On Our Streaming Radar this week, it is another slate of returning favorites. Two are back for second seasons, while another is returning for its third. The choices range from high concept science fiction to unapologetically soapy family drama and a traditional sitcom with plenty of Southern charm.
Let us begin with Dark Matter, which returns this week on Apple TV. The series stars Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly, Alice Braga and Jimmi Simpson, and it continues to turn a sprawling multiverse into something intensely personal.
Edgerton plays Jason Dessen, a physicist and professor who discovered that alternate versions of his life exist and that the mysterious Box allows people to move through realities shaped by the roads they did not take. Season 1 followed Jason as he fought his way home after being abducted into another version of his own life. The premise was enormous, but the stakes were grounded in one question: Could he get back to his wife and son before another Jason took his place for good?
Season 2 finds the Dessens attempting to settle into a quiet life in a world that finally seems safe. Naturally, that stability cannot last. Jason becomes increasingly obsessed with the Box, while Daniela, played by Connelly, grows more paranoid about the danger surrounding their family. Elsewhere, Amanda, played by Braga, and Ryan, played by Simpson, join forces in a desperate attempt to find their way home. In essence, we are watching a family try to recover from a multiversal nightmare. The chilling idea is that they may never truly escape it.
I sing the praises of Apple TV often, but that is because the service consistently produces some of the best looking and best acted shows in streaming. Dark Matter has the science fiction machinery, but performers such as Edgerton and Connelly give it dramatic weight. They make the Box matter because they make the family waiting on the other side of it matter.
Dark Matter Season 2 premieres Friday, August 28, on Apple TV. The 10 episode season will release one episode each Friday through October 30.
If you want soap opera style drama from your favorite streamer, Netflix has you covered. Tyler Perry’s Beauty in Black is back for a third season, and all eight episodes arrive at once.
The series stars Taylor Polidore Williams as Kimmie and Houston’s own Crystle Stewart as Mallory. When the show began, Kimmie was an exotic dancer struggling to survive after becoming entangled with the immensely wealthy and deeply dysfunctional Bellarie family and its Beauty in Black cosmetics empire. Since then, she has gone from an outsider fighting for scraps to a woman with a seat at the head of the table.
Following the chaos of Season 2, Kimmie is fighting to hold on to her new power. Her former rival Mallory becomes an unlikely, potentially unholy ally as old enemies regroup and the Bellarie family turns against itself. The fallout from the FBI raid still hangs over everyone, with family members facing prison, dangerous secrets threatening to surface and control of both the business and the club suddenly in question.
The central question is no longer whether Kimmie can gain power. She already has it. Now we get to see whether she can keep it when the target on her back is bigger than ever. That shift gives the third season an especially juicy foundation because nearly everyone around her has a reason to want what she has or to destroy it.
Stewart plays Mallory to perfection. The entire cast understands the heightened tone Perry is aiming for, but Mallory is a particular reason to watch. She is hot and a mess, and I mean that in the best possible way. She can be calculating, combustible and unexpectedly vulnerable, sometimes within the same scene. Putting her in an alliance with Kimmie gives the new season exactly the kind of volatile relationship this series does best.
All eight episodes of Tyler Perry’s Beauty in Black Season 3 stream Thursday, August 27, on Netflix.
For viewers who still appreciate the rhythms of a traditional multi camera sitcom, Leanne is also back. The series comes from co-creators Susan McMartin, Chuck Lorre and Leanne Morgan. Lorre, of course, helped bring us Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, but this show is built around Morgan’s warm, plainspoken comedic voice.
Morgan is already a favorite comedian for plenty of people, including my mother. The series gives her a premise perfectly matched to her material. Leanne’s husband of 33 years leaves her for another woman, forcing a wife, mother and grandmother in her 50s to start her life over when she least expected it.
Those of us in the South know that family can be loving, raucous and wildly opinionated, often all at once. Leanne certainly has that kind of family. Her ride or die sister Carol, played by Kristen Johnston, becomes her primary support system as she tries to find her footing without the marriage that defined so much of her adult life.
Season 2 continues that reset as Leanne deals with dating, divorce remorse, becoming a grandmother again and the realities of her aging parents. Celia Weston returns as Mama Margaret, while the great Blake Clark plays Daddy John. Lainey Wilson and Jaime Pressly are among the new guest stars, alongside Billy Gardell and Tyne Daly.
Leanne is not trying to reinvent the sitcom. That is part of its appeal. It knows the pleasures of a familiar format: a strong comic voice, a family that can turn any small disagreement into a full event and enough sincerity underneath the punchlines to keep the characters from becoming caricatures. If you enjoy old school sitcom rhythms, Southern charm and Morgan’s comedic style, Season 1 is for you, and Season 2 should be even more so.
Leanne Season 2 streams Thursday, August 27, on Netflix.
