This pandemic hasn’t been especially kind to budding streaming platforms like Quibi and HBO Max, but that isn’t stopping NBCUniversal from unleashing its long-gestating service Peacock, the next home of some hard-fought favorites and new original programming. Today, the digital hopeful debuted its first look at some of its original offerings ranging from David Schwimmer as an NSA agent with unearned confidence to an animated look at a time-traveling, teenage Cleopatra. With Peacock nearing its July 15 debut, here’s a roundup of the newly released trailers. We covered the Brave New World and Psych 2 trailers a little more in-depth, in case you’re interested.
Intelligence
Once you’ve burned through every episode of Friends on HBO Max, you can follow David Schwimmer to the U.K. for Peacock’s new workplace comedy, Intelligence. Per the network, the series is “set in the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters – a kind of weedier, geekier, more bureaucratic version of MI5 and MI6, where they tackle international and domestic Cyber Crime from a desktop.” Schwimmer plays a pompous agent who is called in to combat cyber terrorism.
The Capture
The Capture aims to join NBCUniversal’s enduring slate of crime dramas with a conspiracy thriller starring Holliday Grainger, Callum Turner, Ron Perlman, and more. Former soldier Shaun Emery must fight for his freedom after newly surfaced, damning footage indicates his involvement in a woman’s disappearance. While his chance of acquittal look bleak, Detective Rachel Carey “quickly learns that the truth can sometimes be a matter of perspective.”
In The Deep With Ryan Lochte
Remember that time when Ryan Lochte totally lied about being robbed at gunpoint during the Rio de Janeiro Olympics? Here is his redemption story, we guess.
Lost Speedways With Dale Earnhardt Jr.
NASCAR mainstay Dale Earnhardt Jr. will visit abandoned raceways to uncover the deeply buried history of racing. No matter what transpires, this is already better than Cars 3.
Curious George
Since 1941, Curious George has combined educational content and a total disregard for self-preservation into one adorably adventurous monkey. The new animated series will continue the tradition of stoking the average preschooler’s imagination while encouraging them to ask questions and pursue knowledge through exploration.
DreamWorks’ Cleopatra In Space
Per NBCUniversal: “Cleopatra In Space is a comedic adventure focusing on the untold story of Cleopatra’s teenage years. Viewers can follow Cleo as she is transported 30,000 years into the future, to an Egyptian-themed planet that is ruled by talking cats and where she discovers she is the prophesied savior of the future world.” It’s a remarkably oddball premise, which is DreamWorks’ specialty.
DreamWorks’ Where’s Waldo?
DreamWorks has turned one of the most infuriatingly evasive characters in pop culture and handed him a bunch of global mysteries to solve. That’s it. That’s the premise.
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Just to note, Where’s Waldo has been airing on Universal Kids for a long while now. I understand if you didn’t know there WAS a Universal Kids, since they tend to average about 27,000 viewers, but it does exist. The network also airs the Inspector Gadget reboot, American Ninja Warrior Junior, Home: Adventures of Tip and Oh, Adventures of Puss in Boots, Dragons: Riders/Defenders of Berk/Race to the Edge, and constant marathons of Totally Spies. It’s…. certainly a channel that exists, all right.A sci-fi version of Cleopatra is nice and all, but it’s been done before: Finally, how is it that Dreamworks seems to consistently get the shittiest animation studios to do their cartoons? Voltron and Kipo are practically their only 2D cartoons that don’t have terrible and/or flat visuals.
Technical in that show Cleopatra was not the real Cleopatra that was just her stripper name. She was also the really really white lady in the cast. Also she got frozen for 500 years after botched boob job. It was silly
The Cleopatra in Space graphic novels are a ton of fun, for whatever that’s worth.
“A sci-fi version of Cleopatra is nice and all, but it’s been done before”
The fact that it’s been done poorly before should preclude it from ever being done again?
Adds calendar reminder for 2025 to send out “Remember Peacock?” article pitches.
