These 20 TV shows will save you from a summer of sport

Does World Cup fever leave you reaching for the remote? Will wall-to-wall Wimbledon have you fleeing the coverage from Centre Court? If the thought of sporting action has you seeking drama far away from the stadium, pitch and SW19, then refuge is at hand.

Below, Radio Times presents the ultimate antidote to the summer of sport: a haven free of flag-waving, tie-breaks and punditry, where actors are the only ones going on the attack.

It’s an international line-up of the highest quality – the only challenge is finding a room in the house that’s free of football chants and cries of “Come on!”…

These 20 TV shows will save you from a summer of sport

1. Elle, available 1 July, Prime Video

The 2001 movie Legally Blonde, a clever concept executed with irresistibly joyous energy, has lived on in the form of two movie sequels, a Broadway musical and even a reality show. Now here’s the TV prequel, where deceptively smart California girl Elle Woods (Lexi Minetree) navigates high school, having reluctantly left pink, fluffy Bel Air behind and moved with her parents to rainy, grungy Seattle in 1995.

It’s a pretty standard fish-out-of-water format, but with plenty of camp pep and a corny moral – about not judging by appearances, because loving girlish things and having a brain are not mutually exclusive – that’s as true as ever. Jack Seale

2. Trying, season 5 available 8 July, Apple TV

The first three seasons of this bittersweet treat of a sitcom were recently rerun on BBC and are on iPlayer, yet it’s still criminally overlooked. Strong casting and deft writing elevates a fairly familiar romcom set-up: Rafe Spall and Esther Smith are entirely believable and extremely charming as a couple in a suspiciously lovely, Richard Curtis-esque fantasy version of north London, who can’t conceive a child naturally and pursue adoption instead. Andy Wolton’s scripts are so good they’ve attracted a ludicrously strong cast, with Phil Davis, Imelda Staunton, Sian Brooke and Darren Boyd all lending their class to supporting roles. Jack Seale

3. Little House on the Prairie, available 9 July, Netflix

Life on the Western frontier is charted in this new take on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s classic saga. Viewers with fond memories of the previous screen version, which was a staple part of the US TV schedules for much of the 1970s, will have a keen eye on this eight-part reimagining from Netflix, which sees Alice Halsey (Lessons in Chemistry) take on the role of the strong-willed Laura and Luke Bracey (Hacksaw Ridge) play patriarch Charles. Part family drama, part survival story and American West origin tale, this eight-parter looks set to bring to life the wild Kansas landscape of the late 19th century. David Brown

4. Lucky, available 15 July, Apple TV

Anya Taylor-Joy is perfectly cast in a lithe thriller from Your Friends and Neighbours creator Jonathan Tropper. The titular Lucky is half of a glamorous couple of heist merchants who have just hit the big one in Las Vegas: their suitcase full of stolen cash means they should be set for life. A flash-forward has already, however, shown us Lucky, her long red hair chopped short and roughly dyed blonde, alone and on the run from the FBI. Pale and frail but apparently made of the hardest, purest steel, Lucky is consistently underestimated by the feds who want her locked up and the gangsters who want her dead. Jack Seale

5. The Bear, season 5 available 25 June, Disney+

Jeremy Allen White’s chef Carmy might have signed over his restaurant to protégé Syd (Ayo Edibiri) and “cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), but that hasn’t slowed things down in the kitchen. In fact, this final season looks like the final service for this ragtag crew of chefs and servers, with their investment money drying up just as the restaurant itself is hit by flash floods. Still, no matter – chaos is what The Bear does best. Would we really want to watch a series where the orders go out on time, nothing lights on fire and the employees all have respectful, calm professional relationships? No, chef! Huw Fullerton

6. Ted Lasso, season 4 available 5 August, Apple TV

This football-based comedy seemingly ended for good in 2023 with a big wrap-up finale – but Apple TV’s called extra time. Now, a few years after US coach Ted (Jason Sudeikis) taught a British premiere league team to believe in themselves, he’s back in Blighty to help kick off AFC Richmond’s nascent women’s squad. Plenty of the old team – Hannah Waddingham, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt and Juno Temple among others – are back on the pitch, with new signings including Sex Education’s Tanya Reynolds and Game of Thrones’ Faye Marsay. OK, we’ve officially run out of football metaphors – hopefully Ted’s just getting started with all his. Huw Fullerton

