August TV Highlights: What To Watch This Month

By Brent Furdyk. 1 Aug 2020 9:00 AM

This month: New-to-us British game show “Taskmaster”, Quibi’s Kiefer Sutherland-led reboot of “The Fugitive”, a new all-stars season of “Big Brother”, an animated “Star Trek” spinoff, Seth Rogen’s “An American Pickle”, the return of Shark Week, Jason Sudeikis as rookie soccer coach “Ted Lasso”, Jordan Peele’s “Lovecraft County”, the final season of “Lucifer” and more.

The CW

Quibi

A&E

CBS

'Star Trek: Lower Decks' - Series Premiere

Disney+

The CW

'Surviving Jeffrey Epstein' - Series Premiere

Lifetime

HBO Max

Discovery

Showtime

Quibi

'Doubling Down with the Derricos' - Series Premierre

TLC

Apple TV+

Disney+

HBO

The CW

Showtime

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'Taskmaster' - Series Premiere
The CW
This British game show features a panel of comedians assigned uniquely hilarious tasks by titular Taskmaster Greg Davies and sidekick Alex Horne.

* Sunday, Aug. 2
'The Fugitive' - Series Premiere
Quibi
Quibi — the streaming platform featuring series with episodes under 10 minutes of length — presents this reboot of "The Fugitive", with Boyd Holbrook starring as Mike Ferro, an innocent man on the run and desperate to clear his name as he's relentlessly pursued by determined Detective Clay Bryce (Kiefer Sutherland).

* Monday, Aug. 3
'What's It Worth?' - Season Premiere
A&E
Imagine if PBS's "Antiques Roadshow" took place virtually over Zoom instead of in person and you have the gist of this new series in which comedian Jeff Foxworthy meets people from all over the U.S. as he seeks out hidden treasures.

* Tuesday, Aug. 4
'Big Brother' - Season Premiere
CBS
Even COVID-19 can't prevent a new season of "Big Brother", which returns with a new all-stars edition hosted, as always, by the Chenbot herself, Julie Chen-Moonves.

* Wednesday, Aug. 5 on Global
'Star Trek: Lower Decks' - Series Premiere
CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The latest edition to the "Star Trek" franchise is an animated comedy that originally streamed online.

The series focuses on the support crew aboard one of Starfleet's least important ships, the USS Cerritos, showcasing their social lives while the ship is hit by an ongoing series of sci-fi anomalies.

* Thursday, Aug. 6
'Howard'
Disney+
This documentary looks at acclaimed lyricist Howard Ashman, who collaborated with composer Alan Menken on the unforgettable songs in Disney classics "The Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast" and "Aladdin".

* Friday, Aug. 7
'Being Reuben' - Series Premiere
The CW
This reality series centres on Reuben de Maid, a 14-year old Welsh singer, influencer and makeup expert who shot to fame after appearing on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show", following his adventures as he travels to Hollywood and attends star-studded award ceremonies and glamorous events.

* Friday, Aug. 7
'Surviving Jeffrey Epstein' - Series Premiere
Lifetime
As the recent arrest of Jeffrey Epstein's alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell returns the story to the headlines, this four-part documentary shares the horrific stories of the women who were victimized by the late pedophile billionaire.

* Sunday, Aug. 9 on Lifetime
'An American Pickle'
HBO Max
In this comedy movie, Seth Rogen plays a recent immigrant to America who accidentally falls into a vat of pickles, which miraculously preserves him until he emerges 100 years later. Making his way in a world he doesn't recognize, he meets his sole descendant (also played by Rogen), who realize they have absolutely nothing in common.

* Saturday, Aug. 8
'Shark Week'
Discovery
The summertime tradition continues with a brand new week of shark-themed programming that's guaranteed to make you think twice before dipping a toe in the ocean.

