Your guide to streaming, including Alley Cats, Lioness, Dark Matter, The Shards and the return of Ted LassoTom Basden stars as Ponce with Diane Morgan as Olive in Alley Cats. Photograph: PA Courtesy of Netflix Sat Aug 01 2026 - 05:15 • 7 MIN READLionessFrom Sunday, August 2nd, Paramount+Zoe Saldaña, Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman and Michael Kelly are reporting back for duty in the third series of the all-action espionage thriller and you probably wouldn’t be far off the mark to guess that the stakes are getting higher and the danger is getting perilously closer to home. Saldaña is soldier and CIA operative Joe McNamara, whose job it is to recruit women for the agency’s Lioness programme, teach them the skills of spycraft and close-quarters combat, and send them out to befriend the wives and girlfriends of the world’s most wanted criminals and terrorists and infiltrate their operations. Kidman returns as Kaitlyn Meade, Joe’s boss within the CIA, with Freeman reprising his role as US secretary of state Edwin Mullins. Ted LassoFrom Wednesday, August 5th, Apple TVFresh from his appearance on the sidelines at the World Cup final in New Jersey last month, when he brought Justin Bieber on as a surprise substitute during the half-time show, Ted Lasso is back at AFC Richmond, but things have changed utterly in the three years since he left the London soccer club and returned home to Kansas. Instead of managing the men’s team, he’s now coaching the club’s women’s soccer team – the Lady Greyhounds, who are in the second-division doldrums – but his annoyingly positive, can-do attitude has not diminished and his Marty moustache is as gloriously luxuriant as ever. We thought we had seen the last of Ted following the end of the third season, which seemed to close things off neatly, but star and executive producer Jason Sudeikis couldn’t resist reprising the role (he says it’s good for his own mental wellbeing), so he’s back on the AFC Richmond sidelines, tasked with turning the women’s side into a winning outfit. Impossible? It might take more than putting an apostrophe after the “i” to get these girls out of the relegation zone. Hannah Waddingham is back as the club’s owner Rebecca Welton, with other returning cast members Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, Juno Temple and Jeremy Swift, and new cast members including Tanya Reynolds, Jude Mack, Faye Marsay, Rex Hayes and Aisling Sharkey. One Hundred Years of SolitudeFrom Wednesday, August 5th, NetflixThe epic story of the Buendía family reaches its conclusion in this second series of the ambitious Colombian TV drama based on the Gabriel García Marquéz masterpiece of magic realism and literary virtuosity. The sweeping series features a big cast led by Claudio Cataño as Colonel Aureliano Buendía and Susana Morales as Úrsula Iguarán, the lovers who elope to found the mythical utopia of Macondo. The story follows generations of the Buendía family who are cursed to live a century in isolation and are riven by madness, passion and war. Series two consists of seven episodes plus a grand finale to bring the saga to a close, and takes up the story after the Treaty of Neerlandia is signed. Despite the armistice, however, there’s no peace for Macondo.Sterling PointFrom Wednesday, August 5th, Prime VideoStreaming networks know their teen viewership needs characters they can really relate to, and what could be more relatable than a coming-of-age drama featuring a gorgeous 17-year-old dealing with the burden of having just inherited an entire island from her mysterious grandad? Ella Rubin stars as New Yorker Annie Jacobson, with Keen Ruffalo as her twin brother Connor. Both are being raised in New York by their adoptive dad, Steven (Jay Duplass), but Annie’s world is shaken when she learns the grandfather she never knew has left her a prime piece of real estate in Canada, complete with boat dock and holiday cottage. Heading up to explore her new asset, she makes new friends, meets new crushes and discovers a sister she never knew existed. Just to lock in that relatability, the trailer features a new song from pop star Gracie Abrams, Look at My Life.The ShardsFrom Thursday, August 6th, Disney+It’s summer in Los Angeles in the early 1980s and a bunch of beautiful, rich, privileged high school seniors are getting on with their usual sex, seduction and social climbing. But this isn’t your usual steamy teen drama – The Shards is based on the 2023 novel by Bret Easton Ellis, veteran chronicler of Gen X teen nihilism. It’s a metafictional story loosely based on Ellis’s own adolescence, with added layers of lust and obsession, plus a big dollop of horror. Bret is a young student and aspiring writer at the exclusive Buckley prep school, trying to navigate his fluid sexual identity, when a charismatic new transfer student, Robert Mallory, changes the dynamics of his tight-knit friend group. His arrival coincides with a spate of gruesome murders and soon LA is in the grip of terror as it becomes clear a serial killer is on the loose – and he’s targeting the