The Best Shows on TV This Week: June 21–27 • What's Most Popular

The Targaryen civil war returns for a third season on Sunday night. Set roughly two centuries before the events of Game of Thrones, the show traces House Targaryen as it tears itself apart over who should hold the throne. The previous seasons built the two sides of that conflict toward open war, and this premiere picks the story back up. HBO has kept the specifics of the opening episode under wraps, so plot details are thin going in. If you fell off somewhere in the second season, the season break is a reasonable place to re-enter, since a premiere tends to reset the board before the next stretch of fighting.

New to Westeros or want the full backstory? See our Game of Thrones and Westeros books reading guide.

Carmy and the crew are back for a fifth season, opening with an episode called “Soda.” The series follows a fine-dining chef who comes home to Chicago to run his late brother’s sandwich shop, remaking the place and himself alongside a rough crew that turns into a chosen family. Christopher Storer wrote and directed this premiere, in which a storm hits. The show has always moved between frantic kitchen service and quieter stretches, and its season openers usually lay out where everyone stands. It lands Thursday on Hulu, a good jumping-on point if the back half of last season got away from you.

Deep into its fourth season, FROM is still working through the mystery of a town nobody can leave. The residents try to keep some version of normal life going while surviving the creatures that come out after dark, and the show has spent four seasons slowly revealing how the place works and where it came from. In this week’s episode, “The Calm Before,” Boyd sets a risky plan in motion, and the title suggests the fallout is still ahead. It airs Sunday on MGM+. The season is far enough along that this plays as a check-in for people already following rather than a place to start cold.

Lestat is on tour and being trailed by figures from his past, his influence spreading over humans and vampires alike as the band’s fame grows. This week’s episode, “Toronto,” sits him down with Molloy, who presses him about his years as an actor in Paris, a childhood friend, and his transformation, while Louis handles some long-unfinished business in Detroit. The series is early in its first season, having premiered earlier in June, so there is not much backlog to clear before jumping in. It airs Sunday on AMC+. The story is told largely through that interview framing, doubling back through Lestat’s history as it goes.

Want the source novels? See our Vampire Chronicles reading order.

Netflix brings back its live-action take on Avatar: The Last Airbender for a second season on Thursday. The premise tracks a young boy who has to master the four elements to end a war and stop an enemy set on destroying him. The first season adapted the early stretch of that journey, and this batch of episodes continues it. The whole second season arrives at once in the streaming style, starting with its first episode. Netflix has not released plot specifics for the new run, so go in expecting the next leg of the story rather than a known beat. A solid return point for anyone who watched the first season.

A second season of The Agency: Central Intelligence starts Sunday on Paramount+. The series centers on a covert CIA officer, known as Martian, who is pulled out of his undercover life and sent back to London Station, where an old relationship resurfaces and complicates everything. His cover, his real identity, and his mission all end up at odds with what he wants personally. The first season set that espionage machinery in motion, and the new season picks it back up, though the network has not detailed the opening episode. If the spy plotting lost you last season, a premiere is a clean place to step back in.

John Sugar is back for a second season on Apple TV this Friday. He is a Los Angeles private investigator whose first case dug into the disappearance of a Hollywood producer’s granddaughter and turned up a tangle of family secrets along the way. The show paired that detective work with a strain of strangeness that built across the first season. Apple has not named or detailed this week’s episode, so the specifics are still under wraps. It is the second episode of the new season, so the run is already underway. For anyone who watched the first season, this is the story continuing rather than restarting.

The fifth episode of Cape Fear, called “Faith,” lands Friday on Apple TV. The series follows two married attorneys, Anna and Tom Bowden, whose lives are upended when Max Cady, a killer they helped put away, gets out of prison and comes looking for revenge. The first season has been building that threat across its run, and this week’s chapter continues it. Apple has not put out a detailed summary for the episode beyond its title. The show premiered earlier in June and is still in its first season, so the backlog is short. It runs as a tense, slow-tightening thriller centered on that one looming figure.

Set behind the Iron Curtain, Star City reworks the space race around the idea that the Soviet Union put the first person on the moon. It follows the cosmonauts, engineers, and intelligence officers inside the Soviet program and the risks they took to get there. This week brings the season’s sixth episode on Friday via Apple TV. The show premiered in late May and is roughly midway through its first season, so it is well into its story by now. Apple has not released specifics for this episode. It plays as a paranoid period thriller, with the politics of the program running underneath the science.

The documentary about Wrexham AFC returns to its central question this week: can the Welsh club climb another rung. Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds bought the team in 2020 with no football experience between them, and the series has tracked the club and the town ever since. In “We Go Again,” Wrexham and two other clubs scrap for the last playoff spot, with promotion to the Premier League coming down to the final days and, in the show’s usual fashion, the final seconds. It airs Thursday on FX. The season has been heading toward this stretch, so the episode carries real stakes for anyone who has followed the run.

Rick and Morty rolls on into its ninth season with an episode titled “Jer Bud,” airing late Sunday on Adult Swim. The setup is unchanged after all this time: a brilliant, hard-drinking scientist drags his anxious grandson through dimension-hopping trouble, with the rest of the family caught in the wake. The episode’s only tease, “Man’s best friend, broh,” points the focus toward Jerry, going by the title. The show runs as self-contained episodes more often than not, so a single new one does not demand a recap before you watch. Nine seasons in, it still runs on the same mix of sci-fi premises and family dysfunction it built its name on.

Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler anchor Dutton Ranch, which follows the couple after they leave the Yellowstone world behind for a 7,000-acre spread of their own. Holding onto it means hard choices, a ruthless rival ranch, and the job of raising Carter into the man they want him to be. This week’s episode, “Whiskey Limits,” airs Friday on Paramount+. The first season has been laying out the new threats around the ranch, and the episode continues that. Paramount has not put out a fuller summary beyond the title. For anyone who came over from Yellowstone, this is where Beth and Rip’s story has landed.