10 sci-fi and fantasy shows you should watch in August

If you like genre TV, August of 2022 will either be the best month of your life or the month you finally crack and go mad. The powers that be (Netflix, Disney, HBO Max and the like) are aiming their big guns straight at your free time with a battery of shows we’ll be taking weeks to recover from, if we ever do.

So what’s on tap for this August? Let’s go through the heavy hitters one by one while taking deep, calming breaths. Starting with…

The Sandman: August 5 (Netflix)

August starts with the weirdest of bangs as Netflix debuts The Sandman, an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s beloved comic book. Explaining this one is always a trip. The main character is Dream, aka Morpheus, aka the Sandman, aka Oneiros, aka a bunch of other stuff. He is the literal personification of dreams, and he oversees the twilight realm you visit when you sleep. He has a number of other siblings who are also anthropomorphic representations of different aspects of the human condition, and before the season is done, he will visit with Cain and Abel, travel to Hell, call on the three fates and attend a serial killer convention.

This is a weird comic, and if Netflix wants to do it justice, The Sandman will be a weird show. But it’s also imaginative, and ambitious, and all-around wonderful. The Sandman is about myth and dreams and change and humanity; it’s about everything, and those kinds of stories don’t come around every day. If Netflix pulls this off, it could be spectacular. If they fail, it will be an epic fail.

This is one of the most interesting shows of the month and it’s coming out right at the top. What else might the month bring?

Locke & Key season 3: August 10 (Netflix)

Locke & Key tells the story of the Locke family, who go to live in their father’s drafty family home in Massachusetts after he dies. Does anyone who so much as glances at the house know it’s haunted? Yes, but why should that get in the way of a good story?

Plus, the house isn’t haunted in the traditional sense. It contains many magical keys that can all do a number of interesting things, from transporting you great distances to controlling demons. Naturally, malevolent powers want to get ahold of these keys, so the Locke family has their work cut out for them.

This will be the third and final season of Locke & Key, which is based on the comic book by Gabriel Rodríguez and Joe Hill, who happens to be Stephen King’s son and a prominent horror writer in his own right. The show has a following but has never blown up proper. Is this the year the Netflix drama gets its due?