Gracie Abrams<\/a>, Look at My Life.<\/p>\nThe ShardsFrom Thursday, August 6th, Disney+<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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\u2019t your usual steamy teen drama \u2013 The Shards is based on the 2023 novel by Bret Easton Ellis, veteran chronicler of Gen X teen nihilism. It\u2019s a metafictional story loosely based on Ellis\u2019s 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 \u2013 and he\u2019s targeting the teens in Bret\u2019s social circle. Could there be more to the mysterious Robert than meets the eye? <\/p>\n
Alley CatsFrom Friday, August 7th, Netflix<\/p>\n
Ricky Gervais has had huge success with a string of edgy comedy series, from The Office to Extras to After Life to Life\u2019s 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\u2019t-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\u2019t be seen on kids\u2019 TV schedules any time soon \u2013 the children would be so traumatised they\u2019d change their minds about getting a kitten for Christmas. Gervais voices the gang\u2019s leader Gus (\u201chungry, tired, full of hate and fury\u201d), 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. <\/p>\n
The Chosen in the Wild with Bear GryllsFrom Sunday, August 9th, Prime Video<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re 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\u2019 creator and executive producer Dallas Jenkins on an epic journey through the great American outdoors, including Utah\u2019s Castle Valley, Nevada\u2019s Great Basin Desert and New York state\u2019s Adirondack Forest. <\/p>\n
ReacherFrom Wednesday, August 12th, Prime Video<\/p>\n
Poor 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\u2019t 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\u2019t last two rounds with Cruise in the acting stakes. Still, that hasn\u2019t stopped Reacher from becoming one of the streamer\u2019s most popular series and even before this fourth series airs, there\u2019s already a fifth in production. This series is based on Child\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Average JoeFrom Wednesday, August 19th, Paramount+<\/p>\n
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\u2019s rush and as the first season ended, he was settling back down to everyday life fixing folks\u2019 pipes and faucets. But it\u2019s 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\u2019ll soon learn they\u2019re 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. <\/p>\n
Dark MatterFrom Friday, August 28th, Apple TV<\/p>\n
Joel 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 \u2013 and they\u2019ve got more than kidnapping in mind. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LionessFrom Sunday, August 2nd, Paramount+ Zoe Salda\u00f1a, Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman and Michael Kelly are reporting back for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[593,74185,38848,18,117,8926,64358,19,17,151181,29436,127,10420,62134,29234],"class_list":["post-615105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-apple-tv","tag-bear-grylls","tag-disney-plus","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-gracie-abrams","tag-hannah-waddingham","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jason-sudeikis","tag-joel-edgerton","tag-netflix","tag-nicole-kidman","tag-prime-tv","tag-ricky-gervais"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117020228729052091","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}