Dear newsletter subscribers,

Now that the Summer Olympics are (almost) over, it's time for reality TV to fill the void, both with actual sports (football) and reality TV's version of The Challenge. And there are a lot of shows coming your way this week, in addition to the finale of The Bachelorette—well, the first of two Bachelorettes that will air this year.

First, the 16th season of HBO's real-time, behind-the-scenes NFL reality show Hard Knocks returns to follow the Dallas Cowboys at their training camp (HBO, Tuesdays at 10). Here are seven fun facts about how it's filmed.

The new season of The Challenge is subtitled "Spies, Lies and Allies," and has 17 contestants from reality shows around the world, and 17 Americans (MTV, Wednesdays at 8). It'll be preceded by a casting special (MTV, Monday, Aug. 9, at 8). This is the season that reportedly shut down production, so we'll see if the special or the show deal with that directly or not.