For instance, Marvel fans can turn to new Disney Plus series Ironheart, while also arriving on that platform is the new season of acclaimed comedy-drama The Bear.
Meanwhile, Taron Egerton stars in new Apple TV+ crime drama Smoke, Jordan Gray and Nick Frost lead new ITV comedy Transaction and period drama The Gilded Age is back for season 3.
That’s not to mention Jensen Ackles’s new Prime Video series Countdown, or the hours and hours of live Glastonbury coverage, which is airing across the BBC over the big weekend.
Here, you’ll find our top picks for this week – read on for our full choice of what to watch.
The Gilded Age season 3
Carrie Coon in The Gilded Age. HBO
Release date: Monday 23rd June, 9pm, Sky Atlantic
Downton Abbey returns for a third (and final) outing later this year in cinemas – but before we reunite with the Crawleys, it’s time for a return to Julian Fellowes’s other tale of torrid toffs. Though, of course, this series has a rather different flavour, taking the class-conscious action to 1880s New York City, where wealthy families the Van Rhijn-Brooks and the Russells vie for position and status.
In this third series, the formidable Mrs Russell (Carrie Coon) has big plans for her daughter’s entry to society, which clash with her Robber Baron husband’s more tender hopes. And across the street, sisters Agnes and Ada (Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon) grapple with a reversal in fortunes. It’s period fluff, really, but the formidable leading ladies make it sing.
Huw Fullerton
Transaction
Transaction. Big Talk Studios/ITV
Release date: Tuesday 24th June, 10:05pm, ITV2
Comedian and singer Jordan Gray makes a confident first foray into sitcom playing Liv, a transgender layabout forced into taking a job stacking supermarket shelves by a housemate (Thomas Gray, no relation) keen that she should start paying rent. Manager Simon (Nick Frost, channelling Brent and Partridge) hires Liv to appease a crowd who have gathered outside to protest at an inadvertently offensive advertising campaign — a situation Liv exploits, with unreasonable demands and pranks. When the bravado slips and Liv’s vulnerability surfaces, this otherwise sharp, surreally funny and gleefully crude series looks like it could have real staying power.
Gabriel Tate
Countdown
Jessica Camacho as Amber Oliveras and Jensen Ackles as Mark Meachum in Countdown. ELIZABETH MORRIS © AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC
Release date: Wednesday 25th June, Prime Video
A major conspiracy is threatening Los Angeles in a straight-ahead crime thriller that begins with a foot chase through the city’s back streets. An attack on a Homeland Security officer in broad daylight, plus the discovery of a large amount of money covertly changing hands, indicates that something seriously bad is about to go down at the docks, which can only mean one thing: it’s time to assemble a secret, off-the-books law enforcement task force, made up of elite renegade mavericks.
As this crack team of rule-breakers shoot, punch and wisecrack their way through clues that point to a conspiracy that goes right to the top, can they keep their ragtag band of troubled high-achievers together long enough to foil the plot and stop LA being nuked? You’ll know they’re doing something extra cool and badass when you hear electric guitar on the soundtrack.
Jack Seale
Ironheart
Dominique Thorne plays Riri Williams in Ironheart. Marvel Studios
Release date: Wednesday 25th June, Disney Plus
After a brief but impactful appearance in the 2022 movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Dominique Thorne returns as Riri Williams, the MIT whiz who assumes a new identity when she dons a highly advanced, flying suit of armour.
It’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s female-fronted reboot of Iron Man, in other words, playing out as a six-episode “event” so it’s not too much of a time investment. The lead character’s muse/nemesis is Parker Robbins aka the Hood (Anthony Ramos), an outsider criminal whose reliance on dark magic is anathema to our heroine – he’s also from a tough part of Chicago, the urban setting that keeps Ironheart to some extent grounded, even when its heroine is zooming across the sky.
Jack Seale
The Bear season 4
The Bear. Disney Plus
Release date: Thursday 26th June, Disney Plus
What sort of mood will The Bear be in this year? Christopher Storer’s drama about a Chicago sandwich shop, converted into a fine dining restaurant by volatile culinary visionary Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), thoughtful new talent Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and a kitchen full of barely qualified misfits, was a sleeper hit in season 1, a classic in season 2, and a directionless misfire in season 3.
