New to Neon in August

Game of Thrones prequel House of Dragon (August 22) dwarfs the rest of Neon’s August premieres.

They include the quirky Nathan Fielder comedy The Rehearsal (August 27) and the return of Kevin Bacon crime drama City on a Hill (S3, August 1) and high stakes financial thriller Industry (S2, August 2).

The Rehearsal will appeal to fans of awkward comedy or meta humour. According to The Atlantic:

You’ve never seen anything quite like The Rehearsal … The HBO series features Fielder as the director of “rehearsals,” elaborately staged scenarios re-creating parts of ordinary people’s lives that are meant to help them prepare for something: maybe a confession they must make to a close friend, or what a difficult life choice might look like once they embark on it. Each episode shows the trippy work that goes into playing such intense pretend. (You’d be forgiven for thinking you’re watching a scene from Synecdoche, New York.) But these expensive endeavours alone don’t make The Rehearsal the strangest “comedy” airing on TV. The show is at odds with its mastermind.

Neon ventures into the BBC’s vault with two 2016 dramas: The Collection (August 8) and Rillington Place (August 25).

The former is about two brothers who are feuding fashion designers in post-war Paris; the latter dramatises serial killer John Christie’s relationship with his wife Ethel in the flat where he buried his victims (it originally streamed here on TVNZ+).

Death on the Beach (August 24) is a three-part true-crime series about who have died under mysterious circumstances on the remote backpacking Thai island of Koh Tao.

Also new will be the Asian cuisine-in-the-US series that’s already aired on Prime, Take Out With Lisa Ling (August 11), and three Louis Theroux: Law and Disorder documentaries set in Johannesburg, Lagos and Philadelphia.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Belfast lead the movie premieres. Here’s the full slate for August: