Month: April 2021

Watchable the week of April 26, 2021

April 26, 2021 / Debra Yeo

SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Handmaid’s Tale (April 28, 9 p.m., CTV Drama Channel/Crave)

Elisabeth Moss as June Osborne in Season 4 of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Hulu/Bell Media

The handmaid is a renegade in Season 4 of this dystopian drama and one who doesn’t always feel on the side of the angels.

Viewers will likely find themselves vacillating between sympathy for and frustration with June Osborne, the handmaid of the title, played with the usual fervour by Elisabeth Moss, who also directed three episodes this season.

If you watched Season 3 — and if you didn’t, consider this your spoiler alert — you’ll recall that June was shot in the season finale, after she and a band of rebel handmaids were able to distract armed guards long enough for a plane carrying 86 children to take off for Toronto, striking a blow against the totalitarian regime of Gilead.

When Season 4 opens, June gets patched up enough for a network of Marthas to get her and the other handmaids out of Boston and to temporary safety at a farm overseen by teenaged wife Esther (Mckenna Grace, “Designated Survivor”), whose much older husband appears to have dementia — which comes in handy when there are a bunch of strange women running around the property.

Esther is a bit of a puzzle at first, fawning over June one moment, angrily bullying Janine (Madeline Brewer) the next for her reluctance to eat the pig that had to be slaughtered to feed all the extra mouths. It becomes clear that Esther is another traumatized victim who has suffered sexual violence sanctioned by the regime.

She gets a chance to take revenge against one of the men who violated her and the scene is emblematic of the ambivalence viewers may feel about this season. On the one hand, we’ve been waiting for the men who’ve enslaved the women of Gilead to get their comeuppance. On the other, June sanctions an act of savagery — which takes place off camera, but still — that seems to put her on an equal footing with the men who have tortured and executed women.

And yet, to deny women like June their revenge, even when the violence makes you squeamish, is to deny them their full humanity, which is what Gilead is all about. As June says in a later episode, “Why can’t we be as furious as we feel?”

June’s obsession with finding other members of the Mayday resistance and, ultimately, bringing down Gilead leads her to take risks that have serious, even fatal consequences for other people who depend on her. That’s made devastatingly clear at the end of Episode 3, which Moss directed. It’s one of the moments, and not the only one, in which it feels like June straddles the line between hero and villain.

During a virtual Q&A with members of the Television Critics Association in February, showrunner Bruce Miller said this season is about delivering on things that were set up in previous seasons and it does that, based on the eight of 10 episodes I screened, which take June out of Boston and beyond the control of Gilead, at least part of the time.

The later episodes also start to dig into the question of who people are when they’ve lived through something as traumatic as Gilead and whether a so-called “normal” life is even possible anymore under those circumstances. It’s a question that’s explored not just for June but for former handmaids Emily (Alexis Bledel), and Moira (Samira Wiley), and former “Martha” Rita (Canadian actor Amanda Brugel), all adjusting to life in Toronto and demonstrating that the path from victim to survivor is anything but linear.

Moss and her fellow actors continue to be brilliant this season. Brewer, in particular, really gets a chance to shine.

Viewers have found the series bleak and difficult to watch, and there isn’t much respite in the first half of the season. Some light starts to filter through in the later episodes, albeit still shaded with suffering.

This is necessary. It was time to, as Miller said in February, “make shit happen.”

Miller also said he feels like “I can go on and on forever” with the series, which to me seems like a dangerous impulse.

It’s time to let June achieve her goal and let Gilead fall. I can see one or two more seasons to conclude this handmaid’s tale. Anything beyond that would be indulgence.

Rutherford Falls (April 29, 8 p.m., Showcase/StackTV)

Ed Helms as Nathan Rutherford and Michael Greyeyes as Terry Thomas in “Rutherford Falls.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Colleen Hayes/Peacock

If you like gentle comedy with a point to it you might want to spend some time in Rutherford Falls.

The show was co-created by Ed Helms and Michael Schur, who have applied their talents to beloved series like “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation,” and Indigenous writer-producer Sierra Teller Ornelas (“Superstore”).