7. House of the Dragon, season 3 available 22 June, HBO Max / Sky Atlantic

Although the second season of this fiery Game of Thrones spin-off was noted for its slower pace and lack of action, these criticisms look like they’ll be rapidly remedied in season 3 as the show enters its biggest chapter yet. House Targaryen is breaking out into an all-out civil war with the long-awaited Battle of the Gullet. A new face enters the fray as James Norton joins the cast as the noble Ormund Hightower, while we’re also reacquainted with old favourites including usurped queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma Darcy) and warrior Daemon (Matt Smith). Then there’s worried Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) now desperately seeking peace, as one son, Aegon (Tom Glynn Carney) flees King’s Landing, while the other, Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), seemingly grows ever more power-hungry. It’s been a long time coming but the Dance of Dragons is finally heating up and, as House Targaryen rains fire and blood over Westeros, one thing is for certain: no-one is safe. Louise Griffin

8. Dutton Ranch, available now Paramount+

A Yellowstone sequel that takes two of the old show’s best characters, fiery Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) and her stout husband Rip (Cole Hauser), and moves them from Montana to Texas, the location for creator Taylor Sheridan’s more recent hit, Landman. The tone is somewhere between Yellowstone and Landman, with the former’s soapy, occasionally violent power struggles and a good dose of the latter’s world-weary wisdom. The fearsome Beth, meanwhile, is granted a suitably awesome new comrade/nemesis in the form of Beula, the town’s existing queen bee who’s played by none other than Annette Bening. Jack Seale

9. Cape Fear, available now, Apple TV

With an air of complacency, Tom Bowden (Patrick Wilson) assures his wife Anna (Amy Adams) that “Max Cady is not coming”. History tells us otherwise. Cady is always coming. The notoriously vengeful antagonist first appeared in John D MacDonald’s novel The Executioners before reaching the screen twice – initially embodied by Robert Mitchum’s predatory calm, then later reimagined through Robert De Niro’s almost operatic menace. This time, Javier Bardem brings his trademark controlled intensity to a Max Cady with twice the incentive.

Newly released from prison after his conviction is overturned, he sets his sights on both Tom, the prosecutor who put him away, and Anna, the defence attorney who failed to keep him free. Tom and Anna’s subsequent marriage after falling in love while working on the case only deepens Cady’s sense of grievance: in his eyes, the pair are united in guilt. As a 10-part season, this version can’t sustain Cady as a mere tattooed avatar of sadism. Hints of a troubled childhood begin to bubble up, adding texture to the threat. But any suggestion of softening is undercut by the return of Bernard Herrmann’s thunderous score – its pulsing brass a reminder of the violence lying in wait beneath the surface. As Cady himself puts it, he’s only just getting started. David Brown

It’s not hard to work out how Neil Forsyth’s new thriller got commissioned. Forsyth wrote The Gold, the BBC’s excellent drama based on the 1983 Brink’s-Mat robbery. So, said Netflix: got any more true stories about seedy organised crime from around the same time that you can draw on to repeat the trick? Forsyth has delivered with a dramatisation of an outlandish scheme UK customs officials came up with in 1990, amid political pressure to stop heroin imports: they sent ambitious customs officers with no experience of field work under cover to infiltrate trafficking gangs.

Steve Coogan is in his element as Don, a damaged but still driven veteran of clandestine stings who trains up a crack unit of officers to live in Liverpool and London, on rough estates and in the Turkish immigrant community respectively. As they embark on a mission that could end in violent death if the slightest error is made, Forsyth’s skill for paring narrative down to just the fun parts makes Legends irresistible: every scene is tense, funny or both at once, and the sense of Thatcher’s Britain as a place defined by grubby, brutal dysfunction is intoxicating. Jack Seale

11. Rivals, available now, Disney+

What a pleasant surprise this show was when it debuted in 2024. Those with a passing acquaintance with the bestselling books of Jilly Cooper expected the TV version of her Rutshire Chronicles series to be shameless trash, and it sort of was – but as real aficionados of Dame Jilly might have predicted, it had wit and heart to go with its tales of lust and power in the Cotswolds in 1986.

Now it’s 1987 and malign media mogul Tony Baddingham (David Tennant) – who like all the men in Rivals, seems to have been lightly sprayed with weatherproof varnish – renews his enmity towards his emotionally inert rival Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) and the rising star of Rupert’s operation, the thrusting Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner). A viciously contested polo tournament is just the start of a fresh round of backstabbing and philandering that’s full of cheeky laughs – but, away from the battlefield, and the bedrooms where illicit liaisons take place, various characters’ romantic feelings are the fuel for just a dash of properly rewarding drama. Jack Seale

12. Star City, available now, Apple TV

Although this stellar new thriller is a prequel and spin-off to Apple TV epic For All Mankind, no prior knowledge is needed to enjoy this alt-history epic, where secrecy and surveillance collide. Set in the 1970s, it asks what would have happened had the Soviets not only won the Space Race but then continued venturing into the stars. Anna Maxwell Martin and Rhys Ifans are two sides of the same coin: she as the ruthless head of KGB intelligence, tasked with uncovering any small act that may jeopardise the Soviet Union; he as the shadowy Chief Designer – the brains behind the space programme and the man who must remain shrouded in mystery.