teens in Bret’s social circle. Could there be more to the mysterious Robert than meets the eye? Alley CatsFrom Friday, August 7th, NetflixRicky Gervais has had huge success with a string of edgy comedy series, from The Office to Extras to After Life to Life’s Too Short, but is he going down a blind alley with his latest creation, an animated series about a gang of feral cats roaming the streets and causing chaos with their don’t-give-a-f**k attitude? This is not some retooled Top Cat with the action transferred to British soil, though. These foul-mouthed felines with disgusting personal habits won’t be seen on kids’ TV schedules any time soon – the children would be so traumatised they’d change their minds about getting a kitten for Christmas. Gervais voices the gang’s leader Gus (“hungry, tired, full of hate and fury”), with Tom Basden as Ponce, Andrew Brooke as Fan, David Earl as Puke, Jo Hartley as Kitten and Diane Morgan as Olive. As they go about their nine lives, in between creating mayhem, these cats muse on the meaning of life and why being a cat is so great, as you can get away with all sorts of unsavoury behaviours. The Chosen in the Wild with Bear GryllsFrom Sunday, August 9th, Prime VideoWhen you’re lost in the wilderness, assailed on all sides by dangers and temptations, you need a good, solid guide to lead you along the right path. For TV explorer Bear Grylls that guide is Jesus and in this new docu-series he blends his Christian faith with his thirst for adventure, leading his followers on a daunting expedition across deserts, forests, canyons and other treacherous terrain. The twist is that the hiking party comprises cast members of the historical drama series The Chosen, which tells the story of Jesus in episodic form and whose sixth series is due to be aired in November. Jonathan Roumie (Jesus), Paras Patel (Matthew), Elizabeth Tabish (Mary Magdalene), Noah James (Andrew) and Luke Dimyan (Judas) are joined by the series’ creator and executive producer Dallas Jenkins on an epic journey through the great American outdoors, including Utah’s Castle Valley, Nevada’s Great Basin Desert and New York state’s Adirondack Forest. ReacherFrom Wednesday, August 12th, Prime VideoPoor old Tom Cruise got no end of stick when he took on the role of Jack Reacher in two feature films. Not that he wasn’t tough enough to play the army veteran turned sleuth, it was just that he fell short of the 6ft 5in height of the hero, as described in the bestselling novels of Lee Child. For the TV series, Prime Video corrected that height sticking-point by casting brick shithouse Alan Ritchson as Reacher. He certainly looks imposing, but wouldn’t last two rounds with Cruise in the acting stakes. Still, that hasn’t stopped Reacher from becoming one of the streamer’s most popular series and even before this fourth series airs, there’s already a fifth in production. This series is based on Child’s 13th Jack Reacher novel, Gone Tomorrow, and finds our hulking hero helping a stranger on a subway only to see all hell breaking loose. Soon, Reacher is up against low-life thugs and high-ranking leaders all out to cut him down to size.Average JoeFrom Wednesday, August 19th, Paramount+When we last saw Pittsburgh plumber Joe Washington, he was plumbing away happily until he discovered that his recently deceased dad had double-crossed the Russian mob, and now they were coming after him and his family looking for their $10 million back. And their Lamborghini. Luckily, Joe was able to tap into his inner Super Mario and give the Russkis the bum’s rush and as the first season ended, he was settling back down to everyday life fixing folks’ pipes and faucets. But it’s not long before a spanner is thrown in the works and Joe has to strap on his toolbelt and save his family from a mysterious new threat. His latest mission will take him and his team to Cape Town in South Africa, where they’ll soon learn they’re not in Kansas any more. Deon Cole returns as Joe, with Malcolm Barrett as Leon, Cynthia McWilliams as Cathy, Michael Trucco as Touch and new cast members Katlego Lebogang as the mysterious Imani and Hakeem Kae-Kazim as Cape Town crime boss Sipho. Dark MatterFrom Friday, August 28th, Apple TVJoel Edgerton returns as physicist Jason Dessen in the mind-blowing sci-fi thriller series based on the bestselling novel by Blake Crouch, and the second series is guaranteed to have even more time twists and reality tangles than the first series. To recap: Jason is living a perfect family life with his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and their son Charlie (Oakes Fegley), when he is abducted one night and wakes up in an alternative reality. He has to find a way to get back to his own reality before whoever abducted him takes over his family and his identity. But could the mystery kidnapper be ... himself? The key lies in a mysterious box about the size of a 40ft container, but it opens the door into so many alternative realities that soon there are multiple Jasons on the loose – and they’ve got more than kidnapping in mind. IN THIS SECTION