📺 What to Watch: Such Brave Girls, Ballard, and a Perfect Game Show
Hulu’s best underrated comedy, a cop procedural, and the most joyful thing on streaming right now
Happy Thursday. Jenni’s off galavanting around Europe, which means it’s just me (Jess) holding down the fort this week. Unless you’re a Love Island fan, there hasn’t been too much to get excited about lately—but one of my favorite shows of 2023 came back this week, and it is still such an underrated gem. My review is below if you need convincing, but trust me, you should give it a try.
In today’s edition:
Weekly Watchlist
Ballard (Prime Video)
Game Changer (Dropout.TV)
Such Brave Girls (Hulu)
Foundation - S3 (Apple TV+)
— Jess Spoll and Jenni Cullen
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Below is a subset of new shows and movies premiering this week. Our unabridged list of July releases is available for premium subscribers.
Too Much (Season 1) — This new rom-adjacent comedy from Girls creator Lena Dunham stars Megan Stalter (Hacks) as a workaholic New Yorker who takes a new job in London and forms an unusual connection with a local guy (Will Sharpe) there.
Watch on Netflix: July 10 (all 10 episodes)Leviathan (Season 1) — Scott Westerfeld's 2009 steampunk novel gets the anime treatment in this new series. Set in an alternate timeline during World War I, Leviathan follows a pair of teens looking to change history while mechanized war machines and genetically engineered creatures go head to head in battle.
Watch on Netflix: July 10 (all 12 episodes)Dexter: Resurrection (Season 1) — A third Dexter spin-off follows up on the first sequel series Dexter: New Blood. Resurrection sees Dexter head to NYC to look for his missing son.
Watch on Showtime: July 11 (2 of 10 episodes, then weekly)Foundation (Season 3) — This visually striking Isaac Asimov adaptation returns with more galaxy-spanning drama, as competing factions wrestle for control of the future.
Watch on Apple TV+: July 11 (1 of 10 episodes, then weekly)The Institute (Season 1) — Based on Stephen King’s 2019 novel, this supernatural horror follows a group of gifted children held at a secretive facility for sinister experimentation.
Watch on MGM+: July 13 (all 8 episodes)The Summer I Turned Pretty (Season 3) — The YA drama returns for one more foray into sun-soaked love triangles, emotional growing pains, and romantic tension.
Watch on Prime Video: July 16 (all 10 episodes)
Our thoughts on brand new streaming content, and where you can watch.
Ballard
Keywords: crime drama, procedural, Bosch spinoff
Watch if you like: Bosch, Jack Ryan, Reacher
Jess’s Rating: 3/5⭐
There’s certainly no shortage of police procedurals out there—especially on Prime Video—but Ballard manages to land just slightly above the genre’s baseline. Set in Michael Connelly’s Bosch universe (though you don’t need to have seen Bosch to follow along), the series centers on Detective Renée Ballard (Maggie Q), a capable but haunted investigator grappling with police corruption and unresolved trauma.
Ballard heads the LAPD’s Cold Case Division, a severely underfunded basement office staffed by retired detectives and offbeat volunteers. (Doesn’t this sound like at least 3 other recent shows?). The series opens in media res and mercifully skips most of the usual exposition dump, setting up a long-gestating mystery involving the decades-old murder of a city councilman’s sister. Case-of-the-week storylines fill the gaps, but everything circles back to a larger conspiracy lurking inside the department.
Maggie Q is solid in the lead, and it’s refreshing to see a woman at the center of one of these “dad shows,” even if she’s given a familiar (clichéd) backstory. Ballard isn’t breaking new ground, but in this slow stretch of summer, it’s a serviceable watch.
— Jess
Length: 45-min runtime, 1 season / 10 episodes
Watch on: Prime Video
Game Changer
Keywords: improv comedy, unscripted, comfort watch
Watch if you like: Whose Line is it Anyway, British Panel TV Shows, @fterMidnight
Jenni’s Rating: 4.5/5⭐
Dropout.TV is a bit of a niche streaming service, but at this point, I may never give it up. And not just because its original comedy panel show, Game Changer makes me so dang happy. The company itself is worth rooting for—it has embraced profit sharing for the past two years (including the building’s custodial staff!) and pays all talent for audition time. That ethos and positive energy radiates through its programming, especially its flagship series.
As the name suggests, Game Changer is a game show that reinvents the rules every episode. Contestants walk in blind, discovering the game as they play it. Watching a rotating cast of comedians try to puzzle out the rules while host Sam Reich giggles and nudges them along is consistently hilarious. It’s a series that thrives on improvisational genius and chaos, but the inventive premises leverage an impressive amount of legwork and pre-planning.
Now in its seventh season, the show somehow keeps escalating its format in wildly inventive ways; just when you think they can’t top themselves, they do. Standout episodes this season so far include “One Year Later,” where contestants have 365 days to complete an array of unhinged challenges, and “Crowd Control,” the show’s first live episode, where three stand-up comics perform crowd work for points, but with a sinister twist.
It always feels tough to recommend something on a streaming service that few people have, but do me a favor: next rainy weekend, get yourself a 3-day free trial of Dropout.TV and see if all these charismatic comedians don’t hook you the way they did me.
— Jenni
Length: 30-min runtime, 7 seasons / 70 episodes, 7 of 10 available of S7, new every other Monday
Watch on: Dropout.TV
Such Brave Girls
Keywords: cringe humor, British, dark comedy
Watch if you like: Fleabag, Catastrophe, You’re The Worst
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