There’s some crossover between the two starry Apple seaslns, as we’re re-introduced to younger versions of For All Mankind’s Sergei Nikulov and Irina Morozova, and thanks to its focus on standout characters like Adam Nagaitis’s cosmonaut Valya and his wife Tanya (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis), a show that could have been abjectly bleak also offers up a huge amount of heart. But perhaps most absorbing are the moments plucked from Soviet history, such as the state arranging marriages for its cosmonauts in a bid to control them, and missions landing off-course in Siberia’s wilderness. Sometimes, reality is more astonishing than fiction. Louise Griffin

13. The Boroughs, available now, Netflix

The Duffer Brothers mix some Thursday Murder Club-style charm with a dash of the horror they conjured for Stranger Things in this new supernatural drama. Life after retiring is anything but relaxing for Sam (Alfred Molina), who reluctantly moves into an idyllic retirement village after losing his wife. Soon, he starts noticing strange happenings about the place and, before too long, his golden years are being rudely interrupted by a deadly otherworldly threat. Typical.

“A lovable bunch of misfits” is how executive producers the Duffers have described the ragtag gang of seniors (Denis O’Hare, Bill Pullman, Alfre Woodard, Geena Davis and Clarke Peters) who join Sam. He’s armed with just a few tools from his days as an engineer, yet must face up to the monsters, all while convincing his daughter he’s not losing the plot. Despite a few ridiculous moments (including an homage to Thelma & Louise that’s laughably shoe-horned in), The Boroughs is a heartfelt series that poses a fair few questions about life, ageing and death – and asks just how far you’ll go for the ones you love. Louise Griffin

14. Two Weeks in August, available now, BBC iPlayer

Zoe (Jessica Raine) is taking her family on holiday but, from the taxi ride to the villa onwards, we can see that this is anything but a relaxing getaway. As the car hurtles down the dusty roads of a beautiful Greek island, Zoe looks after the kids while her other half Dan (Damien Molony) sits pale and anxious in the back. The couple are on their way to meet a group of their friends, most of whom have partners in tow, and none of whom are much more content than Zoe and Dan.

The first night of the break is a dinner and pool party at which more than one awful secret comes out; after that, the group’s decision to take a boat trip the next day seems positively reckless. This trip is going to haunt them. Catherine Shepherd’s austere drama takes its time to draw us in, with a script that isn’t afraid to include plenty of extended two-handers between characters who have a lot of stress and regret to unload. So far the result is easier to admire than it is enjoy, but the island seems to have plenty more in store for the visitors, none of it pleasant. Jack Seale

15. Tip Toe, available now, Channel 4

Screams ring out across the rooftops of Manchester… a man is found hanging from a lamppost outside his own home. Brutal imagery kick-starts a suspenseful new drama from Russell T Davies. It may be on the same turf as Queer as Folk, his breezier calling card of the 1990s, but Tip Toe argues that, a quarter of a century later, life has taken a dark turn for LGBTQ+ people in Britain. Indeed, this is urgent, state-of-thenation stuff from one of our shrewdest screenwriters.

As Davies told me recently, “Our rights are paper-thin as gay people. We’re in great danger. The fight is on. That’s what Tip Toe is about.” As events spool back 10 days prior to that shocking death, we meet Leo, who’s been locked out of his house in just vest and pants and has to call on his neighbour Clive for help.

Alan Cumming is touching as Leo, a bit of a showman in his Canal Street bar Spit & Polish, yet timid on his own doorstep. He’s well matched by David Morrissey as Clive, a troubled family man who oversteps the bounds of neighbourliness. A sense of unease pervades, heightened in a two-hander between Leo and his old friend Melba (Paul Rhys), who tries to shake him out of his complacency. “If there’s a war, you’re on the frontline.” Patrick Mulkern

16. Alice and Steve, available now, Disney+

Forget love stories – this is a true hate story, about how an escalating feud causes chaos (but in a comic way, not a 5 original drama way). Nicola Walker and Jemaine Clement star as the eponymous Alice and Steve, whose decades-long friendship grew from a fizzled-out romantic relationship when they were students. Today, Alice is a cool but self-centred fashion designer; Steve a witty, recently-divorced hairdresser. On a night out, Alice encourages him to find a new, younger girlfriend, and Steve demurs. But when he sleeps on her sofa, there’s immediate chemistry with her recently-dumped twenty-something daughter Izzy. Uh-oh.