More like 2021. Right after we exhaust all the articles about remembering Quibi
Qui-what now?
I have neither seen nor thought about Ryan Lochte since his long and memorable recurring role on the Joel McHale version of The Soup.Here’s an idea: maybe the Joel McHale version of The Soup would be a better NBC/Universal/Sheinhardt Wig Company property that is a better candidate for revival that Ryan Lochte.
None of this looks noticeably different from that Community parody a few years ago:
If you’re hoping for my business never open with Schwimmer.
I don’t know that it matters, but the “new workplace comedy” Intelligence aired in the UK in February.
And they’ve already pissed me off by giving fucking Ryan Lochte money.
I’m confused. Is this a streaming service I have to pay for that has worse programming than the free NBC?
The Capture was on the BBC last year too. I liked most of it okay, but hated the ending.Not sure where they can go with it in S2.
Yeah, I saw that, but of course you can’t edit kinja posts. The trailer looked interesting, at least.
I thought we had all come to an agreement that Cars 2 was the Cars movie we would make fun of, as it is clearly the worst movie Pixar has ever made.
I think their is an argument for the Good Dinosaur being worse.
To be fair, that Intelligence trailer does certainly capture the feeling of a sitcom that last aired 20 years ago.
That isn’t a new Curious George show. It looks like the exact same show that has been on PBS for years, is it just new episodes? Also this is still the best character from the past comes to the future cartoon
“is it just new episodes?”
Yep. New season.
Makes sense. I was confused because the article above said “The New animated series” and it looked just like the old one. Its a fun show for young ones so glad to see there will be more of it
All of these new streaming services are unnecessary, but somehow this one feels the most unnecessary.Just because it’s last, I suppose. But also I feel like Disney+ and HBO Max both have better curated/more interesting back catalogs, and Apple TV+ is basically an add-on with purchase of an iPad. This one just seems like its back catalog is mostly a bunch of stuff that’s already streaming elsewhere.
Yeah, the thing is they’re releasing it a little too early. I think a lot of the NBCUniversal properties are still slated to stream on Hulu until 2024.
“Just because it’s last, I suppose.”
I personally think it’s because NBC isn’t premium. You can’t compete with the likes of Netflix by producing bland network programming.
What’s up with the scratch V/O on the Curious George trailer? Sounds like they sent the wrong file.
Curious George really gets way too much of a pass for what is objectively a terrible message, that doing a good thing completely wipes out also doing a bad thing, even if the bad thing was much worse than the good thing is better, and they have nothing at all to do with each other. Basically, it’s the morality system of The Good Place played totally straight in every single story.
It’s still a step up from Caillou’s relentless whining.
I hate that bald fucker.
I’m still convinced that the reason I cut the cable cord 10 years ago was because of the monstrosity that is Caillou. On my personally assigned days off (I wrote my own work schedule) I would always unconsciously find a way to be on PBS when Caillou would be coming on, and I wanted to punch the TV.
I get that children’s TV is sometimes annoying, but Caillou brought it to a whole new level of hate.
No news about Sam Esmail’s BSG show? Hard meh.
Most of this looks like steaming garbo, but I might get Peacock if it’s got a deep Syfy back catalog.
If I don’t get some way to see A.P. Bio up here (Canada) in a timely fashion, I’m bootlegging the shit out of it.
Waldo is right fucking there!
Would it be fair to say while NBC is throwing all this stuff behind a paywall their broadcast content is pretty much garbage?
There actually is a free-with-ads option.
Intelligence is a BritishUKwhatever… import and it suck balls.
I have a vague recollection of a Top Gear episode way back where they featured a track in the UK that had been abandoned for at least like 40 years and it was absolutely fascinating. I have no, literally no interest in NASCAR (hell, I lived in Charlotte, NC for two years and had to endure Speed Week), but the history of it is something that I can get into. I have ended up working horse tracks the last decade and it’s the same thing: I have no interest in the racing, more so the history of the “sport”, like trainers, jockeys, owners, even the lineage of the winning horses.