Happy July. Time was, the days approaching July 4 were conspicuously “slow” — not unlike the week after Christmas. Summer was a time for repeats and ads for the new fall shows. Cable introduced fare such as Shark Week to fill up the schedule with event programming.
Streaming has changed that dynamic, offering new programming all year round. So even though tonight’s underwhelming broadcast schedule highlights the return of “The Wall,” there’s plenty of original series arriving this month.
Netflix, the platform that revolutionized streaming, owes a great deal to the COVID-era habit of indiscriminate bingeing. So it’s interesting, and perhaps fitting, that the streamer will return to the granddaddy of all pandemics with “The Decameron,” streaming on July 25.
Set during the Black Death of the 14th century, it adapts the epic tales of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). Offering 100 stories in all, the epic relates the tales of young men and women holed up in a monastery in Florence while waiting out the plague. The stories range from the deeply tragic to the bawdy and erotic.
Written in the Florentine dialect of Italian, it represented a breakthrough for writers expressing themselves in their own vernacular, as opposed to Latin, the official tongue of clerics and academics.
Don’t go dusting off your college literature textbooks. Netflix is already describing their take on “The Decameron” as “like ‘Love Island,’ but back in the day.”
Also debuting this month, “Lady in the Lake” on Apple TV+ stars Natalie Portman in a period crime drama set in 1960s Baltimore. Based on the novel of the same name by Laura Lippman, it arrives July 19.
Rashida Jones stars in another Apple TV+ original, “Sunny,” arriving July 10. She portrays Suzie, an American expat in Kyoto, Japan, whose life is upended when her husband and son suddenly vanish.
Highly anticipated returning series include “Star Trek: Prodigy” season two (today, Netflix); “The Serpent Queen” season two (July 12, Starz); “Cobra Kai” season six (July 18, Netflix); and “Snowpiercer” season four (July 21, AMC and AMC+), which originally aired on TNT.
July’s changes to the schedule also allow Hallmark’s return to its tradition of “Christmas in July” movies. Hardly a change for a network that should restart its holiday onslaught in earnest some time in October. Tonight’s rewrapped presents include “The Secret Gift of Christmas” (7 p.m., TV-G) from 2023 and “Christmas at the Plaza” from 2019 (9 p.m.).
TONIGHT’S OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
— Halle Berry and Sharon Stone star in the critically savaged 2004 superhero adventure “Catwoman” (6:30 p.m., Bounce).
— “American Ninja Warrior” (8 p.m., NBC, TV-PG).
— “90 Day Fiance: The Other Way” (8 p.m., TLC) enters its sixth season.
— Teens in trouble complicate a case on “NCIS” (9 p.m., CBS, TV-14).
— Bunk rooms offer a speed bump on the renovation competition series “Battle on the Beach” (9 p.m., HGTV).
— Home cooks compete using recipes they share with their loved ones and other comfort-food family traditions on “The Great American Recipe” (9 p.m., PBS).
— A bioweapons expert is found slain on “NCIS: Hawaii” (10 p.m., CBS, TV-14).
— Two women recall their coming of age in Laredo, Texas, in the first-person documentary “Hummingbirds” on “POV” (10 p.m., PBS, check local listings). If your local PBS affiliate isn’t airing “POV” tonight, “Hummingbirds” can be streamed on the PBS app and on PBS.org starting on Sept. 29.
CULT CHOICE
After decades of saccharine films forced on Hollywood by religious censorship between the Depression and the late 1960s, it’s bracing to come upon a 1933 satire like “Baby Face” (11:30 p.m., TCM), starring Barbara Stanwyck as a young Pennsylvania woman who uses sexual favors to work her way up the corporate ladder. Look for a young John Wayne as one of her conquests. The bawdy audacity of the film helped inspire “the Code” that kept audience “safe” from such content for 30-some years.
SERIES NOTES
On two episodes of “The Neighborhood” (8 p.m., CBS, r, TV-PG): big news (8 p.m.); a record of redlining (8:30 p.m.) … “Name That Tune” (8 p.m., Fox, TV-14) … “The 1% Club” (9 p.m., Fox, TV-14) … “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune” (8 p.m., ABC, TV-PG) … “Celebrity Jeopardy!” (9 p.m. and 10 p.m., ABC, TV-PG) …”The Wall” (10 p.m., NBC).
LATE NIGHT
Jimmy Fallon welcomes Steve Carell, Amandla Stenberg, Noah Lyles and Carly Pearce on “The Tonight Show” (11:35 p.m., NBC) … Kevin Bacon, Chris Colfer and Sydnee Washington visit “Late Night With Seth Meyers” (12:35 a.m., NBC) … Taylor Tomlinson hosts “After Midnight” (12:37 a.m., CBS).
