Well, well, well. Look who crawled out of the June content drought still breathing. Pull up a chair, pour something cold and slightly irresponsible, and let Mother tell you the truth June was too polite to admit: it was a desert out there, darlings. A single tumbleweed rolled across my streaming queue and I very nearly fainted clean onto my chaise. Pride Month, they called it. Famine Month, I called it.
But July? July heard our sobbing through the walls and came back with a whole buffet. We’ve got a series finale that is going to have you weeping into a decorative throw pillow, a Legally Blonde prequel nobody asked for and everybody is going to adore anyway, a gay vampire in leather trousers, a set of cartoon dads, competitive pickleball, and – because Mother contains multitudes and a little darkness – a horror movie. So fix your face, refresh your drink, and take notes. Here is exactly what deserves your precious time this month, and precisely where to find it. You’re welcome in advance.
1.Heartstopper Forever
Listen to me. I do not cry. I am a professional. My mascara costs more than your car payment and I do not risk it for just anyone. And yet. After three glorious seasons of Nick and Charlie being the most painfully wholesome couple to ever hold hands on a windswept beach, Netflix is wrapping the whole love story up in one feature-length movie – and I already know, in my bones and my lash glue, that it is going to absolutely destroy me. Our boys are happier than ever, but Nick is heading off to university, and the film has the nerve to ask the one question we’ve all been dodging: can first love really go the distance? Whatever the answer, clear your evening, silence that phone, and station a full box of tissues within arm’s reach, because you will need every single one. This, my loves, is the headliner. Everything else this month is the opening act.
PGC’s full review lands July 18
2.Elle
Now, I was skeptical. I will admit it in open court. A Legally Blonde prequel? Sweetie, we did not ask for the Elle Woods origin story, and I walked in with both arms crossed. And yet here I sit, eating my words with a tiny pink fork. Teen Elle gets yanked out of sunny Los Angeles and dropped into grunge-soaked Seattle, where her head-to-toe pink wardrobe lands like a flamingo in a flock of wet pigeons – and honey, I have never related to a character more. The real treasure is her new best friend Liz (Gabrielle Policano), a dry-as-a-martini lesbian working the counter at a record store who quietly walks away with every scene she’s in. With Crush director Sammi Cohen on the team, the LGBT+ flavor is baked right into the batter, not sprinkled on top as an afterthought. All eight episodes are already out, which means you can devour the entire season in one gloriously unproductive afternoon. Cancel your plans. Mother insists.
PGC’s full review drops July 10
3.Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Lestat
Oh, you want DRAMA? You want beautiful men with impossible cheekbones behaving abominably across several decades? Mother has you covered, and then some. Season three of Interview with the Vampire hurls us headfirst into Lestat’s rockstar era, which means leather, eyeliner, catastrophic decisions, and enough simmering romantic tension between Louis and Lestat to power the entire Eastern seaboard. This is – and I say this with my whole chest and both hips – one of the gayest shows on television, and it has been since the pilot casually served us levitating vampire lovemaking (yes, darling, you read that correctly, and no, I have not recovered). The critics are foaming at the mouth, new episodes drop every week, and frankly it is the perfect excuse to draw the blinds, ignore your responsibilities, and lurk indoors like the glamorous creature of the night you were always meant to be.
4.The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder
Now, not everything has to be dark and sultry – sometimes even Mother wants a little wholesome joy with her afternoon tea, and this one delivers by the trayful. The Proud Family revival keeps quietly doing the good work, and by good work I mean representation done right. Penny’s world includes two kids being raised by adoptive gay dads voiced by none other than Billy Porter and Zachary Quinto – a casting choice so fabulous I gasped audibly – and this season folds Lena Waithe and Keke Palmer into the mix for good measure. It’s warm, it’s genuinely funny, and it’s family-friendly LGBT+ storytelling that never stops to make a big clumsy speech about itself. It simply lets the family exist, be messy, and be loved. Put it on with the kids, the niblings, or just your own tender inner child who deserved to see this growing up.
5.The Dink
Some evenings you simply do not have the strength to feel your feelings – you want to sit back and laugh at a grown man in athletic shorts. I understand you completely and I support you fully. The Dink stars Will Ferrell as a washed-up athlete chasing a pickleball comeback, which is a sentence I genuinely cannot believe I just typed, and Fortune Feimster turns up as a caddie who does not know the first thing about the sport. Feimster is a reliable scene-stealer who could read aloud from a takeout menu and still make me cackle into my wine, so consider me seated. Is it high art? Absolutely not, and it isn’t trying to be. Is it exactly what the doctor ordered on a sticky July evening when your ambition has left the building? Now you’re finally speaking my language.
6.Saccharine
And for my little horror gremlins lurking in the back row – I see you, I love you, I am one of you – Shudder has cooked up a genre thriller starring out actress Midori Francis with a confirmed LGBT+ storyline. Now let me step out of the feathers for one honest second, because Mother actually cares about you: this film deals with eating-disorder themes, so if that is tender territory, please watch with care, bring a friend, or skip it entirely with my full blessing. There is no shame in protecting your peace, and your peace comes first, full stop. But if scary is your happy place, this is the month’s most interesting swing, and you’ll find me watching it right through my manicured fingers along with the rest of you.
Six titles, one very gay July. Now go forth, hydrate, and stream responsibly. Mother loves you. – Miss Information