Halloween is still a couple of months away, but the week of Aug. 12 brings a couple of very creepy series — one on cable and one on streaming — back to viewers. Also on tap are the latest HBO series from Danny McBride, a couple of stand-up specials and a cult favorite on cable.
Here is The Hollywood Reporter‘s rundown of some of the coming week’s highlights. It would be next to impossible to watch everything, but let THR point the way to worthy options each week. All times are ET/PT unless noted.
The Big Show
Almost two years after its first season, Netflix’s eerie drama Mindhunter bows its second season on Friday. The show jumps ahead a couple of years as well, putting Ford (Jonathan Groff), Tench (Holt McCallany) and Carr (Anna Torv) in the middle of the Atlanta child murders case, the investigation for which stretched from 1979-81.
The new season also features more conversations with Edmund Kemper (Cameron Britton) and the team interviewing a host of other killers, including Charles Manson (Damon Herriman, who also plays Manson in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) and David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz — all while the BTK killer (the ADT technician seen in several vignettes in season one) continues killing people in Kansas. The new season will also further explore the emotional toll profiling murderers takes on the lead characters (spoiler: It’s heavy).
Also on streaming …
Tiffany Haddish Presents: They Ready (Tuesday, Netflix) is a series of six half-hour comedy sets from comics Haddish wants to bring to a wider audience. Marc Cherry’s darkly humorous Why Women Kill (Thursday, CBS All Access) follows three women (Ginnifer Goodwin, Lucy Liu and Kirby Howell-Baptiste) in different time periods who are dealing with cheating spouses. Amazon presents its first stand-up special, Jim Gaffigan: Quality Time (Friday). Docuseries Diagnosis (Friday, Netflix), based on the New York Times Magazine feature, aims to help people solve medical mysteries.
On cable …
Returning: The second season of AMC’s horror anthology The Terror is subtitled Infamy and is set in a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II. Like the first season, the show will mix real-life horrors with supernatural elements. Infamy also features a cast entirely of Japanese-American and Japanese-Canadian actors, including George Takei, who was sent to an internment camp as a boy. It premieres at 9 p.m. Monday.
Also returning: New seasons of cult favorite Lodge 49 (10 p.m. Monday, AMC), Adam Ruins Everything (10 p.m. Tuesday, TruTV), Black Ink Crew (9 p.m. Wednesday, VH1, followed by new spinoff Black Ink Crew: Compton at 10) and Love After Lockup (9 p.m. Friday, WE).
New: Danny McBride returns to HBO with The Righteous Gemstones (10 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 18, HBO), a comedy he created and stars in about a family that’s built an evangelical empire. As THR critic Daniel Fienberg put it, fans of McBride’s Eastbound and Down and Vice Principals will probably enjoy this new series as well. John Goodman, Adam Devine and Edi Patterson also star.
Also new: Intense Israeli drama Our Boys (9 p.m. Monday, HBO) takes a detailed look at all sides of a revenge murder that led to the 2014 Israel-Gaza war. The Hebrew and Arabic language miniseries is “grim,” per THR’s review, but also features “superb performances.” OWN debuts coming-of-age drama David Makes Man, a “potent mixture of gritty clarity and dreamlike nostalgia” from Moonlight writer Tarell Alvin McCraney, at 10 p.m. Wednesday.
On broadcast …
New: The CW gets into the docuseries game with Mysteries Decoded (9 p.m. Tuesday), in which host Jennifer Marshall and a team of investigators use newly discovered evidence and advanced tech to re-examine famous historical mysteries.
Also: After a five-week hiatus, NBC’s Songland returns at 9 p.m. Wednesday; ABC’s Card Sharks (9 p.m. Wednesday) and Family Food Fight (9 p.m. Thursday) and CBS’ Elementary (10 p.m. Thursday) air their finales, the latter closing out its series run after seven seasons.
In case you missed it …
Martial-arts drama Wu Assassins stars The Raid‘s Iko Uwais as a young chef in San Francisco’s Chinatown who learns he’s been chosen by the titular group to keep the mystical Wu powers from falling into the wrong hands. It’s streaming on Netflix.
