Q Wave’s Watchlist: August 2026
"There's nothing to watch" is not a phrase that should exist in a world drowning in content. Join us every month to get curated content - we'll help you avoid the dreaded “Streaming Block” and find something to watch!
Ted Lasso (Apple TV+)
After three years away, the most relentlessly kind man on television is back. Ted Lasso returns for a fourth season that picks up with the Richmond mustache exactly where the show’s enormous goodwill left it, except this time the job is different. Ted is back in England, but instead of the Premier League men’s side, he’s taken on the challenge of coaching a second-division women’s football team. It’s a fresh underdog story built on the bones of the one that made the show a phenomenon.
Most of the family is back. Hannah Waddingham returns as Rebecca, Brett Goldstein as the perpetually growling Roy Kent, Juno Temple as Keeley, and Jeremy Swift and Brendan Hunt as Higgins and Beard. The season leans on a new theme, learning to leap before you look, which is the kind of gentle-but-earnest philosophy the show has always worn well. New faces join the bench, and the women’s-team setup gives the whole thing a reason to exist beyond nostalgia.
The real question is whether lightning strikes twice after a finale that felt like a proper goodbye, and the early goodwill suggests fans are more than willing to find out. The season premieres August 5 with a single episode, then rolls out weekly through October 7. If you were one of the millions who found comfort in this show during harder times, this is the reunion you’ve been waiting for.
You’d like this if you enjoyed: Shrinking, The Hawk
Runtime: 10 episodes
Genre: Comedy, sports
Lanterns (Crave)
Forget everything you think a Green Lantern story looks like. Lanterns reimagines DC’s intergalactic space cops as a grounded, dread-soaked detective thriller set in the American heartland. Kyle Chandler plays veteran Lantern Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre plays new recruit John Stewart, two very different men forced to partner up when a murder in small-town Nebraska turns into something far larger and stranger than a local crime.
The pedigree here is hard to overstate. The pilot comes from Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and comics writer Tom King, and the whole thing has been pitched as a superhero show with the soul of a prestige crime drama, closer to True Detective than to a caped blockbuster. The cast runs deep, with Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, and Nathan Fillion returning as fellow Lantern Guy Gardner, plus Ulrich Thomsen lurking as the villain Sinestro.
As one of the first big television entries in the rebooted DC universe, this one carries real weight, and the noir-inflected approach is a genuine swing rather than a safe bet. The eight-episode season premieres August 16. If you like your superheroes with more shadow than spandex, clear your schedule.
You’d like this if you enjoyed: True Detective, Watchmen
Runtime: 8 episodes
Genre: Superhero, crime drama
The Shards (Disney+)
Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis are a pairing almost too on-the-nose to be real, and The Shards is the glossy, sinister result. Adapted from Ellis’s semi-autobiographical 2023 novel, the series drops us into 1981 Los Angeles among a clique of privileged prep-school seniors whose lives of wealth, beauty, and excess start to curdle when a serial killer known as the Trawler begins stalking teenagers across the city.
At the center is a fictionalized seventeen-year-old version of Ellis himself, played by Igby Rigney, whose grip on reality loosens with the arrival of a magnetic new student, Robert Mallory, played by Homer Gere. Kaia Gerber, Graham Campbell, and Hayes Warner fill out the golden social circle, with Wes Bentley and Evan Rachel Wood among the adults orbiting the edges. It’s dark academia soaked in period atmosphere and Murphy’s signature knack for turning menace into style.
This is prestige-adjacent pulp done with real craft, the kind of thing that could become a late-summer obsession if the twists land. The ten-episode season opens with two episodes on August 5, then continues weekly. If you like your thrillers stylish, unsettling, and a little bit trashy in the best way, this is your lane.
You’d like this if you enjoyed: American Horror Story, Saltburn
Runtime: 10 episodes
Genre: Thriller, coming-of-age
The Whisper Man (Netflix)
Some horror lives in the quiet moments, and The Whisper Man is built almost entirely out of them. Based on Alex North’s bestselling novel, this psychological thriller follows Tom Kennedy, a widowed crime writer played by Adam Scott, whose eight-year-old son is abducted. Desperate, Tom turns to his estranged father, a retired detective played by Robert De Niro, who years earlier caught the serial killer known as the Whisper Man. The problem is that the old case and the new one are starting to rhyme.
The casting alone is a statement of intent. De Niro and Scott as a fractured father and son give the film a heavyweight emotional core, and the supporting cast includes Michelle Monaghan, Michael Keaton, and Owen Teague. Director James Ashcroft, working from a script co-written by one of the writers behind It, leans into slow-burn atmosphere and the eerie playground rhyme at the story’s heart. The Russo brothers produce, lending it real muscle.
This is grief and dread braided together, a mystery about fatherhood as much as murder. It premieres August 28 as a single film, making it a self-contained shot of end-of-summer chills. If you want something that unsettles more than it shocks, this delivers.
You’d like this if you enjoyed: Prisoners, The Silence of the Lambs
Runtime: 1 hour 50 minutes
Genre: Thriller, horror
Don’t Say Good Luck (Netflix)
If the rest of this month’s list runs dark, here’s the warm exhale to end on. Don’t Say Good Luck is a coming-of-age musical dramedy about Sophie Birenbaum, a theater kid gearing up for her big lead role in the high school production of Waitress, only to find that the drama at home is starting to upstage anything happening on the actual stage. Sunny Sandler carries the film as Sophie, in her first true starring role.
Director Julia Hart, known for Stargirl, has a soft spot for earnest teen stories, and the grown-up cast around Sandler is stacked with ringers: Melanie Lynskey and Max Greenfield as the parents, plus Stephanie Beatriz, Bebe Neuwirth, and Steve Buscemi. Produced under Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison banner, it promises the kind of crowd-pleasing sincerity that tends to sneak up on you, with musical numbers woven through the family chaos.
It’s a gentle, feel-good change of pace, the sort of movie that plays beautifully on a lazy August evening. Don’t Say Good Luck premieres August 14 as a single film. If you’ve got a soft spot for stage kids and messy families that pull it together in the end, this one’s an easy watch.
You’d like this if you enjoyed: The Half of It, Stargirl
Runtime: 1 hour 50 minutes
Genre: Musical, coming-of-age