* Sunday, Aug. 9
'We Hunt Together' - Series Premiere
Showtime
This gripping U.K. drama presents a twist on a classic cat-and-mouse story, exploring the intoxication of sexual attraction and the dangerous power of emotional manipulation. As two conflicted detectives (Eve Myles and Babou Ceesay) track down a pair of deadly killers (Hermione Corfield and Dipo Ola), the series reveals how finding a volatile form of solace in another can have dire consequences.

* Sunday, Aug. 9
'Mapleworth Murders' - Series Premierer
Quibi
In this Quibi comedy, Paula Pell (Netflix's "Wine Country") stars as crime-solving mystery writer Abigail Mapleworth, who lives in a bucolic little town plagued by a disturbing number of homicides. Also starring Tim Meadows, Maya Rudolph, JB Smoove and Fred Armisen.

* Monday, Aug. 10
'Doubling Down with the Derricos' - Series Premierre
TLC
In the vein of "Jon & Kate Plus 8" and "Sweet Home Septuplets" and, well, a whole bunch of shows featuring families with loads of kids comes this one, following Karen and Deon Derrico as they raise quintuplets, triplets and two sets of twins.

* Tuesday, Aug. 11
'Project Power'
SKIP BOLEN/NETFLIX © 2020
On the streets of New Orleans, word begins to spread about a mysterious new pill that unlocks superpowers unique to each user. The catch: You don’t know what will happen until you take it. While some develop bulletproof skin, invisibility, and super strength, others exhibit a deadlier reaction. But when the pill escalates crime within the city to dangerous levels, a local cop (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) teams with a teenage dealer (Dominique Fishback) and a former soldier fuelled by a secret vendetta (Jamie Foxx) to fight power with power and risk taking the pill in order to track down and stop the group responsible for creating it.

* Friday, Aug. 14
'Ted Lasso' - Series Premiere
Apple TV+
Jason Sudeikis plays Ted Lasso, a small-time college football coach from Kansas hired to coach a professional soccer team in England. One tiny problem — Ted has never coached soccer before.

* Friday, Aug. 14
'The One and Only Ivan'
Disney+
Ivan (voiced by Sam Rockwell) is a 400-pound silverback gorilla who shares a communal habitat in a suburban shopping mall with Stella the elephant (Angelina Jolie), Bob the dog (Danny DeVito) and various other animals. He has few memories of the jungle where he was captured, but when a baby elephant named Ruby (Brooklynn Prince) arrives, it touches something deep within him. Ruby is recently separated from her family in the wild, which causes him to question his life, where he comes from and where he ultimately wants to be. The heartwarming adventure, which comes to the screen in an impressive hybrid of live-action and CGI. Bryan Cranston is Mack, the animals' owner.

* Friday, Aug. 14
'Lovecraft County' - Series Premiere
HBO
Based on Matt Ruff 's novel of the same name, this supernatural series from exec producer Jordan Peele follows Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors) as he meets up with his friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett) and his Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) to embark on a road trip across 1950s Jim Crow America in search of his missing father (Michael Kenneth Williams). This begins a struggle to survive and overcome both the racist terrors of white America and the terrifying monsters that could be ripped from a H.P. Lovecraft paperback.

* Sunday, Aug. 14
'Dead Pixels' - Series Premiere
The CW
This comedy follows the on- and offline adventures of a group of gamers, with the action split equally between the characters’ tragicomic real lives and their computer-animated misadventures in “Kingdom Scrolls”.

* Tuesday, Aug. 18
'Lucifer' - Season Premiere
JOHN P. FLEENOR/NETFLIX © 2020
Everybody's favourite nightclub-owning, crime-solving fallen angel is back in the cult favourite's swan-song season.

* Friday, Aug. 21
'Love Fraud' - Series Premiere
Showtime
This four-part docu-series follows the search for one man, Richard Scott Smith, who over the past 20 years used the internet and his dubious charms to prey upon unsuspecting women looking for love — conning them out of their money and dignity.

* Sunday, Aug. 30

August TV Highlights: What To Watch This Month

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