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A new streamer enters the fray this month: NBCUniversal’s Peacock, which had a soft rollout to Xfinity customers back in April but will become widely available on July 15. What sets Peacock apart from the other major subscription services? For one, NBC is offering a stripped-down, ad-supported free option for those who’d rather not take on another monthly bill.
Still, even the lowest-tier Peacock viewers will have to invest their time — which will be more valuable than ever this month, given what the new service’s rivals are debuting: It’s going to be an unusually strong July for streaming entertainment, led by Disney Plus’s surprise early release of “Hamilton,” the long-awaited filmed version of the Broadway phenomenon.
Here are our picks for the best new films and TV series premiering this month, plus a roundup of some of the other notable titles that will be available to stream. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice.)
New to Disney Plus
‘Hamilton’
Starts streaming: July 3
In 2016, shortly before the original principal cast of the Broadway musical “Hamilton” dispersed, they performed the show a few more times in front of a live audience and a camera crew. At the time, the writer and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda said he had no definite plans to release the film. But earlier this year Disney bought the rights for a 2021 theatrical release; and then the company’s executives persuaded Miranda and his partners to let Disney Plus go ahead and make the movie available for streaming this summer, while people are still stuck at home. Now everybody who couldn’t score tickets to the biggest Broadway smash of the 2010s can sit in their living rooms and enjoy Miranda’s infectiously tuneful and emotionally affecting retelling of America’s early history, performed by a cast whose talent and cultural diversity reflects this country’s greatness.
Also arriving:
July 17
“Secret Society of Second-Born Royals”
July 31
“Muppets Now”
New to Hulu
‘To the Stars’
Starts streaming: July 3
Perhaps the best movie to compare with the black-and-white small-town melodrama “To the Stars” is “The Last Picture Show” — except that in “To the Stars,” teenage girls are at the center of the story instead of boys. Set in 1960 in a dinky Oklahoma farming town, the film has Kara Hayward and Liana Liberato playing high school misfits who are dealing with troubled home lives, bullying peers and their own irrepressible sexual desires. The director Martha Stephens and screenwriter Shannon Bradley-Colleary steer the story toward an overly heavy-handed final 20 minutes, but for most of its running time, the film is a vivid and poetic portrait of two unlikely best friends, bucking the conformity of their times.
‘Palm Springs’
Starts streaming: July 10
The world wasn’t exactly in dire need of another “Groundhog Day”-like romantic comedy in which characters are stuck in a seemingly inescapable time loop. But with “Palm Springs,” the director Max Barbakow and the screenwriter Andy Siara do put a few original twists on the premise. For one thing, the story starts surprisingly deep into the action, with Andy Samberg playing Nyles, a low-ambition goofball who has been repeating the same destination wedding with his girlfriend’s family for some time when we first meet him. When Nyles accidentally drags the equally directionless Sarah (Cristin Milioti) into the loop, he tries to persuade her of the virtues of a life lived without consequences but soon finds that she has her own ideas for how to spend eternity — and that those plans may not include him.
Also arriving:
July 2
“The Whistlers”
July 17
“Into the Dark: The Current Occupant”
July 20
“The Assistant”
July 28
“Maxxx”
New to Netflix
‘The Baby-Sitters Club’
Starts streaming: July 3
The perennially popular “Baby-Sitters Club” book series has been adapted to the screen before, for a short-lived 1990 TV show and for an underperforming 1995 feature film. The new Netflix version — shepherded by the “GLOW” writer/producer Rachel Shukert and the “Broad City” writer/director/producer Lucia Aniello — may have greater staying power. Rather than aiming for anything awkwardly edgy or wildly off-model, Shukert and Aniello have instead delivered a kid-friendly show that’s true to the novels, telling episodic stories about a group of teenage girls who overcome their differences to run a small business together.
‘Mucho Mucho Amor’
Starts streaming: July 8
The flamboyant Puerto Rican astrologer Walter Mercado died in 2019, after fading from public life a few years earlier. For the documentary “Mucho Mucho Amor” — named for Mercado’s signature signoff line — the filmmaking team of Alex Fumero, Cristina Costantini and Kareem Tabsch were granted an audience with the reclusive entertainer, who shared his life story and his philosophies of life and fashion. The filmmakers may not quite get all the way to the bottom of Mercado’s image-conscious, larger-than-life personality — he does manage to retain some mystery. But “Mucho Mucho Amor” is still impressively comprehensive, covering not just the biography of a beloved cultural icon but also weighing what his presence meant to the L.G.B.T.Q. community — and to anyone else who has ever yearned to live an unusual life.
