'Prime' time: Summer TV offers mix of guilty pleasures, compelling dramas

Not only is summer a useful time to finish or delete anything that's loitering in your DVR, I've always encouraged viewers to use these months as a time to guiltlessly graze TV's junk-food aisles. Certain inane pleasures await when we stop treating TV like highbrow homework and let it become the populist entertainer it was made to be.

That said, I do have some summer assignments (no groaning!), including FX's addictive 1980s drug epic “Snowfall” (July 5) and PBS prequel “Prime Suspect: Tennison” (June 25). Here's a look at some new and returning summer shows airing between now and Labor Day:

<b>“Prime Suspect: Tennison” (PBS, Sunday, June 25)</b>

Before she was THE Jane Tennison (the ace inspector played by Helen Mirren in one of public TV's best series), Jane Tennison (Stefanie Martini) was a 22-year-old rookie “WPC” (woman police constable) in London's Hackney borough in 1973, assigned to radio-dispatch duties until her preternatural instincts for detective work begin to impress her dismissively sexist male co-workers. This three-episode “Prime Suspect” prequel, airing in the United States under PBS' “Masterpiece” banner, is a well-paced, beautifully made and intelligent look at young Tennison's career - and one of the best shows you'll find on TV this summer.

<b>“Snowfall” (FX, Wednesday, July 5)</b>

This thoroughly compelling Los Angeles crime epic, set in the summer of 1983, is about the birth of crack cocaine. Created by John Singleton with Eric Amadio and Dave Andron, “Snowfall” opens in pre-crack South Central, where the ambitions of straight-A student and casual marijuana dealer Franklin Saint (Damson Idris) collide with a surplus of high-grade cocaine in the Hollywood Hills. When Franklin starts selling spare kilos for a powerful supplier, his story begins to intersect with a meltdown inside a Mexican-American crime family, as well as the plans of a deep-undercover CIA agent. “Snowfall” is lean, mean and precise. And it belongs on everyone's must-watch list this summer.

<b>“The Defiant Ones” (HBO, Sunday through Wednesday, July 9-12)</b>

Critics got a glimpse awhile back of this four-night documentary about the intertwining careers of Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine (and the emergence of Interscope and Death Row Records) - and I was totally hooked. “The Defiant Ones” affirms the idea that a good ear for talent is connected to an open (and rebellious, idiosyncratic) mind that instinctively roots out the new.

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“Will” (TNT, Monday, July 10)</b>

Keep this show away from any Shakespeare scholars who might be in an eye-gouging mood (as well as any remaining fans of 1998's rom-com “Shakespeare in Love”). For the rest of us, there's plenty of harmless charm and cheap thrills in this drama about 24-year-old Will Shakespeare (Laurie Davidson), who leaves his wife and three children in Stratford and travels to a 16th-century London that resembles a cross between a syphilitic cesspool and a radiant remake of all of Adam Ant's music videos.

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“Salvation” (CBS, Wednesday, July 12)</b>

This sci-fi/suspense thriller is about an MIT student and a tech billionaire who team up to save the world from an asteroid. That particular sort of Armageddon sounds like old hat, but with past shows like “Brain Dead” and “Extant,” CBS seems to really get the experimental nature of summer TV.

<b>“I'm Sorry” (TruTV, Wednesday, July 12)</b>

“Veep” fans know Andrea Savage as President Laura Montez; here she plays a crazed comedy writer/mom/wife in one of those “loosely based” autobiographical L.A. dramedies. Not exactly a new concept, but short clips from the show seem surprisingly funny - and naughty.

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“Friends From College” (Netflix, Friday, July 14)</b>

Film director Nicholas Stoller (“Neighbors”) and wife Francesca Delbanco are behind this eight-episode dramedy about a group of six Ivy Leaguers (including Keegan-Michael Key, Fred Savage, Cobie Smulders and Nat Faxon) who remain friends in their complicated 40s. Precious, sure, but Key's comedic timing saves the episodes I've seen.

<b>“Game of Thrones” (HBO, Sunday, July 16)</b>

Although I find it a bit rudderless since it eclipsed the novels (which I've never read), “GoT” is still one of the best shows of our time. There are only seven episodes in this penultimate season, so enjoy them while they last.

<b>“The Strain” (FX, Sunday, July 16) </b>

Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan's underappreciated viral-vampires saga moves at a nice clip with a minimum of existential crises amid the horror. This fourth and final season deals with the fact that petulant brat Zach (Max Charles) set off a nuclear bomb in Manhattan at the end of Season 3.

