Season two of Modern Love premieres on Amazon Prime Video Aug. 13. There are eight episodes in this anthology series, inspired by the New York Times column of the same name. Minnie Driver, Kit Harington and Anna Paquin are in the cast. 

The season was shot in Albany, Schenectady and Troy, New York, and internationally in London and Dublin. COVID prevented the producers from shooting in New York City, so they headed upstate. 

“We couldn’t get a big enough soundstage to keep the air flowing and do all the COVID protocol,” said John Carney, executive producer. 

COVID caused some headaches, but Carney is not complaining. “I wasn’t driving a bus in Manhattan in March or April of 2020,” he said, “or having [to do] a real job.”

Speaking of COVID, episodes include one where Lucy Boynton and Harington play characters who meet on a train in Ireland, and promise to meet again on the train two weeks later, without exchanging numbers. Then a pandemic hits. 

“I love things on trains,” Carney said, mentioning Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and Linklater’s Before Sunset.

Carney loves that all the episodes, and the column they’re inspired by, are based on real events. “Sometimes the make-y up-y nature of a TV show — enough already,” he said. “We have an extra magic in this. This all comes back to, these things happened.”

Epix premieres drama Chapelwaite Aug. 22. Based on the Stephen King short story Jerusalem’s Lot, it is about a sea captain who relocates his three children to a seemingly sleepy town in Maine after the death of his wife. The town is not so sleepy. 

Exec producer Donald De Line met with King agent Rand Holston about adapting a King yarn, and the agent suggested Jerusalem’s Lot. “It had all the basic elements I was looking for,” De Line said, including a “great setup” and “hostile terrain.”

“The classic elements of a great Stephen King story,” he added. 

Adrien Brody, also an executive producer, plays Captain Charles Boone and Emily Hampshire portrays family governess Rebecca. De Line noted how Brody can say a lot without speaking. “He doesn’t have to say many words to do a lot of storytelling,” said the producer. 

The 10-episode series was shot in Nova Scotia, which stands in nicely for Maine. “Someone said, let’s go scout Nova Scotia, and I thought everyone had lost their minds,” De Line said. “But physically, they’re extremely similar. The countryside is beautiful and works so well for Maine.”

That region of the world was successful in managing COVID outbreaks. The cast and crew spent quarantine time in their hotel rooms, then got to work. “It was like being in a magic  bubble,” De Line said. 

Season two of anthology drama Modern Love premieres on Amazon Prime Aug. 13. Inspired by the New York Times column of the same name, there are eight episodes. Among them, Minnie Driver and Tom Burke star in “On a Serpentine Road, With the Top Down,” about a woman torn up about what to do with her late husband’s vintage car, and “Strangers on a Train,” which sees Lucy Boynton and Kit Harington play characters who meet on a train in Ireland, and promise to meet on the train two weeks later, without exchanging numbers. Then the pandemic hits. 

Anna Paquin, Garrett Hedlund and Tobias Menzies are also in the season two cast. John Carney, executive producer, called it “an interesting cross-section of actors and movie stars.”

Carney got involved with Modern Love when he was shooting a film in New York, got into reading the newspaper column and, as luck would have it, got a call from a producer about working on Modern Love. 

He likes that pretty much everything in the series happened in real life. “Nothing nowadays has much relationship with fact,” Carney said. “It’s lovely to be involved in a show in which you’ve got some baseline facts in it.”

Carney added, “Sometimes the make-y up-y nature of a TV show — enough already.”

An Irishman, Carney directed the film Once, about a lovesick street musician in Dublin. 

All the episodes come from “Modern Love” columns, but Carney, who wrote the episodes, said “Strangers on a Train” came from “Modern Love” offshoot “Tiny Love Stories,” which happen in just one paragraph. 

Season two of Modern Love was shot in Albany, Schenectady and Troy, New York, and overseas in London and Dublin. COVID prevented the producers from shooting in New York City, so they headed upstate. “We couldn’t get a big enough soundstage to keep the air flowing and do all the COVID protocol,” said Carney. 