‘Cursed’
Starts streaming: July 17
Based on a young adult novel by Tom Wheeler (with illustrations by the comic book artist Frank Miller), “Cursed” retells some of the Arthurian legends from the perspective of the young enchantress later known as “the Lady of the Lake.” Katherine Langford plays the lady, Nimue, who suffers setbacks and tragedy as she discovers her mystical calling. Wheeler — a veteran TV writer who serves as the series’s co-executive producer with Miller — adopts the familiar pulp fantasy style of “Game of Thrones” and “The Witcher” but with a somewhat lighter touch. The stakes are still high and the battles still bloody, but from its amusingly sleazy Merlin (played with gusto by Gustaf Skarsgard) to its feminist overtones, this show is primarily meant to entertain and inspire.
Also arriving:
July 1
“Unsolved Mysteries”
July 3
“Cable Girls” Final Season: Part 2
“Desperados”
“Ju-On: Origins”
July 8
“Stateless”
July 10
“The Old Guard”
July 21
“How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)” Season 2
July 24
“The Kissing Booth 2”
July 28
“Last Chance U: Laney”
July 31
“The Umbrella Academy” Season 2
New to Amazon
‘Hanna’ Season 2
Starts streaming: July 3
Toward the end of the first season of the thriller “Hanna,” the plot began moving beyond the 2011 movie that inspired the series. Season 2 continues on that path, with a narrative arc about a secret training program that spawns young assassins like the title heroine (Esme Creed-Miles). Similar to the film, the root appeal of this show — beyond the strong performances and some supercool action sequences — is its nuanced take on a highly trained young killer who’s still learning to process ordinary human feelings. In this new run of episodes, the adults keeping an eye on Hanna (including friendly rivals played by the excellent Mireille Enos and Dermot Mulroney) try to exploit her talents, while she takes new steps toward independence.
Also arriving:
July 17
“Absentia”
July 24
“Jim Gaffigan: The Pale Tourist”
“Radioactive”
New to HBO
‘Close Enough’
Starts streaming: July 9
The TV producer and animator J.G. Quintel is best known for his weird and whimsical Cartoon Network series “Regular Show,” in which he took the mundanities of life as an underemployed young adult and turned them into a kooky talking-animal sitcom. Not long after “Regular Show” ended in 2017, Quintel announced a new show, “Close Enough,” made for a since-scrapped TBS adult animation block but is now arriving via HBO Max. It represents a natural progression from “Regular Show,” shifting from documenting the lives of 20-somethings to looking at life after 30. Quintel and Gabrielle Walsh voice the characters of Josh and Emily, a married couple in Los Angeles trying to hang on to their millennial mojo while raising a daughter. There are fantastical elements, but primarily this is a funny and honest cartoon about young parents struggling with “adulting.”
Also arriving:
July 9
“Expecting Amy”
July 14
“Showbiz Kids”
July 16
“The House of Ho”
July 23
“Tig n’ Seek”
July 24
“Room 104” Season 4
July 30
“Frayed”
New to Apple TV Plus
‘Little Voice’
Starts streaming: July 10
The songwriter Sara Bareilles and the writer-director Jessie Nelson — who collaborated on the hit Broadway musical “Waitress” — re-team for “Little Voice,” a slice-of-life drama about a young musician named Bess (Brittany O’Grady), tentatively trying to launch her career in New York. Though uncommonly talented, Bess doubts herself, in part because she worries that by pursuing her dreams she’s hurting her family, who’ve come to rely on her support. Bareilles’s soft, yearning songs provide a fine soundtrack for this muted, emotional story, all about someone wrestling with whether it’s possible to be a good and caring person while hustling to become a pop star.
Also arriving:
July 10
“Greatness Code”
“Greyhound”
New to Peacock
‘Brave New World’
Starts streaming: July 15
NBCUniversal’s new streaming service debuts with a show that could never play on its parent network. This adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s influential 1932 dystopian novel “Brave New World” is very TV-MA, explicitly depicting the drug-fueled sexual decadence of a futuristic upper class, all while telling the story of an unusually clever “savage” (well-played by Alden Ehrenreich) who openly questions how the elites live. Long in development — and originally slated to run on Syfy — Peacock’s version of Huxley’s stinging social critique is fascinating in how it both reflects and diverges from the world of today. The show’s illustration of how revolutions quickly take hold may actually be more relevant in 2020 than it would have been had “Brave New World” been made years ago, as intended.
Also arriving:
July 15
“The Capture”
“In Deep with Ryan Lochte”
“Intelligence”
“Psych 2: Lassie Come Home”
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