Helms also stars as nerdy Nathan Rutherford, whose raison d’etre is preserving the history of his family and, particularly, town founder Lawrence Rutherford. His best friend Reagan Wells (Lakota Sioux actor Jana Schmieding) is equally devoted to sharing the history of her fictional Minishonka First Nation and the two support each other in their lonely quests.

So far, so good, but then the town’s mayor (Dana L. Wilson) proposes moving Lawrence’s statue, known as Big Larry, from its spot in the middle of the main street — not out of a spirit of anti-colonialism, mind you, but because drivers keep crashing into it. Nathan’s zeal to keep Big Larry in the exact spot where Lawrence signed a “uniquely fair and honest deal” with the Minishonka 400 years earlier sets him on a collision course with local Minishonka residents and, eventually I suspect, with Reagan herself.

One also suspects that as the show goes on (I screened four of 10 episodes), Nathan will have to come to terms with the colonialism that he obliviously embraces.

He’s not the only one facing an identity crisis. Reagan is an outcast from her tribe, who see her as a sellout to white culture. Her boss, casino owner Terry Thomas, is devoted to the well-being of the tribe but tends to value its traditions as something to be monetized.

Terry is played by Michael Greyeyes, a Canadian actor from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, and he’s the real standout in the cast. Smart, ambitious and pragmatic, Terry is the most well-rounded character, at least from what I’ve seen so far, and Greyeyes lights up whatever scenes he’s in.

Nathan and Reagan don’t get much character development beyond their well-meaning devotion to their respective histories. Nor does Josh Carter (Dustin Milligan of “Schitt’s Creek”), the reporter who comes to town in search of a story and becomes a love interest for Reagan. The cast also includes non-binary actor Jesse Leigh as Nathan’s assistant Bobbie and Canadian Mohawk actor Kawennahere Devery Jacobs as Reagan’s cousin Jess.

It’s not laugh-out-loud comedy — at least it wasn’t for me — but the show has heart and things to say: about power and who gets to exercise it, and whose stories get to be told and by whom.

Catching a Serial Killer: Bruce McArthur (April 30, 9 p.m., Super Channel Fuse)

The victims of serial killer Bruce McArthur: clockwise from top left, Selim Esen, Soroush Mahmudi, Dean Lisowick, Abdulbasir Faizi, *Majeed Kayhan*, *Kirushna Kanagaratnam*, *Andrew Kinsman* and Skandaraj Navaratnam. PHOTO CREDIT: Toronto Police Service/The Canadian Press

I’m not sure that having a Canadian entry in the ever growing true crime genre is actually something to celebrate, but this documentary takes a fairly thorough look at a notorious Toronto case.

Grandfather Bruce McArthur pleaded guilty in January 2019 to murdering eight men, whom he dismembered and buried mainly in large planters that he had access to as part of his landscaping business. The plea came more than eight years after the first victim went missing.

This doc, which has already aired on pay TV in the U.S., lays out the case chronologically from that first disappearance, of Skandaraj Navaratnam, to the eventual arrest and conviction of McArthur, which took place only after a white victim who was well known in the gay community disappeared (the other victims, aside from one homeless man, were all South Asian immigrants or refugees) and after two previous police interviews of McArthur.

The police actually get off pretty easily in the doc, far better than in a recent report that itemized serious flaws in their investigations. You can read more about that in this Toronto Star article by Wendy Gillis.

Gillis appears in the doc along with other journalists, two police detectives, former friends of McArthur’s, a criminologist and members of the gay community.

Of particular interest is an interview with John Doe, a man whom McArthur tried to strangle in his van in 2016. Police let McArthur go when he told them it was a “misunderstanding.” He went on to kill two more men, Selim Esen and Andrew Kinsman, whose disappearance kick-started surveillance of McArthur.

One flaw in the doc is that we learn much more about McArthur than we do about his victims. That lack of attention unfortunately mirrors the lack of attention that allowed the disappearances of a group of gay men of colour to go unsolved for as long as they did.

