Somewhere along the line, summer became a hotbed of new, quality series. Once the stomping ground of reruns, leftover episodes of canceled series, and reality television, over the last few years the summer months have brought us some of the highest-quality shows on TV.

With shorter seasons and marquee casts, these shows are heavy on science fiction or otherwise mysterious or supernatural plots – just the way I like ’em. And they’re not just on premium cable, either. Thank goodness for DVRs, so we can record them and fast-forward through the commercials.

Being the sci-fi geek that I am, my favorites tend to fall in that category, as you can see by my list of the top 7 new series of this summer. Why six? Because there’s that much goodness on.

The Leftovers

I know a bunch of people who don’t like this show, and I actually understand that. It’s not for everyone. It’s slow, sad, and centered around a mystery the show doesn’t seem very interested in solving. But that’s exactly what I do like about it.

Quick synopsis: Two percent of the world’s population disappears one day. We pick up the story three years later, when people are perhaps over the initial shock, but are now dealing with the psychological after-effects – the PTSD, perhaps. That’s exactly what I like about it: It’s not about the mystery. Was it The Rapture? Was it alien abduction? Was it something else? It doesn’t really matter. What matters are the people left behind.

Some go kinda crazy. Some are grieving those lost that day. Some are grieving the loss of stability. Teens are more nihilistic than usual. There are about a zillion different cults. But there’s a sort of quiet desperation among those left behind. I don’t really know what it is, but we rarely see real depictions of grief in movies or on television.

We see that moaning, screaming, crying version of grief that most often happens in the immediate aftermath of a death. We rarely see the quiet, desperately sad and long grief that lasts, that allows us moments of joy and happiness, but can overwhelm and quiet us. The grief that affects even those of us who have not lost someone, but become aware of how fragile life really is – and feel guilty we have not experienced that loss directly ourselves.

The Leftovers isn’t about the mystery of why so many were taken. The Leftovers, to me, is about the mystery of grief.

Intruders

I’ve only seen two episodes of Intruders so far (the second episode is On Demand and also at BBCAmerica.com), but it’s super-creepy. I like super-creepy.

We don’t really know what’s going on, except that people are somehow being possessed by people or souls or something from some time ago. The little girl pictured above, Madison, has the soul of someone named Marcus inside her. Marcus is not a nice person. We have men in black, Mira Sorvino, John Simm and a possibly alien, possibly supernatural … something going on. Or maybe just a Being John Malkovich scenario, without puppets.

I’m not sure where this is going, but I’m looking forward to riding along.

The Strain

Several of my friends who have similar taste in TV to me don’t like this vampire-ish tale.

It’s based on the book co-written by Guillermo del Toro, and it’s relatively faithful to the source material so far. No surprise that both this and The Leftovers come from folks who brought us Lost, which is still one of my favorite shows (and I did not hate the ending of that, so there).

In this story, a sort of vampirism is caused by a virus/parasite. Creepy, icky and set in New York. It has lots of the usual tropes – the mole, the bad guy trying to go good, the wise old man, the government agent trying to uncover the truth who is being accused of lying (and murder). The ex-wife, the ex-mistress, the man who knows something weird is going on but is estranged from his parents.

Fun, creepy, icky. And these vampires most definitely do not sparkle.

Extant

Extant is a nice, old-fashioned sci-fi romp.

We have astronauts, we have aliens, we have cool future tech.

Halle Berry plays an astronaut who comes back from a one-year solo mission on a space station and finds out she’s pregnant. Oops. And it turns out she wasn’t able to get pregnant before. She has to settle back in with her husband and young son, the latter of whom we find out in the first episode is a new type of android. Mysteries and intrigue ensue.

Besides the main story, we’re treated to all sorts of small details that show us we’re in the future. Bathroom mirrors that come straight out of the Corning Day Made of Glass. Electric cars, including Teslas. Futuristic garbage cans (hey, I got kind of excited at that!). Photos in frames and books that act more like animated gifs. Self-driving cars (as the norm, not a Google exception. Did I mention the android son?

Basically, the backdrop of the story is a world that looks fully familiar, yet has the gee-golly-nifty-cool features of a future that seems not all that far off.

Outlander

Many, many women have been waiting for this series to debut on Starz.

Make no mistake – men are enjoying the series as much as any woman. But the series of books written by Diana Gabaldon were beloved by women in no small part due to the fact that the main character was a strong woman thrown between two worlds – the present, of post-World War II Great Britain; and the past, of Scotland in 1743, when the Scots are rebelling under the yoke of the English. Our heroine, Claire, is English, a Sassenach – Scottish Gaelic for Outlander, or someone who isn’t a Scot.

Claire’s present-day husband’s ancestor is the evil British Capt. “Black” Jack Randall who nearly rapes her in the first episode. That’s when the dashing Jamie rescues her.

Will Claire find her way back to the present and her husband? Will she fall for strapping young Jamie? Will Black Jack Randall take her for his own? Will Jamie’s people ever come to trust Claire?

Some of us know all the answers already, but don’t worry – we won’t tell you and spoil the fun.

Also? From Ron Moore, who brought us the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.

Legends

Sean Bean is the man some call a “two-legged spoiler“. Killed as Eddard Stark in Game of Thrones, as Boromir in Lord of the Rings – I could go on, but GeekSpeak Magazine lays out all of Bean’s movie deaths pretty well.

No wonder the hashtag for the premiere episode was #DontKillSeanBean. But given that he’s the star of the show, we should have at least a season before he dies. Even Eddard Stark gave us a full season, after all.

Legends is the undercover identity of FBI agents – name, story, background. Bean’s character starts the episode undercover with a white power militia. It ends with him saving the day, but wondering if he’s who he thinks he is in his “real” life.

It’s basically a procedural with a mystery, and the procedural is with Sean Bean being all undercover with Ali Larter (Heroes) as his handler. I’m not big on procedurals, but Bean makes it worth the while.

The Knick

Clive Owen plays a cocaine-addicted, insanely brilliant doctor in 1900 New York, a time at which medicine was changing rapidly in The Knick (short for Knickerbocker Hospital, where most of the action takes place, but also because of all knicks the surgical instruments take out of the patients’ skin). Not long before, surgery was done in barber shops (no, really).

Given the era, it also deals with racial and gender issues and the entire first season is directed by creator Stephen Soderbergh. So it’s pretty well-done. It’s gory (it does take place in 1900 New York in a hospital, after all), but the sets are rich with the dark wood and strict fashion of a certain means of the time.

Besides, Clive Owen is one of those actors you could probably watch even if he were reading a phone book.

Honorable mentions

The Bridge

The Bridge is in its second season, so it doesn’t belong on the list, but this season has been so spectacular I couldn’t not include it. It takes place on the U.S.-Mexico border, where El Paso and Juarez meet. The two main characters – a female El Paso cop and a male Juarez cop – both are extremely flawed. Great stuff here.

Penny Dreadful

Penny Dreadful premiered in the Spring and barely ran into the summer, but the Showtime series is a sort of origin story for some of Victorian England’s most iconic literary characters, including Dorian Gray and Dr. Frankenstein and his creature. It also stars Ethan Hawke and Billie Piper and has been renewed for a second season.

 

Photo by Walt Jabsco via Flickr Creative Commons.