The best new TV shows from August

Watching

What do television, psychotherapists, and the population of Europe have in common? They all have a reputation (antiquated or otherwise) for taking long August vacations. But this year, when it comes to pumping out new shows, TV has been clocking in. Here are just a few of our favorites; see the full list here.

• Alien: Earth. FX’s fantastic Alien: Earth—a prequel to Ridley Scott's movie that is also the first live-action Alien series—is a remarkable achievement. Read more.

• Long Story Short. In Netflix’s Long Story Short, BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg uses the elasticity of animation to warp time, dropping in on a singular Jewish family a couple dozen times from the 1990s to 2022 (and once in 1959). Read more.

• Women Wearing Shoulder Pads. It’s been quite the month for adult animation. The most delightfully bizarre of this August’s animation offerings is creator Gonzalo Cordova and animation studio Cinema Fantasma’s short-form, stop-motion, Spanish-language Women Wearing Shoulder Pads, a sort of camp telenovela set in 1980s Ecuador. Read more.

Listening

• 99% Invisible. Nearly 15 years since launching as a podcast and KALW radio show, 99% Invisible has continued to explore the hidden designs, spaces, and buildings that shape our lives and inform us about our surroundings—the way something looks, how it functions, and how it solves problems. Read more.

• Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. After spending nearly half of his life hosting late-night talk shows, Conan O’Brien realized that he hadn’t spent enough time getting to know the thousands of guests who had sat down with him. In 2018, he launched a hilarious weekly podcast, interviewing celebrities about their lives outside of work in hopes of rekindling old friendships and sparking up a few new ones. Read more.

• Fiasco. After co-creating and hosting the Watergate and Clinton impeachment seasons of Slow Burn, journalist Leon Neyfakh embarked on a similar project with Fiasco, a Pushkin series that examines primarily 20th century political scandals that shaped modern America. Read more.

Talking About

• Christian author-lifestyle influencer-lightning rod Jen Hatmaker amassed a popularity among a cohort of women, many Evangelical-adjacent, who are, at midlife, taking stock of the delta between their youthful hopes and their current reality, and resolving to muddle through. Then she got divorced and stopped going to church.

• Bill Belichick is a football coaching legend. Sam Lazarus simply does not care—the director of creative media for the Texas Christian University football team went viral for trolling Belichick on social media. Meet Lazarus here.