Set in the late 1980s, school is out for the summer, and a sun-drenched season of firsts beckons the counsellors at Camp Clearwater, a seemingly idyllic Midwestern summer camp, including first loves, first kisses – and first kills. Clearwater’s dark, ancient mythology awakens, and what was supposed to be a summer of fun soon turns into one of unforgettable scares and evil at every turn.

Part coming-of-age story, part supernatural horror story, Dead of Summer is a bold, new series that mixes genres as it examines the light and dark of a summer like no other.

Why we’re looking forward to this: Here at This Is Horror we love anthology series, like American Horror Story or going back further in time, Tales From The Crypt, and we also can’t get enough of summer camp slashers like Sleepaway Camp, The Burning and the granddaddy of them all, Friday The 13^th.

Dead of Summer combines both of these awesome things to bring us a television series dealing with what happens when summer camp goes wrong, though we can wager a pretty good guess. We’re expecting masked killers, gratuitous nudity (it works for Game of Thrones) and inventive kills, and if we get just some of that it’ll still make the 1980s slasher film freak in all of us very happy.

The show is being developed by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (Lost, Once Upon a Time) and boasts Once Upon a Time writer Ian Goldberg as one of the creators, so we’ve got a reasonable amount of comfort that its in good hands, but as always with projects that sound too good to be true, they sometimes are. We live in hope, though.

Dead of Summer is currently in development and will be airing on the ABC Family (to be rebranded Freeform) network in 2016.

RICHARD COSGROVE