The Shards is now streaming on Hulu for US viewers and Disney+ internationally, as it adapts Bret Easton Ellis' novel of the same name.
In my The Shards review, I was pleased to note that it was a welcome return to form for Ryan Murphy. I was also impressed by how well he adapts the source material into a sexy, glamorous yet dangerous TV series.
If you're here, you're wondering when the next episodes will stream. Much like the two episode premiere, we also get two episodes this week.
Here's what you need to know about the release of The Shards episodes 3 and 4.
What time can I watch The Shards episodes 3 and 4 on Hulu?
For US viewers, both The Shards episodes 3 and 4 will drop on Wednesday, August 12 at 6pm PT/ 9pm ET.
Here's when you can stream the new episodes in other countries.
US – Thursday, August 13 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
Canada – Thursday, August 13 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
UK – Friday, August 14 at 2am BST
India – Friday, August 14 at 6:30am IST
Singapore – Friday, August 14 at 9am SGT
Australia – Friday, August 14 at 11am AEDT
New Zealand – Friday, August 14 at 12pm NZDT
When do new episodes of The Shards come out?
(Image credit: Hulu)
After this week's double bill, episodes of The Shards will premiere on a weekly basis until the finale on Wednesday, September 9. We do have another double bill coming up too, which is good news for those who don't like to wait.
For dates as well as the episode titles for the upcoming The Shards releases, take a look below.
The Shards Episode 1 “Pilot”: Out now
The Shards Episode 2 “Don’t You Want Me”: Out now
The Shards Episode 3 “Help Me! Rhonda!”: Wednesday, August 12
The Shards Episode 4 “Robert’s Party”: Wednesday, August 12
The Shards Episode 5 “Murder on the Dancefloor”: Wednesday, August 19
The Shards Episode 6 “Homecoming Part One”: Wednesday, August 26
The Shards Episode 7 “Homecoming Part Two”: Wednesday, August 26
The Shards Episode 8 “Hamlet”: Wednesday, September 2
The Shards Episode 9 “Stairway to Heaven”: Wednesday, September 9
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The Shards is guaranteed to have audiences talking, for better or for worse, as Bret Easton Ellis' controversial semi-autobiography comes to the small screen.
But, in my opinion, Ryan Murphy teaming up with Ellis has given him the chance to shine once again. Fans of Murphy's work were left disappointed and baffled in recent months after his abysmal Hulu series All's Fair aired, which has a seriously low Rotten Tomatoes score of just 6%.
Thankfully, The Shards feels closer to what Murphy was doing with the anthology series American Horror Story, and the result is an addictive, bloody and over the top series which shows that Murphy and Ellis are an excellent creative duo.
The Shards is certainly not for everyone, but I'm sure it will find a dedicated audience among Hulu subscribers. Those who can put up with intentionally insufferable protagonists are rewarded with a stylish, tasty peek into life as a privileged student in the 1980s, set in a sunny LA neighborhood.
The nine-part series follows a fictionalized version of Bret Easton Ellis, who is 17 and in his final year at the elite Buckley prep school. Igby Rigney, known for his work on Netflix's Midnight Mass, plays this version of the thriller author.
We open with Bret going to see The Shining, smoking a cigarette and driving a convertible, as he narrates all the luxury clothing he's wearing. Rigney's almost bored-sounding narration would feel out of place anywhere else, but here it fits perfectly as he talks about his life, one that many viewers will never have and might desperately covet. Despite having everything, there's no enthusiasm to his voice at all.
Opposite Rigney, Homer Gere stars as Robert Mallory, a new arrival at Buckley whose unsettling presence coincides with the activities of a serial killer known as The Trawler. Gere is fantastic in The Shards, dominating every scene he's in, and making us feel very uncomfortable from the moment we see him.
The unsettling dynamic between Bret and Robert forms much of The Shards, supported by an equally good cast playing fellow students around them. Susan Reynolds (Kaia Gerber), is a popular girl and cheerleader who soon develops a thing for Robert, much to the annoyance of her long-term boyfriend Thom (Graham Campbell).
Bret's girlfriend, Debbie (Hayes Warner), is a teen rebelling against her movie director father, adding to the already complex layers of this dysfunctional friend group.
The first two episodes were released together, but unfortunately it's a weekly release from then on. I have a feeling some people might be gutted they can't binge-watch it because it's easy to become invested in what's happening. The Shards is a dazzling experience where you feel like a fly on the wall watching these spoiled teens, wondering what's going to happen to them next, even if you probably should look away.
It's a visceral, no-holds-barred look into this 80s society which finds itself rapidly torn apart, sometimes literally. Indeed, those looking for Bret Easton Ellis' brand of gratuitous violence will find it here, making The Shards an interesting blend of teen drama and horror movie, with some grisly results.
Even if you haven't read The Shards, if you know you're a fan of Ellis' other works like American Psycho, I think this will be right up your alley. It ticks all the right boxes for what we'd expect from him, after all.
At the time of writing, The Shards season 2 has not been confirmed, which means the season finale's ending will prove frustrating if we don't get more. Though Ellis' book has a similar ending, I'm hopeful that The Shards will choose to take the story further as it feels like it's been written with a second season in mind.
