course the badass out of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and this series takes place before the events of that film, and sees our rebel hero on a quest to discover how he can make a difference in the rebel alliance’s guerrilla war with the Empire. Diego Luna reprises his role as Andor, with Genevieve O’Reilly, Stellan Skarsgård, Adria Arjona, Denise Gough and Kyle Soller co-starring.
