July’s TV premieres open up a Brave New World (and a new streaming service)

Somewhere between Apple being a company that makes hip computers and Apple trying to brand itself as a company that makes streaming TV, we had Apple as the company that sells you digital music. Rarely before have the music and TV eras of Apple seemed as perfectly aligned as they are in Little Voice, a musical drama from J.J. Abrams, Sara Bareilles, and Jessie Nelson. Billed as a coming-of-age drama and a “love letter to the diverse musicality of New York,” the show is about an aspiring singer trying to find her voice and “fulfill her dreams while navigating rejection, love, and complicated family issues.” It stars Brittany O’Grady from Star, plus Sean Teale, Colton Ryan, and Chuck Cooper, but the biggest hook is probably that it features new original music from Bareilles. That’s certainly the case in the trailer Apple released, which is as much a music video for Bareilles’ song “Little Voice” as it is a preview of this TV show. [Sam Barsanti]

It would be easy to offer and as points of reference for this new Starz series, but P-Valley comes with a much more direct predecessor: Katori Hall’s insightful play, Pussy Valley, which she’s adapted for the small screen. Set in the Mississippi Delta, P-Valley stars Brandee Evans as Mercedes, the strip club star who’s asked to mentor—or perhaps just influence—the newly arrived Autumn (Elarica Johnson). As Uncle Clifford, Nicco Annan is a boss and a mother to this group of dancers. With her play and her TV series, Hall challenges a long history of hypersexualizing Black women, while creating a “space for their voices to shine,” capturing just how nuanced and complicated they are. P-Valley also boasts an all-women lineup of directors, including award-winning music video director Karena Evans, Kimberly Peirce, Millicent Shelton, Tamra Davis, Geeta V. Patel, Tasha Smith, Sydney Freeland, and Barbara Brown. [Danette Chavez]

We’ll have more on Peacock’s programming slate and library offerings in the coming days, but for now, it’s safe to say that David Wiener’s adaptation of Brave New World represents the most intriguing of the new service’s original series. Along with Grant Morrison and Owen Harris, Wiener has reimagined Aldous Huxley’s seminal dystopian novel for a time when the connection between oppressive systems and violence is starker than ever. The sci-fi drama, which stars Jessica Brown Findlay, Alden Ehrenreich, and Harry Lloyd, was originally set to begin production at Syfy before making its way to the USA Network and, finally, Peacock. But it remains to be seen if this Brave New World will prove as immersive an experience as the novel’s feelies. [Danette Chavez]

The classic Arthurian mythos gets a reworking in Cursed, the adaptation of Frank Miller and Tom Wheeler’s brutalist graphic novel, which provides a new origin story of sorts for Nimue, a.k.a. the tragic Lady Of The Lake. The series reimagines the hero, played by Katherine Langford (best known for being the most compelling part of 13 Reasons Why), as a young woman who, after losing her mother to the rampaging Red Paladins, joins up with an equally youthful Arthur on a mission to locate Merlin and deliver a famed sword of power. Nimue is a member of the Fey, a humanlike race of fairies that possess magic abilities, and the trailer suggests there’s going to be plenty of tweaks to the familiar King Arthur legends—especially when it comes to the intense violence, which is not terribly unexpected, as it’s coming from source material Frank Miller is involved in, and he’s executive-producing the show alongside Wheeler. [Alex McLevy]

Created by, written by, and starring Australian comic Sarah Kendall, this six-episode U.K./Aussie import explores the classic fish-out-of-water-even-though-she-was-born-in-said-water dynamic, as Kendall’s posh Sammy Cooper is forced to move back to her down-market Australian home after her husband suddenly dies. Matt Passmore and Kerry Armstrong co-star as just two of the people Sammy thoroughly pissed off before bailing on the whole Southern Hemisphere, and who she now has to reconcile with in order to keep her and her kids afloat. [William Hughes]

Like so many jewel thieves, Ebenezer Scrooges, and fried frog leg restaurateur’s over the years, Disney has struggled mightily with how to handle The Muppets. Trying to hammer Jim Henson’s anarchic creations proved semi-disastrous for ABC, and so Disney+ is now (or Now) taking Kermit et al. back to something closer to their roots, offering up a 10-minute talk show/cooking show/game show hybrid to fans of the streaming service. Playing to the puppeteer’s talent for off-the-cuff—but on-the-hand—comedy that’s made the Muppets talk show circuit favorites for decades, the new series will feature interviews and back-and-forths with RuPaul, Seth Rogen, Aubrey Plaza, and more. [William Hughes]