Perry Mason
Remember the crusading defense attorney played by Raymond Burr over decades of television? Well, forget him. HBO’s prestige miniseries stars Matthew Rhys as a younger, angrier Perry, a war veteran and self-destructive alcoholic working as a private investigator in 1932 Los Angeles, and surrounds him with an ensemble that includes Tatiana Maslany, John Lithgow, Stephen Root, Lili Taylor, Juliet Rylance and Gayle Rankin. Expect exacting period details and a convoluted mystery plot that only our hero can untangle. (June 21, HBO Canada and Crave)
I’ll Be Gone In The Dark
Before she died, actor Patton Oswalt’s late wife Michelle McNamara spent her evenings obsessing over a serial rapist and murder whom she called the Golden State Killer. She was researching his crimes and trying to uncover his identity while writing I’ll Be Gone In The Dark, the best-selling book published after McNamara died from an accidental prescription drug overdose complicated by a heart condition.HBO’s six-part mini-series tells the story of McNamara and the Golden State Killer. (June 28, Crave)
Canada’s Drag Race
The moment many Canadian Drag Race fans have been waiting for is almost upon us. The first Canadian edition of the popular reality series is premiering and seven of the 12 queens vying for the crown – Anastarzia Anaquway, BOA, Scarlett Bobo, Juice Boxx, Lemon, Priyanka and Tynomi Banks – are from Toronto. Similar to other international versions of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the Canadian edition does not feature RuPaul. Instead, Traci Melchor will handle periodic hosting duties while drag star Brooke Lynn Hytes, Toronto fashion figure Stacey McKenzie and UnREAL star Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman will judge. (July 2, Crave)
The Umbrella Academy (season 2)
After a first season that started strong but kinda struggled to justify its 10-episode order, the Netflix adaptation of Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s comic – about a family of maladjusted superheroes whose emotional issues could literally destroy the world – returns to set things right. (Literally: season 1 ended with the entire cast jumping back in time to rewrite their traumatic histories.) Everyone’s back, including Ellen Page’s tragic Vanya and Robert Sheehan’s mordant Klaus let’s just hope the plot moves a little faster this time. (July 31, Netflix)
Lovecraft Country
Adapted from Matt Ruff’s acclaimed novel by Underground creator Misha Green and produced by Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams, this new HBO series stars Jonathan Majors as Atticus Black, a young man searching for his vanished father in the Jim Crow South of the 50s – where the racism is as old and terrifying as the actual monsters that lurk in the shadows. Jurnee Smollett, Michael Kenneth Williams and Courtney B. Vance co-star. (August, HBO Canada and Crave)
The Good Lord Bird
Get Out producer Jason Blum is behind this unhinged Western where Ethan Hawke lets loose with twin revolvers as abolitionist John Brown. The miniseries also stars Daveed Diggs (also in Hamilton) as Frederick Douglass and Joshua Caleb Johnson as the young revolting slave Onion who frames this history from his perspective, which is an obvious gambit to fend off criticism about yet another white saviour narrative. (August 9, Crave)
Love Fraud
Jesus Camp directors Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing’s wild-looking true-crime series might be late summer’s answer to Tiger King. In it, spurned lovers seek revenge against a serial con man who defrauds women, leaving at least one bankrupt and making a habit of crushing their dreams of romance, over 20 years. (August 30, Crave)
Wynonna Earp (season 4)
It’s been two years since we last saw this goofy, idiosyncratic and hella gay supernatural Western, which stars Melanie Scrofano as a cranky, hard-drinking demon hunter who leads a crew of weirdos in the fight against various evils in their small frontier town. But Earpers rejoice: your hero is back, and ready to retrieve her vampire ex (Tim Rozon) and her sister Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley) from the otherworldly realm that swallowed them up in season 3. Look, just watch the show, it all makes sense and it’s kinda hot. (Summer, Bell Sci-Fi)
The Twilight Zone (season 2)
After a promising first season, Jordan Peele’s reworking of Rod Serling’s classic anthology series returns for a second wave of trips into that mind-bending, reality-questioning dimension, with Christopher I don’ tknow Meloni, Morena Baccarin, Joel McHale, Mel Rodriguez, Jimmi Simpson, Veena Sood among the unsuspecting people whose lives are turned upside-down by sci-fi weirdness and pesky twist endings. It looks like Peele’s not done reworking Serling’s best-loved premises, either. (Summer, CityTV)
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