Short Takes

John Simm as Roy Grace in “Grace.” PHOTO CREDIT: BritBox screen grab

Grace (April 27, BritBox)

If you’re running out of crime dramas to stream, this two-part series is worth adding to the rotation. Created by Russell Lewis, known for the addictive “Endeavour,” and based on the novels by Peter James, it stars John Simm (“Life on Mars,” “Doctor Who”) as disgraced detective Roy Grace, who in addition to being relegated to cold case files is still mourning the disappearance of his wife six years before. The series isn’t reinventing the wheel, but the episode I saw, about a groom-to-be who vanishes from his stag, has some clever twists, and Simm makes an engaging lead.

Headspace Guide to Sleep (April 28) and Pet Stars (April 30, both Netflix)

These two series seem particularly pandemic-appropriate given that COVID-19 has both done a number on sleep patterns and led to an increased focus on our animal companions. The first show purports to be a guide to better sleep, a joint project of Netflix and the Headspace meditation app that features animation and soothing narration by Eve Lewis Prieto. Each episode ends with a wind-down exercise meant to send you into slumber, but I watched in the middle of the day and skipped through that part so I can’t say if it works.

“Pet Stars” features Colleen Wilson and Melissa May Curtis of Los Angeles animal talent agency Pets on Q as they search out social media animal celebs. And that’s it really, but the animals are cute. OK, maybe not the ugly dogs in Episode 1, but still.

Netflix also debuts Yasuke (April 29), an anime series based on the real-life, 16th-century Black sumurai.

Odds and Ends

Hailie Sahar as Lulu and Indya Moore as Angel in “Pose.” PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Parmelee/FX

One of the shows I would have most liked to review for you is “Pose,” which debuts its third season May 2 at 10 p.m. on FX. Unfortunately, reviews are embargoed until tomorrow. Season 3 is set in 1994 and sees Blanca (MJ Rodriguez) in the thick of AIDS activism while Pray Tell (Billy Porter) deals with his alcoholism and Angel (Indya Moore) tries to move ahead with her wedding.

I didn’t watch enough of “The Mosquito Coast” (April 30, Apple TV Plus) to really review it, but I can say it combines family drama with TV thriller based on the pilot episode. It’s an adaptation of the 1981 novel by Paul Theroux, star Justin Theroux’s uncle.

Disney Plus debuts a prequel to the Oscar-winning “Soul” on April 30, “22 vs. Earth,” which explores what soul 22 (Tina Fey) has against life on our planet in a short film by Kevin Nolting.

Also on April 30, Amazon Prime Video releases the action film “Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse,” starring Michael B. Jordan of “Black Panther” and “Creed” as Navy SEAL John Kelly.

On the same day, CBC Gem has the documentary “The Donut King,” by Alice Gu, about the rise and fall of a Cambodian refugee who built a doughnut empire in America.

NOTE: The post on “The Handmaid’s Tale” has been altered because I felt there was more to say after finding time to screen all eight of the episodes made available to critics.

NOTE: The dates and times listed here reflect information provided to me and cross-checked where possible against broadcast and streaming schedules, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of series reviewed reflects what I’m given access to by networks and streamers, whether reviews are embargoed, how many shows I have time to watch and my own personal taste.

Watchable the week of April 19, 2021

April 19, 2021 / Debra Yeo

SHOWS OF THE WEEK: Life in Color (April 22, Netflix) and Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World (April 22, 8 p.m., BBC Earth)

Host David Attenborough with colourful macaws in Costa Rica in “Life in Color.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Humble Bee Films/SeaLight Pictures

On one level, these shows have nothing in common, other than the fact they’re both being released on Earth Day, but I see them as linked due to the preoccupations of their stars with saving the planet.

At 94, David Attenborough, who hosts and conceived “Life in Color,” is the old pro. The numerous nature documentaries he has presented are in one sense the carrot to the stick of environmental activism. They show us the wonders of our world in the hope we’ll be enamoured enough of their beauty to try to stop them from being wiped out.

This particular series uses special cameras to reveal the colours of nature, including ones that humans can’t perceive with the naked eye. Many of the species in the first episode are gorgeous birds — macaws, peacocks, pink flamingos, toucans, hummingbirds, birds of paradise — but also creatures you wouldn’t necessarily think of as beautiful, including fiddler crabs, peacock mantis shrimp and strawberry poison dart frogs.

