TV Guide Magazine August 15, 2022

The calendar still says August, but we are already excited about the fast-approaching fall TV season. One of the earliest premieres is also one of the biggest: the Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon on HBO. The blockbuster series focuses on the Targaryen family almost 200 years before the events of GoT, and we know you loved the original. It made our cover no fewer than eight times during its run, including a set of collector’s covers for the final season in 2019. Our staffers who saw an early screening of the first episode were blown away. So, of course, House of the Dragon gets our Must Watch seal of approval! Also in our Sneak Peek (page 8) is one of the biggest premieres from last fall: the hilarious…

Source: Nielsen Media Research, week of July 18–24, 2022, in millions. Broadcast networks only. Smart Watch If you have 30 minutes, watch this episode On Nathan Fielder’s uniquely comic The Rehearsal, big sets are built and actors are hired to help regular folks rehearse for difficult coming conversations. Title of this episode: “Pretend Daddy.” Friday, Aug. 19, 11/10c, HBO If you have an hour, watch this season finale The never-been-better gritty Chicago drama The Chi wraps Season 5 with big life decisions for ex-con Trig (Luke James) and a determined Emmett (Jacob Latimore). Sunday, Aug. 28, 9/8c, Showtime If you have a free evening, watch this documentary In Running With the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee, the man behind the perennial antivirus software finds he can’t protect himself from a homicide investigation. Wednesday, Aug. 24,…

Those spellbinding 17th century sisters are baaaack…and they’re mad as you-know-what. Hocus Pocus 2 resurrects the ghostly Sanderson siblings—played as they were in the original 1993 cult smash by (from left) Kathy Najimy, Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker—for this Disney+ film, premiering September 30. The trio wreak new havoc on Salem, Massachusetts, with Halloween approaching, and it’s up to some high schoolers to keep them from unleashing lots of toil and trouble. —Robert Edelstein TONY DOW (1945–2022) TONY DOW WILL forever be young, the idealized big brother to little Beaver Cleaver (Jerry Mathers) in the classic suburban-family sitcom Leave It to Beaver (1957–63). An accomplished athlete but untrained actor when cast at 12 as Wally, the handsome Dow enjoyed the perks but also the pitfalls of early fame. Dow, who died of…

@TVGMMattRoush SERIES PREMIERE Friday, Aug. 12, Prime Video BASEBALL ISN’T JUST a game; it’s a lifeline and a pathway to self-discovery in this seriocomic twist on the beloved 1992 movie about the pioneering All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during wartime in the 1940s. You’ll have to wait until the fifth (of eight) episodes to hear someone say, “There’s no crying in baseball.” Significantly, it’s not a bullying coach who says it, but one of the Rockford Peaches, chiding one of their own for not standing up for herself and for the team. There’s also not a lot of laughter, at least of the belly-laugh variety, in the new League’s earnest depiction of gender and racial discrimination and prejudice. “This isn’t even real baseball, kid,” quips the condescending coach, former pro Dove Porter (an oddly…

@TVGMMattRoush I am still stoked over the new season of HBO’s Barry. But how can it be classified by the Emmys as a comedy or even a dramedy? This season was by far more dramatic than comedic. Is it simply because it’s a halfhour show? —JV MATT ROUSH: A brilliant series like Barry is hard to pigeonhole, and there’s no doubt it’s pushing the definition of “dark comedy” to the limit. There was humor this season, especially in its satire of the pitfalls in showbiz, but it doesn’t entirely make sense for a show this intense to be competing (with 14 nominations!) against much lighter fare. But that’s the Emmys for you, and I’d be surprised if it’s ever reclassified at this point. I was looking forward to the new season of TBS’s…

SERIES PREMIERE Sunday, Aug. 14, 9/8c, AMC BREATHING NEW LIFE into a franchise that even a die-hard (pardon the puns) horror fan like myself has grown weary of, as casts scatter and tiresomely odious human antagonists keep obscuring the zombie-scape, this eclectic anthology of stand-alone Walking Dead vignettes is a welcome reminder that less can be more. I’ve seen three of the six episodes, and while this format is uneven by its nature, I’m especially encouraged by the shifting tones, from whimsy to suspense and existential despair, evoking The Twilight Zone in its imaginative expansion of genre and mastery of short-form storytelling. The first episode, a satisfying mismatched-buddy road trip starring Terry Crews and Olivia Munn, is the most conventional; the next is the wildest, an amusingly harrowing time-loop fantasy with Parker Posey…