August is the month the telly usually gives up and leaves you to the barbecue you keep not having. Not this year. This is what is new to streaming in August 2026: the six releases actually worth planning around, with the UK home and date for each. The evenings are long, the sofa is patient, and for once the schedule has done its bit. Even the weather cannot ruin a line-up like this, though it will presumably try.
Six new to streaming in August, sorted
The bar for this list: releases that will come up at work whether you have seen them or not. Two returning favourites, a new DC mystery, a De Niro thriller, and a handsome new period drama. Dates are the UK arrivals as announced. Set the reminders now; the group chat will not wait.
Lanterns
Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre as two Green Lanterns working a murder in small-town Nebraska, pitched as slow-burn mystery rather than capes and quips. From 17 August on Sky Atlantic and NOW, and quietly the most promising thing DC has attempted in a decade. No pressure, then.
Ted Lasso
Season four begins 5 August, weekly through to October. A show about an American discovering football, returning just as the actual season kicks off. You will roll your eyes at the timing and watch every episode. As is tradition.
Reacher
Season four lands 12 August, three episodes at once and then weekly. Gone Tomorrow provides the plot, a subway encounter provides the trouble, and Alan Ritchson provides the doorframe-filling. It knows exactly what it is, which is rarer than it sounds.
The Whisper Man
Robert De Niro, Michael Keaton and Adam Scott in a crime thriller about a widowed writer whose son is taken, and a case that rhymes with an old one. 28 August, and the strongest film Netflix has kept for the month.
My Brilliant Career
A handsome six-part adaptation of the Miles Franklin novel, all episodes from 13 August: an ambitious young writer in colonial Australia refusing every sensible path offered to her. Period-drama comfort with actual spine, and Anna Chancellor quietly excellent, as ever.
The Last House
Honourable mention
Greta Lee and Wagner Moura wake to find their home sealed shut and the outside world going quietly wrong. 7 August, and the honourable mention because three Netflix picks felt like showing off.
The rest of the month, briefly
Elsewhere, the full Lanterns rundown confirms the Sky Atlantic and NOW arrangement for the UK, Netflix adds Ricky Gervais's animated Alley Cats on 7 August alongside a shelf of Chucky films for the horror-inclined, and Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel's psychological thriller Mother Mary reaches Sky's cinema shelf later in the month. iPlayer and ITVX tick along underneath with the usual free safety net for the evenings nobody can decide. Nobody is short of options. Agreeing on one remains the national struggle.
Plan the month before the scroll eats it
A word on pacing before you promise yourself all of it. Ted Lasso and Reacher are weekly, which quietly sorts two evenings a week into autumn, while My Brilliant Career arrives in one six-part drop on the 13th and The Whisper Man is late enough to be proper long-weekend material. Slot Lanterns in from the 17th, keep The Last House for a night the weather turns, and the month more or less arranges itself. All that remains is the negotiation over who holds the remote. Anything left over rolls into September, where the telly is traditionally worse. The bank holiday at the end of the month exists for exactly this backlog.
A month this good deserves better than the usual twenty-minute stalemate over the remote. Add the ones you fancy, match with whoever shares the sofa, and let the app referee. For tonight's answer, the what to watch tonight guide covers the field, and this week's picks stay current all month. That is everything new to streaming in August worth your evenings. Available in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and the United States.