Ted Lasso to The Shards: 10 of the best TV shows to watch this August

From the comeback of Apple TV's hit football comedy to a dark teen thriller from Ryan Murphy, and new DC superhero series Lanterns – these are the best series to watch and stream.

Set in the worlds of boxing and drug cartels, this revenge drama has Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson as an executive producer, as he was on Power, a show so successful it has led to five spin-offs. Fightland shares a similar gritty style. British boxer Duke Kilroy (Howard Charles, best known for Top Boy) becomes world heavyweight champion, only to spend the next eight years in a US prison for his brother's murder. On his release, he heads back to London determined to get vengeance on the man he is certain set him up for a crime he didn't commit: Kingsley Marshall (Nicholas Pinnock), a drug lord living a lush lifestyle. Duke decides to infiltrate his crime syndicate. Kingsley sets the series' tone in the teaser trailer, looking polished and ominous as he says, "Boxing is a criminal enterprise. Always has been and always will be."

Fightland premieres 31 July on Starz in the US and 27 August on Sky and NOW in the UK

Three years after it ended, supposedly for good, this warm, funny hit series returns with a twist. Former AFC Richmond football coach Ted (Jason Sudeikis) is lured back to the UK from Kansas City to coach a Richmond women's team that Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) has just created. The first episode sets up his choice too obviously, but by episode two he's back in London and the old show is reinvigorated with its new female-empowerment theme. Much of the lovable cast returns, including Jeremy Swift as director of operations Leslie Higgins, Juno Temple as marketing guru Keeley Jones, and Brett Goldstein as Roy Kent, now in Ted's old job but still a wonderfully acerbic character with a marshmallow heart for Keeley. Tanya Reynolds (from Netflix's Sex Education) plays a deadpan, talented coach for the women's team. With its motto "Believe", the show was embraced as pandemic-era comfort food when it began in 2020. Now that it's familiar, it may be even more comforting today.

Ted Lasso premieres 5 August on Apple TV internationally

Produced by Ryan Murphy, like a gazillion other series, this drama is set in 1981 Los Angeles and based on Bret Easton Ellis's 2023 semi-autobiographical novel. The conspicuously named Bret (Igby Rigney) is an aspiring writer and closeted gay man in his senior year of high school, when a new student, Robert, played by Homer Gere (yes, son of Richard) arrives. At the same time, a serial killer called The Traveler begins piling up victims. Kaia Gerber (daughter of Cindy Crawford) also stars as Bret's friend, Susan. The three are caught up in a world of rich, beautiful people and themes typical of both Murphy and Ellis: sexual identity, jealousy and suspicions. When The Shards was published, the New York Times review said the author had returned "to his old tropes: gruesome murder, lonely teenagers and 1980s Los Angeles".

The Shards premieres 5 August on Hulu in the US and 6 August on Disney internationally

Megan Park, writer and director of the coming-of-age comedy My Old Ass, created this teenage melodrama fraught with family secrets. Seventeen-year-old Annie (Ella Rubin) and her twin brother, Connor (Keen Ruffalo), live in New York City with their father (Jay Duplass). Out of nowhere, the twins inherit a Canadian island called Sterling Point from the grandfather they barely knew, the father of their late mother. The trailer gives away part of a key secret. We see Annie arriving at her grandfather's cottage on the island, meeting a........

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