Television

Correction Appended: May 21, 2012

The Cure for Reruns

Debuts aren’t just for fall

Dallas

Who revived J.R.? We’ve seen TV remakes (Charlie’s Angels) and reimaginings (Battlestar Galactica), but this is more like a restoration of the classic oil-family soap. Many of the same actors and characters return–including J.R. (Larry Hagman), Bobby (Patrick Duffy) and Sue Ellen (Linda Gray)–but the new Dallas also introduces a younger generation of lusty, conniving Ewings and their companions, looking to build their own fortunes on Southfork. Their challenge is the same as the series’: to strike black gold twice in the same place. (TNT, premieres 6/13)

The Newsroom

Since his TV hit The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin has written movies about media (The Social Network) and the great American game (Moneyball). Now he’s behind a drama about cable news, where media becomes a game. The Newsroom, about a veteran cable anchor (Jeff Daniels) who goes rogue and reinvents his career, has the potential to be Sorkin at his best (fast-paced environment, workaholic wonks) or worst (abundant opportunities for preachy monologues and author-surrogate soapboxing). Either way, expect it to make headlines. (HBO, 6/24)

Anger Management

Yes, Charlie Sheen has drug issues, domestic-violence issues and telling-off-producers-before-having-a-national-media-meltdown issues. But proving that Hollywood believes in forgiveness and redemption–with forgiveness and redemption equaling “bringing in ratings while hopefully not getting arrested again”–Sheen has a new sitcom gig. In Anger Management (based on the 2003 movie) he plays a therapist who helps clients despite, or with the benefit of, his own past rage problems. Say what you want about Sheen, the man does live his work. (FX, 6/28)

Political Animals

Elaine Barrish (Sigourney Weaver) is not Hillary Clinton. She’s … well, taller. Formerly married to a philandering President, Barrish is a Secretary of State appointed by the current President (Adrian Pasdar), who defeated her in the primaries, and finds herself dealing with conflicts outside and within the Administration. (See? Not familiar at all!) With Clinton riding a wave of Internet-meme popularity, the makers of Political Animals probably don’t mind any comparisons. Let’s just hope Weaver looks as good in sunglasses. (USA, 7/15)

Copper

The first original series from BBC America is possibly one of the most unusual projects airing this summer. Yes, Copper is a cop show, but it’s a cop show set in grimy 1860s New York City in the aftermath of the Civil War. This piece of Americana comes to us from the writer-director team of Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson, who surveyed crime of a different era in Baltimore on NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street. Here, Kevin Corcoran (Tom Weston-Jones) investigates crime in the rough Five Points neighborhood with the help of a war buddy and an African-American physician. Is it Deadwood with taller buildings? Gangs of New York with a badge? For now we’ll just call it NYPD Sepia. (BBC America, 8/19)

The Perennials

Comebacks to look for

Awkward.

One of the sleeper surprises of last summer, this high school comedy proved that MTV’s relevance doesn’t have to hinge entirely on teen moms or beach-house meatheads. Channeling ’90s-classic Daria with a dash of Mean Girls, the show follows Jenna (Ashley Rickards), a sharp, sarcastic teen whose life is complicated by two potential boyfriends and a mother who’s more of a child than Jenna is. Like the best teen comedies, Awkward. shows the real people behind the yearbook archetypes. (MTV, returns 6/28)

Louie

It’s tough to make predictions about the third season of Louis CK’s comedy because its first two seasons were so unpredictable. Any given half hour–shot more like a low-budget indie short film than a sitcom–could be about parenting, God, the comedy business, unrequited love, death, the New York City subway or masturbation. What united each episode was the comedian’s nuanced, rawly funny insight into what it means to be human and flawed. (FX, 6/28)

Breaking Bad

“I won,” said Walter White (Bryan Cranston) at the end of Season 4, after he killed his drug-lord boss/nemesis, completing his rise from chemistry teacher to crystal-meth kingpin. But what has he lost? Breaking Bad, returning for its final season, is a thriller about the capacity for evil. White rationalized his turn to drugmaking after a cancer diagnosis as a means of providing for his family. With White cancer-free and victorious, the show’s final question may be whether he can break good again or if he is simply broken. (AMC, July)

Damages

Like Patty Hewes (Glenn Close), this drama about the dark side of the law has proved hard to take down. After a highly praised, low-rated run on FX, it launches its fifth and final season on DirecTV, promising a showdown between sharky litigator Hewes and her protg turned enemy Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne). How will the show resolve their conflict between expediency and morality? Expect Damages, like its antihero, to do whatever it takes. (DirecTV, 7/11)

The Summer Olympics

The showmanship bar for this Olympics is high: Beijing began its 2008 Games with an astonishing opening ceremony that included 2,008 drummers pounding in unison. London? Well, it’s got Pippa. But the most exciting part of this TV-sports spectacle may not be on TV at all: NBC will be streaming all 32 sports live at nbcolympics.com If you still can’t find something you want to watch, just wait; the network plans to use the Games to promote and launch its fall shows early. Hopefully, that plan will work better for 2012’s newcomers than it did for Joey in 2004. (NBC, 7/27–8/12)

The Party Conventions

It promises to be a suspenseful and dramatic presidential election this fall, which is not to say that the conventions will be; they often unfold less as history in the making than as tightly scripted theater. But there’s always the possibility for unexpected controversy and sparks as the Republicans take Tampa and the Democrats renominate Barack Obama in Charlotte, N.C. Or skip the main event and stay up late instead for The Daily Show, which will be reporting from both conventions. If the speeches aren’t newsworthy, there’s always fake news. (Republican, 8/27–30; Democratic, 9/3–6)

FOR MORE OF WHAT’S AHEAD THIS SUMMER, GO TO time.com/entertainment

A previous version of this article misidentified the channel on which Dallas will be seen. The show will air on TNT on June 13.