Now The Bear the restaurant, like The Bear the show, is recovering from receiving bad press. But with the new eaterie fully up and running, this is a chance for The Bear to go back to basics, drawing fine drama out of the intensity of a working kitchen and a set of characters that we have, over the years, come to dearly love. Perhaps there’s one exception to that, which is Carmy’s impossible mother, Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis): just in case anything threatens to run smoothly, she’s in town.
Jack Seale
Smoke
Taron Egerton in Smoke. Apple TV+
Release date: Friday 27th June, Apple TV+
Dennis Lehane and Taron Egerton, respectively the writer and star of the seriously underrated drama Black Bird, reunite for a detective show with a difference. Egerton is Dave Gudsen, a sleuth who is, just after we meet him, obliged to take on a new partner, Michelle Calderon (Jurnee Smollett) – but Gudsen is specifically an arson investigator and the perpetrators he and his colleague must find are two serial arsonists at work in the Pacific Northwest.
Both lead characters bear the trauma of being caught in fires themselves, as well as the negative effects of relationships past and present – while those backstories and the detectives’ quickly growing chemistry are sketched with some assurance, it’s the show’s specific interest in arson as a crime and fire as a fearsome natural phenomenon that sets it apart. A particular kind of criminal deliberately sets fires – Smoke successfully ensures that it is therefore a particular kind of crime series.
Jack Seale
Squid Game season 3
Jo Yu-ri as Jun-hee, Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun and Park Sung-hoon as Hyun-ju in Squid Game season 3. No Ju-han/Netflix
Release date: Friday 27th June, Netflix
Let the games begin again! The monster Korean hit returns for a third and, thankfully, final season – it’s brilliant but it’s probably best it ends now before the concept collapses. In case you’ve been on Mars since 2021, we’re in a secret island location where desperate Koreans play supersized versions of children’s games, with a huge cash prize for the overall winner and death for everyone else. A sharp comment on ruthless capitalism and the way money rules people’s lives, it looked to have ended naturally in its first season, but just about renewed itself successfully in a follow-up run that saw the initial winner Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) voluntarily re-enter the game to try to destroy it from the inside.
Now the revolt has been quelled, the games can re-start, with some sort of horrific gumball machine playing a key role… ranged against enigmatic overlord Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) are an infiltrator on his staff, his own brother who will storm the compound as soon as he can find it, and the ever-resourceful Gi-hun, who could have been killed at any point but hasn’t been because that would spoil the story. It’s great to have one of TV’s most narratively and visually imaginative shows back, for one last round.
Jack Seale
Glastonbury 2025
Huw Stephens, Clara Amfo, Jack Saunders, Jo Whiley, Jamz Supernova and Lauren Laverne. BBC
Release date: Friday 27th June, 7:30pm, BBC One & BBC Two
Festival organiser Emily Eavis has said they have sold “a few thousand less tickets” to Glastonbury this year to try to minimise overcrowding. That means a few thousand more people who will be swerving a thankless trudge between stages or lukewarm pints flecked with silt and instead tuning in for the comprehensive campsite coverage this weekend.
As ever, no stone on Worthy Farm is being left unturned. The BBC has promised more than 90 hours of performances, with live streams of the five main stages, plus a Glastonbury Channel (12 noon until late across the weekend) available on iPlayer.
After a quick introduction to this year’s festival from Clara Amfo and Lauren Laverne (7:30pm BBC One), BBC Two has two and a half hours of today’s highlights from 8pm, including sets from Alanis Morissette, Biffy Clyro and Self Esteem, plus, hopefully, this year’s mystery artist (see page 22 for Jo Whiley’s predictions as to who that will be).
From 7pm, BBC Four has nearly five hours of back-to-back highlights, starting with the somewhat semantically unfortunate pairing of English Teacher and Wet Leg, as the indie darlings of this year and 2022 respectively take to the stage. Floral-skewed Supergrass and Blossoms are at 8pm, followed by rockers Franz Ferdinand and Wunderhorse (9pm), with the evening rounding off at 10pm with laid-back hip-hop poetry from Loyle Carner.
Pyramid Stage headliners the 1975 (who have created a fair few controversial headlines of their own in recent years, courtesy of frontman Matty Healy) are on BBC One from 10:30pm, while there are more highlights on BBC Two from midnight.
Frances Taylor
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