What to Watch in August: 20 Notable TV Shows & Streaming Movies

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – July 30, 2021

The month ahead will bring new shows like Marvel's What If, Reservation Dogs, Nine Perfect Strangers, and The Chair, plus returning favorites like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and streaming movies including a surprisingly good take on The Suicide Squad. In the gallery on this page, our editors have selected the most interesting TV and movie titles debuting at home in the next month, listed in order by premiere date.

5 of 22 photo by Marvel Studios

69 Marvel's What If...?: Season 1

Animated series debuts August 11 on Disney+

Yes, it's yet another Marvel series on Disney+, but this one's different: It's animated. It's also literally different. Based on the comic book series of the same name, the anthology series What If reimagines classic Marvel characters in hypothetical situations that depart from the stories you know from the MCU films. What if it were Peggy Carter who took the Super Soldier serum and became Captain ~~America~~ Britain? What if it were Steve Rogers who donned the Iron Man suit? What if T'Challa became Star Lord? These and other alternate realities will be explored across 10 episodes, streaming weekly. Jeffrey Wright voices Uatu The Watcher, who narrates the series, while MCU regulars Michael B. Jordan, the late Chadwick Boseman, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, Jeff Goldblum, Paul Rudd, Jeremy Renner, Sebastian Stan, Toby Jones, Hayley Atwell, Chris Evans, Michael Douglas, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Ruffalo, Taika Waititi, and many more will reprise their film and TV roles (at least in voice form).

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