<b>“Loch Ness” (Acorn TV streaming, Monday, June 19)</b>

“Loch Ness” hews strictly to the formula of crime procedurals set in breathtakingly pretty (and gloomy) U.K. climes, but this six-episode series keeps a viewer hooked. Laura Fraser (“Breaking Bad”) stars as Annie Redford, an inspector in a small town on the shores of Scotland's enigmatic lake, where the local piano teacher has turned up dead and a teenage prank gone wrong has uncovered a squishy human heart with no body. Siobhan Finneran co-stars as a brusque higher ranking officer who swoops into town to oversee an investigation that becomes a hunt for a serial killer.

<b>“Insecure” (HBO Sunday, July 23) </b>

Issa Rae's affecting portrait of a young social worker in Los Angeles and the up-and-down state of her friendships and love life ended its first season on an especially down note, when her character's boyfriend dumped her. Both Rae and HBO have been pretty tight-lipped about what happens next.

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“Midnight, Texas” (NBC, Monday, July 24)</b>

From author Charlaine Harris (who gave us “True Blood”), this drama is about a small town that's full of paranormal inhabitants (vampires, witches, werewolves, psychics) who have to fight off cops and biker gangs to form a community where they can be themselves.

<b>“Somewhere Between” (ABC, Monday, July 24)</b>

As if media workers aren't crazy-busy enough these days, Paula Patton stars as Laura Price, a TV news producer who has a frighteningly detailed vision that her 8-year-old daughter (Aria Birch) will be murdered. This 10-episode thriller follows along as Laura desperately tries to prevent the inevitable.

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“The Last Tycoon” (Amazon streaming, Friday, July 28)</b>

Hollywood will never break the habit of playing 1930s dress-up, but if you're going to succumb to that temptation, it couldn't hurt to return to F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished 1941 novel. Matt Bomer plays Monroe Stahr, a rising executive at Brady-American Pictures and producer of a big-budget biopic about his late wife. The production runs into trouble as studio boss Pat Brady (Kelsey Grammer) capitulates to censorship from an important foreign distributor - Nazi-controlled Germany. The stars fling themselves into the spirit of “The Last Tycoon,” but the material shows its age.

<b>“Room 104” (HBO, Friday, July 28)</b>

From brothers Jay and Mark Duplass (“Togetherness”), this anthology dramedy features a random mix of characters who each spend a night in Room 104 of an nondescript motel. The brothers initially said they wanted to set the show in a banal, corporate chain motel, but in a preview clip, this retro, double-queen room definitely looks old-school No-Tell Motel.

<b>“Manhunt: Unabomber” (Discovery Channel, Tuesday, Aug. 1)</b>

Discovery takes a dramatic, eight-episode stab at telling the story of hermit and domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski (Paul Bettany) and the FBI profiler, Jim Fitzgerald (Sam Worthington), who tracked him down in 1996. Jane Lynch plays Attorney General Janet Reno. “Quarry” showrunner Greg Yaitanes directs.

<b>“What Would Diplo Do?” (Viceland, Thursday, Aug. 3)</b>

Viceland's first attempt at a scripted show is a dramedy in which James Van Der Beek stars as a satirically egocentric version of Diplo, the world-famous DJ and record producer. Your skepticism is warranted.

<b>“Get Shorty” (Epix, Sunday, Aug. 13)</b>

Chris O'Dowd stars in this series adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel, which is a refreshing departure from both the book and the 1995 John Travolta movie. The essential plot is the same - O'Dowd is a hit man who travels to Hollywood for a job and realizes the movie biz is his true calling - but it's been given a “Breaking Bad”-style upgrade that suits it well.

<b>“Broad City” (Comedy Central, Wednesday, Aug. 23)</b>

Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson's surrealistic, hilarious twist on the “young women in the big city” trope is back for a fourth season. Delightfully weird, “Broad City” may not be a “Seinfeld”-size hit, but it has a “Seinfeld”-esque way of reflecting this generation's sharpest sense of humor.

<b>“Halt and Catch Fire” (AMC, expected in late summer)</b>

The fourth and final season of AMC's dawn-of-the-internet drama was slow-going at first but then shifted its characters' perspectives into higher gear and evolved into a moody, almost “Mad Men”-esque rumination on a certain time (the 1980s) and place (first Texas, then the Bay Area). Now it's the 1990s - so here come all those freebie AOL discs?