As a standalone season though, it's entertaining and shocking in equal measure. The Shards is a welcome addition to Ryan Murphy's filmography, and I hope he does more like this because I have certainly missed him when he's at his bloody best.
Fun fact: whenever I have days that I work remotely, I'll always have an episode of Bob's Burgers on in the background. In fact, I watch all 16 seasons of the hit Hulu and Disney+ animated comedy so often, that I could tell you exactly what episode was on without directly looking at it.
I felt incredibly prepared for the handful of Bob's Burgers quizzes already on the internet claiming to be the hardest, but nobody has yet been able to truly test the reams of random knowledge I've acquired from watching the series so often.
Should I be able to tell recite the lyrics to the song that plays over Tina and Tammy's first time collectively ditching class in season 2? Probably not.
So, behold — the genuinely most difficult Bob's Burgers quiz that I have played to date (because I made it). If you get more than 80%, I'll assume that you're actually a Wharf resident who's somehow found their way into the real world.
I have left out anything that happens in The Bob's Burgers Movie, but you'll need to have seen seasons 1-16 in order to answer all of the questions.
Check back when Bob's Burgers season 17 (hopefully) airs in early 2027... you know that the above will be updated accordingly.
As Oliver (Martin Short), Charles (Steve Martin) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) head to London, UK to solve the death of a global podcaster, the below Brits will be joining the action:
Jennifer Saunders
Sean Teale
Simone Ashley
Amar Chadha-Patel
Rhea Norwood
Matthew Beard
Sharon Horgan
Geri Halliwell Horner
Martin Freeman
Jamie Demetriou
Anjana Vasan
Jane Horrocks
Derek Jacobi
Lesley Nicol
David Tennant
Nicola Coughlan
Jodie Whitaker
Jim Broadbent
Adrian Lukis
Richard Ayoade
Kathryn Hunter
This is all before the Disney+ and Hulu show slyly revealed its most recent casting through an Instagram carousel: England's Oscar-winning hero, Olivia Colman.
She's seen filming scenes solo while sat on a sofa, but the post shows that Mabel and Loretta (Meryl Streep) have also been at the same location. Put two and two together and there's a very high chance that Streep and Colman could be sharing the screen... and this is exciting to me.
Why? This will be the first time that the pair are reunited on screen since the 2010 British political biopic that I was unusually feral for as a 17-year-old girl. It's also the performance that won Streep her most recent Best Actress Oscar... and frankly, it all has to be seen to be believed.
Only Murders in the Building season 6 will be Olivia Colman and Meryl Streep's first onscreen appearance since The Iron Lady
Only Streep could take a figure as politically and culturally divisive as former UK Conversative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and turn her into an Academy Award winner.
The 2011 biopic The Iron Lady explores her life and career as the UK's longest-serving Prime Minister, with an older Thatcher looking back over her life after the death of her beloved husband, Denis (Jim Broadbent).
So, where does Colman fit in? She plays Carol Thatcher, Margaret's daughter, sharing intimate scenes with Streep during Margaret's older years. Watching them together is like watching destiny... of course these two were always going to unite and give audiences something special.
While Streep rightly received a great deal of notoriety for her performance, it's surprising how many people forget that Colman was ever in it. In fact, if you've never realized before now, you've likely seen the below anecdote on The Graham Norton Show, with Colman revealing that Streep thought her real teeth were fake.
Oddly, The Iron Lady is one of the few films I can probably recite word for word without needing to watch it again first. Around the same time that it was released, a college friend of mine and I set up a (very) unofficial Meryl Streep fan club: The Mezralites.
We got t-shirts made — for all two members who were in the club — and spent every lunch break possible learning Streep's ways: understanding how she embodied the famous Prime Minister before our time, how she turned her hand to the slightest of details that could make or break a single moment.
I would always argue that any film featuring Streep is worth seeing, but The Iron Lady is the perfect binge before Only Murders in the Building season 6 arrives.
We're getting two divas for the price of one, and the underlying biting tension between them onscreen could so easily be replicated under Oliver, Charles and Mabel's watch.
My favorite interviews over the course of my career have involve people I'd never normally get the chance to speak to in everyday life.
So far this year that's involved two former FBI agents, but Dr. Sarita Robinson — who you can see in Pompeii: Out of Time, out now on Disney+ and Hulu — might just take the cake. Known as "Dr. Survival," her work specialises in figuring out why some people are more likely to survive disasters than others.
This makes her a compelling expert for the three-part docuseries, which explores the events leading up to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD, which destroyed the nearby Roman city of Pompeii, and features Tom Hiddleston as presenter.
But it's not her take on the past that I'm actually as interested in... it's her take on the disasters of the future. As a TechRadar writer, I can't pass up an opportunity to talk to Robinson about the dangers of the rise of AI usage across the globe.
Add in potential climate change risk, and I think that AI is more than a viable candidate for the sort of survival emergencies that Robinson researches. But surprisingly, AI isn't what she's most worried about.