It’s an impressively wrong-footing premise which challenges prejudices about age-gap relationships…and then reminds us how creepy it is that Steve is dating his ex’s daughter, whom he knew as a child…and then makes him sympathetic by just how extreme Alice’s reaction is (another neat twist – Alice is herself more than a decade older than her husband). Soon, in an arms race of petty revenge careers are sabotaged, videos leaked and damaging secrets revealed. It’s a miracle the pair haven’t killed each other by the sixth episode, which ends abruptly, perhaps with a hint that we may see these monstrous BFFs return. Huw Fullerton

17. The Witness, available now, Netflix

Sadly there are numerous reasons for the 1992 murder of Rachel Nickell to live on in infamy, but this careful three-part drama finds a new angle on it. It does cover the brutality of the crime – Nickell was stabbed to death in broad daylight on Wimbledon Common -–and the farrago of the police investigation, which pursued an innocent man all the way to a collapsed trial and only caught the real culprit more than a decade later.

The focus here, though, is on Nickell’s partner Andre and the only witness to the crime, her young son Alex. As they cope with grief, anger, frustration and intrusion from a monstrously insensitive tabloid press, a delicate story about a father and son unfolds. Netflix also has an extensive new documentary about the case itself, which is a chance to meet the real Andre and Alex. Jack Seale

18. Ponies, available now, Now

Moscow in the late 1970s is the setting for a comedy drama that’s clearly been inspired by The Americans, but gives the idea of secret agents hiding in plain sight more than one smart twist. As well as taking place in a handsomely realised Soviet Union – with its chilly market squares full of chain-smoking men and fierce women in frightening hats – where the staff of the US embassy are all CIA spies, it finds two unlikely heroes in conscientious Bea (Emilia Clarke) and cynical, loudmouthed Twila (Haley Lu Richardson).

They went to Russia as the wives of spies but, when they become the widows of spies, they are stuck for something to do – so become spies themselves. It’s more comedy than drama, droll and offbeat without going for big belly laughs – as yet there’s not a huge amount of espionage action, either, but Bea and Twila are just getting going. Without much training but with a lot more common sense than the menfolk in their lives ever had, they are what are known in the business as Persons of No Interest. But can they stay under the radar? Jack Seale

19. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, available now, BBC iPlayer

Where teenage fans of mystery fiction are concerned, the difference between this generation and the last is that there’s no longer the need to make the leap from juvenile fare like Nancy Drew to the works of Agatha Christie. These days, young adults have whodunnits written specifically for their own age group, with one of the genre’s most popular teen sleuths being Pip FitzAmobi (Wednesday’s Emma Myers), the podcasting detective who returns in this adaptation of Holly Jackson’s sequel novel Good Girl, Bad Blood.

Steeped in true crime, Pip is very much a hero for the social media era, and unlike the ever-unflappable Nancy, she hasn’t emerged unscathed from her previous investigation. Still dealing with the psychological fallout of that case, she’s reluctant to involve herself in another disappearance. Yet once Pip spots inconsistencies the police seem content to overlook, she once again feels compelled to pursue the truth – even if she’s now painfully aware that justice in the real world is rarely neat, tidy and comforting. David Brown

20. Death Valley, available now, BBC iPlayer

In the eyes of retired actor John Chapel (Timothy Spall), there’s very little to separate crime-solving from workshopping a play. Suspects become dramatis personae, motives neatly sketched character arcs. He’s self-important, certainly. Occasionally, downright pompous. But irritatingly, he also gets results. So, when a car dealer on community payback plunges (or is he pushed?) from the parapet of a 12th-century castle, newly promoted DI Janie Mallowan (Gwyneth Keyworth) is instructed to enlist his help once again. Janie is less than thrilled.

The pair have been keeping their distance ever since it emerged that Chapel has been “boffing” her mum Yvonne (Melanie Walters). Chapel, however, is incapable of staying away from the spotlight. Donning a high-vis tabard with the gusto of a Shakespearean leading man in doublet and hose, he throws himself into the case. It may not be the most taxing mystery, but there’s plenty of fun in watching him grandly quote Keats and Milton, flourishing his litter-picker like a prop sword. David Brown

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