June is here. The sun is shining and the weather is warm, so now is the perfect time to hole up in your living room and binge some great TV.
And the powers that be are making it easy for you. There are several great sci-fi and fantasy shows worth paying attention to this month, from remakes of beloved classics to bold new literary adaptations. Here’s what’s on the docket:
10 modern TV shows you can watch in any order you want without getting lost
Whether you want to laugh, cry, or get scared out of your mind, these shows will get it done, and it doesn’t matter if you start from the beginning.
The Legend of Vox Machina Season 4
June 3 on Prime Video
The Legend of Vox Machina is based on the Dungeons & Dragons campaigns put on by the improvisers at Critical Role, turned into a fast-faced animated series. If you’ve ever played D&D with friends too late into the night, this will feel familiar; there’s plenty of histrionic drama and goofy jokes, with some glorious animated violence to wash it all down.
The third season of Vox Machina ended with the rag-tag teaming defeating the Chroma Conclave, a gang of tyrannical dragons. After going their separate ways for a while, the group reunites in Season 4 to face down the Cult of The Whispered One, a terrifying and ancient dark evil threatening the land of Exandria.
- Release Date
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January 27, 2022
- Network
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Prime Video
- Showrunner
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Brandon Auman
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Laura Bailey
Vex’ahlia (voice)
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Taliesin Jaffe
Percy (voice)
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Ashley Johnson
Pike (voice)
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Liam O’Brien
Vax’ildan (voice)
The Vampire Lestat
June 7 on AMC and AMC+
The Vampire Lestat is sort of a new show, except not really. It’s actually the third season of Interview With The Vampire, AMC’s brilliant adaption of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles books. The first two seasons covered the 1976 book Interview With The Vampire, but this third season will pivot to the 1985 The Vampire Lestat, with Sam Reid’s rock star bloodsucker moving center stage.
The title change is typically bold for what is definitely one of the best, most underrated shows on TV. Vampires have been done to hell and back, but someone showrunner Rolin Jones and his team have found a new way to approach them in this show. Interview With The Vampire (or The Vampire Lestat, or whatever you want to call it) is by turns scary, gorey, hilarious, and deeply heartfelt, and Season 3 will add in a bunch of musical numbers as Lestat goes on tour with his band.
For most shows, that would be crazy. For this one, it’s crazy enough to work.
- Release Date
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October 2, 2022
- Network
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AMC
- Showrunner
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Mark Johnson
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Jacob Anderson
Louis de Pointe du Lac
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Sam Reid
Lestat de Lioncourt
-
Eric Bogosian
Daniel Molloy
-
My Adventures With Superman Season 3
June 13 on Adult Swim (and the next day on Max)
My Adventures With Superman is an upbeat Superman show that takes on the familiar story of the Man of Steel with heart and humor. There’s as much high-spirited action as you could expect from a Superman show, with the second season dedicated to a battle against the iconic villain Brainiac. But there’s also a lot of time building out the central trio of Clark, Lois, and Jimmy. The third season will bring Superboy into the mix.
There have been animated Superman shows before, but My Adventures With Superman takes some cues from anime, which is a new twist that adds a lot of visual interest.
- Release Date
-
July 7, 2023
- Network
-
Adult Swim
- Showrunner
-
Jake Wyatt
-
Jack Quaid
Clark Kent / Superman (voice)
-
Alice Lee
Lois Lane (voice)
-
Ishmel Sahid
Jimmy Olsen (voice)
-
Chris Parnell
Agent Slade Wilson (voice)
Sugar Season 2
June 19 on Apple TV+
I’ve gotta be careful how I talk about Sugar, because there’s always a risk of accidentally exposing the incredibly bold twist at its center. I’ll say that Sugar is a lovingly crafted modern film noir that stars Colin Farrell as a movie-loving private investigator…until things flip partway through the first season and it becomes about something else entirely.
Maybe. It’s hard to know how Sugar will continue after pulling the rug out from under audiences in the first season, but any show willing to take such a hard turn so deep into its premiere season is worth paying attention to. The odds that you’ll be bored are very low.
- Release Date
-
April 4, 2024
- Network
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Apple TV
- Showrunner
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Mark Protosevich, Sam Catlin
-
-
-
Miguel Sandoval
Thomas Kinzie
-
Scott Lawrence
Dr. Vickers
House of the Dragon Season 3
June 21 on HBO Max
HBO’s first Game of Thrones prequel series returns for its third season, promising a scorched earth battle between two factions of the Targaryen dynasty, both of them with multiple fire-breathing beasts at their disposal.
TV doesn’t get much bigger than House of the Dragon these days. The show has scale for days, with HBO spending tens of millions to mount spectacular battle scenes in the sea, on the land, and in the air. If you want spectacle, you’ll get it here.
- Release Date
-
August 21, 2022
- Network
-
HBO
- Showrunner
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George R.R. Martin
- Directors
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Clare Kilner, Geeta Patel
- Writers
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Gabe Fonseca
Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 (June 25)
June 25 on Netflix
Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the most enduring and well-liked animated shows ever, a fleet-footed odyssey that takes our hero Aang through a fantasy world inspired by East Asian cultures. Netflix’s live-action hasn’t yet quite matched its unique charm, but the ambition is admirable, and it’s about to enter into the juiciest part of the story.
The second season of The Last Airbender was where the original show really took off, with our heroes venturing to the city of Ba Sing Se and grappling with dangerous villains like Azula. With a full season under its belt, hopefully this live-action remake can rise to the challenge.
- Release Date
-
February 22, 2024
- Network
-
Netflix
- Showrunner
-
Albert Kim
Genre-adjacent
Every single one of these shows is returning for a new season; there are no brand new series on there. And that’s fine, but if you’re crazing something fresh and novel, there are a couple of sci-fi and fantasy-adjacent series to recommend.
First up, Apple will debut its new Cape Fear series on June 5, starring Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson as a pair of married lawyers who screwed over a client years ago, and Javier Bardem as the crafty ex-convict determined to get his revenge on them. It promises to be a slow burning blast of a crime show.
After that, HBO will air the new sketch series Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness on June 26, starring Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Larry David as different characters throughout American history. There’s no literal time travel, but the costume drama is often a close cousin to the fantasy show, so we’re counting it.