'We theoretically have a risk from AI'
First, I begin by asking Robinson exactly how she defines a survival emergency. Does it have to be a natural occurrence, like the Mount Vesuvius eruption near Pompeii?
"Absolutely not," she replies. "For me, when I'm looking at emergencies, it's anything where your life is at risk. That can be as simple as you walking across a road and a car coming, small scale emergencies that are just enough that you have to respond, or it can be huge emergencies. The last one that I did quite a lot of research on, as you might expect, is the pandemic. The next one will be climate change, the era of global boiling."
"Medium scale would be an earthquake in a region, a terror attack — so they can be human made disasters... they don't have to be just natural disasters."
So far, so good. When it comes to categorizing AI within Robinson's research boundaries, is this kind of technological disaster something she's ever considered?
"I think I've watched enough science fiction movies to know that we theoretically have a risk from AI," she tells me. "Exactly what that risk would be or how it would look is very difficult to predict at this moment. But yes, absolutely, I would definitely add it onto my list of things that can go wrong... my list is quite extensive."
'I would be far more worried about a solar pulse'
(Image credit: Disney+/Hulu/National Geographic)
"To be fair, I think the thing I worry about more on the tech front is something like a solar pulse that then knocks out a whole load of technology," Robinson adds. "I can't imagine my life without a mobile phone, a computer... it would be very odd to go into an age of no internet."
It's at this point of the interview where I stop feeling bad for adding a disaster scenario to Robinson's list, as she's certainly just added one to mine. Before this point, I'd never even heard of a solar pulse, which can best be described as a sudden burst of energy from the sun. According to the University of Minnesota, they can trigger "explosive releases of radiation and magnetized plasma ripple through space, occasionally triggering geomagnetic storms on Earth and producing auroras."
Fantastic, another reason to have anxiety in 2026. But what is Robinson's advice for not feeling so anxious about... well, general impending doom?
"Be prepared: active coping, doing something about it, keeping it in perspective, but making sure that you have the resources if something goes wrong," she responds. "I don't mean building a nuclear bunker in your back garden. For example, when the pandemic hit back in 2020, I had a 'pandemic kit' under my sink. I felt like I had a little bit more control in that moment."
"I did some research on the pandemic and what it did show was that those people who'd made some preparations prior to the lockdown were doing much better in terms of mental health, stress, anxiety and depression."
Can we make a solar pulse or anti-AI kit for under our sinks? Most likely not. But that doesn't mean that Robinson's advice should be discarded — control also means vigilance, so keeping a mix of online and offline resources in day-to-day life could be a great way of achieving this.
I've been living for the episode titles for Rick and Morty season 9, but this week is the first time I've felt genuinely terrified for what I'm about to see.
Episode 8 is called Rickuiem Mort a Dream, which is a play on the Darren Aronofsky film Requiem for a Dream. If you've been brave enough to watch that movie, you'll know that it's so traumatizing, you can never, ever see it again.
What on earth that means for an animated TV series, I have no idea. But when does Rick and Morty season 9 episode 8 arrive on Adult Swim, Hulu, and HBO Max?
What time can I watch Rick and Morty season 9 episode 8 on Adult Swim, Hulu, and HBO Max?
In the US, Rick and Morty season 9 episode 8 will debut on Adult Swim on Sunday, July 12 at 8pm PT / 11pm ET.
Viewers elsewhere, as well as in the US, have two streaming options: Hulu and HBO Max. Episodes should appear on these platforms 24 hours after they've aired on Adult Swim, meaning you can expect episode 8 on Monday, July 13.
These are the timings you need to take note of:
US – 12am PT / 3am ET
Canada – 12am PT / 3am ET
UK – 8am BST
India – 12:30pm IST
Singapore – 3pm SGT
Australia – 6pm AEST
New Zealand – 8pm NZDT
When do new episodes of Rick and Morty season 9 come out?
(Image credit: Adult Swim)
Rick and Morty season 9 is set to have 10 episodes. As long as there are no unexpected delays, we can expect it to follow the following release schedule:
It's hardly a surprise, but Hulu and Disney+ have confirmed that Rivals season 3 has been renewed. However, we're forgetting that something important will be missing.
Hulu and Disney+ have just announced the stacked guest star list for Only Murders in the Building season 6 — and two new cast members are already connected.
Praise be, The Handmaid's Tale spinoff The Testaments season 2 has already been renewed. Here's everything we know so far, from returning cast to plot predictions.
With six episodes under half an hour long, Deli Boys season 2 is this week's perfect bite-sized comedy binge. But for what to stream next, I asked the Hulu and Disney+ show's own cast.
Talk about a final episode that had everything and the kitchen sink in. We've had some important questions answered, so here's The Testaments ending explained in full.
Blink and you'll miss it, but Rivals season 2 episode 4 just hinted at a future lesbian romance. However, I've taken a request for more right to the Hulu and Disney+ writer's room.
I'm still reeling over Rivals season 2's underwhelming release schedule — but before we're left waiting for the second half, there's a mega plot twist in store.
You might miss it, but Chaka Khan's name is briefly mentioned in Rivals season 2 episode 2 — and it almost resulted in a 'major legal battle', according to one star.
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