7 streaming picks to add to your watchlist this June

Horror is having a moment, as you can see with all the buzz that surrounds Obsession and Backrooms lately. But even if you can’t watch a horror flick without closing your eyes, I’ll implore you to give Widow’s Bay a try. With hardly any jump scares and very few creepy ghosts to deal with, Apple TV’s latest horror comedy (from creator Katie Dippold of Parks and Recreation fame) is the rare show that can frighten and delight in one sitting. The story is set in a small island town that comes with an ancient curse and revolves around the efforts of one Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), the island’s sincere mayor, who wishes to make it the next Martha’s Vineyard for tourists. Every episode sees Loftis’s scepticism about the curse fall to bits as he comes to terms with all the strange things unfolding around him. After you binge on the 10 episodes, you can immerse yourself in the other genre greats (Shaun of the Dead and What We Do in the Shadows are mandatory picks for horror-comedy enthusiasts) or spend all your days henceforth exploring every tiny detail from the show on Reddit.—Megha Mahindru

I’ll admit it: I only started watching Sugar last year because I was out of things to watch but ended up enjoying it thoroughly, especially thanks to the bizarre twist that no one sees coming in its first installation. Apple TV’s neo-noir show switches gears mid-season to become a sci-fi story. Spoiler alert: John Sugar, the cinema-obsessed PI with a mysterious past solving cases on the streets of Los Angeles, is actually an alien. In the second season, which premiered last Friday, Colin Farrell as Sugar is still charming and charismatic as ever. He stays back on Earth to continue investigating his sister’s disappearance while taking on a case that may or may not be good for him: tracking down the missing brother of a rising local boxer. The cinematography captures a moody LA beautifully; we still have clips from old Hollywood interspersed with Sugar’s inner monologue, and the set and costume design are fabulous to look at too.—Chloe Chou

After watching this 104-minute docu, you’re not going to leave with a clearer understanding of what lies ahead in our AI-shaped future than you did before. In almost two hours, Daniel Rohen, co-director and soon-to-be father, tries to end the confusion around whether all the end-of-the-world predictions of doomsayers are true but ends up echoing our collective confusion and anxiety today. He invites a coterie of people working in AI (40 experts, including three of AI’s Big Five: Open AI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis) to know what kind of Frankenstein they are building. Rohen attempts to show us the pros and cons, but the brief interactions with these talking heads reveal a rather gloomy world filled with ChatGPT suicides, politically motivated deepfakes, and the unforgiving environmental cost of setting up massive data centres in this race to get ahead that somehow falls short of his optimism in AI’s promising impact in curing cancer or figuring a way out of the ongoing climate crisis. The less unnerving bits are about his personal life and the playful animations that seep through this father’s inquiry of the future.—Megha Mahindru

I have a strongly held belief that there is a curse shared among beloved shows: a terrible ending. We’ve seen it with Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother, and even New Girl, but I hoped that this wouldn’t be the case with one of my recent favourites, Hacks. The show’s creators, Lucia Aniello, Jen Statsky, and Paul W Downs, knew the end from the very beginning; they even included the ending in their pitch for the show. I kept this in the back of my mind as I watched the most low-cortisol season of Hacks yet, complete with thrilling denouncements of AI and a little something for the “Avorah” fans too. The final episode scratches that quintessential, confrontational Hacks itch and had me crying at my desk in the middle of a workday. Because Hacks, while beloved, is also pretty great. If it hasn’t made its way off your watchlist and onto your currently watching list, this is probably your sign to start.—Saniya Jaffer

Jason Schwartzman stars as the titular fiction writer Philip Lewis Friedman, an insufferably arrogant author on the rise navigating career and relationships. Success has made Friedman even more of a jerk, so naturally his love life isn’t great. Elisabeth Moss stars as Friedman’s girlfriend, a talented photographer in her own right, who over the course of the film, slowly, painfully manages to end her nosedive of a relationship. Everyone is brilliantly cast by director Alex Ross Perry. With his scrawny build and deadpan manner, Schwartzman manages to make even this most unlikeable of characters comedic. Moss holds her own in a film that’s largely about grumpy men, bringing a refreshing thoughtfulness to the storyline. If you’re a fan of Woody Allen-style movies with neurotic characters, huge male egos, beautiful cinematography, and deft writing, then this low-key but playful film is for you.—Butool Jamal

I started watching The Madison because my feed refused to stop showing me clips of the Clyburn family having unproductive arguments. Every Reel made them look like the most exhausting people on TV and I really wanted to know what the fuss was all about. Created by Taylor Sheridon of Yellowstone fame, the six-episode show on JioHotstar follows a wealthy New York family whose lives change after a tragedy, sending them to Montana to deal with grief, secrets, and each other. I was surprised at how comforting the show felt. The Montana landscapes are obviously stunning, and Michelle Pfeiffer delivers a grounding performance.—Sheya Kurian

George Hardy (Hugh Jackman), a sheep farmer who likes to read murder mysteries to his flock, is found dead one morning, and his woolly friends take it upon themselves to investigate his murder. If the premise wasn’t sweet enough, throw in lores of the winter lamb, some laughs and tears around their ability to forget things at will, and what happens to sheep when they die, along with a cast that includes Molly Gordon, Nicholas Galitzine (in an unfortunate hairdo) and Emma Thompson (with Brett Goldstein, Bryan Cranston, and Bella Ramsey voicing the sheep), and you have the screen equivalent of chicken soup.—Shalini Shah