COVID caused some headaches, but Carney is not complaining. “I wasn’t driving a bus in Manhattan in March or April of 2020,” he said, “or having [to do] a real job.”

Season two of anthology series Modern Love starts on Amazon Prime Friday, Aug. 13. The show is inspired by the New York Times column of the same name. There are eight episodes. 

Tobias Menzies and Sophie Okonedo have joined the cast for season two, joining Gbenga Akinnagbe, Susan Blackwell, Minnie Driver, Kit Harington and others. 

John Carney is writer, director and executive producer of Modern Love. John Crowley, Marta Cunningham, Jesse Peretz and Andrew Rannells will also direct episodes and Celine Held and Logan George co-direct one. 

Todd Hoffman, Trish Hofmann and Anthony Bregman executive produce season two, along with Caitlin Roper and Choire Sicha of The New York Times.

The series is produced by Amazon Studios, Storied Media Group, Likely Story and The New York Times.

The second season was filmed in New York City, Albany, Schenectady and Troy, New York, and Dublin. 

Two new series based on popular franchises head the list of new and returning series debuting this week.

USA Network on Oct. 15 will premiere drama series Treadstone, based on the Jason Bourne theatrical movie franchise, which follows the origins of a secret CIA black ops program. Debuting Oct. 20 is HBO’s Watchmen, based on the graphic comic book series of the same name and set in an alternate history where superheroes are treated as outlaws, according to the network.

On the streaming services front, Oct. 18 will serve as the debut date for Prime Video’s drama anthology series Modern Love, Hulu’s miniseries Looking for Alaska and Netflix’s dramedy Living With Yourself.

Below are video trailers and premiere dates for several shows debuting this week on cable networks and streaming services (for some videos, viewer discretion is advised):

Oct. 14 -- Letterkenny (returning series) -- Hulu

Oct. 15 -- The Purge (returning series) -- USA

Oct. 16 -- Impulse (returning series) -- YouTube

Oct. 16 -- Limetown (drama) -- Facebook Watch 

Oct. 17 -- BookTube (returning talk show) -- YouTube

Oct. 17 -- Liberty: Mother of Exiles (documentary) -- HBO

Oct. 18 -- Eli (horror movie) -- Netflix

Oct. 18 -- Wounds (horror movie) -- Hulu

Amazon Studios Saturday released first-look trailers for several of its upcoming series premieres as part of its Television Critics Association press tour session.

Below are the trailers as well as premiere dates (if available) and short descriptions for each show:

Transparent (movie, premiering Sept. 27): The musical-tinged finale of Amazon’s long-running series follows the Pfefferman family as they face a life-changing loss and begin a new transition, confronting grief as they come together to celebrate connection, joy, and transformation.

Carnival Row (new series, premiering Aug. 30): The series, which stars Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne, is set in a Victorian fantasy world filled with a growing population of mythological immigrant creatures that struggles to coexist with humans — forbidden to live, love, or fly with freedom. A recent string of gruesome murders threatening the uneasy peace of the Row.

Modern Love (new series, premieres Oct. 18):The romantic comedy anthology series explores love in all of its complicated and beautiful forms as each standalone episode brings some of the most beloved stories to life with a stellar cast, including Anne Hathaway, Tina Fey, John Slattery and Brandon Victor Dixon.

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (returning series): The second season of the series finds CIA Officer Jack Ryan heading down to South America to investigate a potentially suspicious shipment of illegal arms in the Venezuelan jungle. As Jack’s investigation threatens to uncover a far-reaching conspiracy, the President of Venezuela launches a counter-attack that hits home for Jack, leading him and his fellow operatives on a global mission spanning the United States, UK, Russia, and Venezuela to unravel the President’s nefarious plot and bring stability to a country on the brink of chaos.

Undone (animated series, Sept. 13): Amazon's new animated series that explores the elastic nature of reality through its central character Alma, a twenty-eight-year-old living in San Antonio, Texas. After getting into a car accident and nearly dying, Alma finds she has a new relationship to time. She develops this new ability in order to find out the truth about her father’s death.