Attenborough gives them all their due, explaining the function of each animal’s colours, to communicate, to attract mates, to warn off rivals and predators. Not a word was spoken, in that first episode anyway, about environmental destruction or species extinction, but I couldn’t help thinking back to the episode I had watched of “Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World,” in which a scientist said 20 to 30 per cent of the world’s species are “committed to extinction by 2050” if current climate warming trends continue.

Greta Thunberg with reindeer in Jokkmokk, Sweden, in “A Year to Change the World.”
PHOTO CREDIT: BBC Studios

Quite honestly, I am in awe of 18-year-old Greta Thunberg, of her dedication to fighting climate change, which seems like a monumental and dispiriting task. But as she says, “Hope doesn’t come from words, hope only comes from action.” So when the UN Climate Change Conference in 2019 was relocated to Spain from Chile — to which Greta and her father had planned to drive from North America — she refuses to take a seven-hour flight to Madrid, instead enduring a 20-day journey by catamaran across the Atlantic Ocean in November.

By that point in the docuseries, Greta had already attended a climate strike in Edmonton, Alberta; visited dying pine forests in Jasper National Park; surveyed the rapidly melting Athabasca Glacier, which will never recover even if the world wakes the hell up and starts taking greenhouse gas reduction seriously; and travelled to Paradise, California, virtually wiped out by a wildfire in 2018, before setting out from Virginia for her ocean journey.

The series makes the point that people may be too exhausted from the COVID-19 pandemic to face another crisis, but it also makes the point that we are running out of time. Even if the 196 nations that signed the Paris Climate Agreement were to stick to their vow to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5 C, it’s already too late to undo some of the damage.

I honestly don’t know if the Earth can be pulled back from the abyss, but bless people like Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough for trying.

Cruel Summer (April 20, 9 p.m., ABC Spark)

Chiara Aurelia and Olivia Holt in “Cruel Summer.” PHOTO CREDIT: *Bill Matlock*/Freeform.

This YA drama, which has the distinction of being executive-produced by Jessica Biel (“The Sinner”), is really a story of two young women, told over three summers from 1993 to 1995.

Jeanette (Chiara Aurelia, “Tell Me Your Secrets”) is the quintessential nerd when we first meet her, right down to the glasses and braces, while Kate (Olivia Holt, “Cloak & Dagger”) is the stereotypical popular girl, blond and self-assured.

But identities and allegiances shift. After Kate is kidnapped, Jeanette becomes the popular one, to the point of taking Kate’s place with her boyfriend (Froy Gutierrez, “Teen Wolf”) and her best friends. And in 1995, after Jeanette has been accused of playing a role in Kate’s captivity, she is a pariah in her small Texas town.

What may seem straightforward in the first episode is anything but. As the story builds, shifting back and forth between timelines and points of view, the villain looks more like the victim and vice versa. The deceptions and obfuscations extend to the adults involved, including Jeanette’s mother Cindy (Sarah Drew) and Kate’s mom Joy (Andrea Anders). Allius Barnes and Harley Quinn Smith (Kevin Smith’s daughter) also play key roles as Jeanette’s friends Vincent and Mallory.

The standout here is Aurelia, who convincingly portrays Jeanette’s transformation from sweet, trusting teenager to cynical outcast. She gets help from hair and wardrobe, with three distinct looks for each time shift, but the evolution is more than just physical.

With its plot twists and layered characters, “Cruel Summer” is a YA show that grown-ups can enjoy too.

Short Takes

The cast of “The Parker Andersons” and “Amelia Parker.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Super Channel

The Parker Andersons/Amelia Parker (April 19, Super Channel Heart & Home, 8 and 8:30 p.m.)

These linked sitcoms about a Black man, a white woman and their blended family seem to have their hearts in the right place. They were created by Toronto producer Frank van Keeken (“The Next Step,” “Lost & Found Music Studios”), who is white, but overhauled by Toronto writer Anthony Q. Farrell (“The Office,” “Secret Life of Boys”), who is Black. He brought together a diverse team of BIPOC writers to redo the original scripts to make them true to the lives of their Black characters. The cast is primarily Canadian and the show comes from a Canadian production company, Marblemedia, in partnership with Mormon-owned BYUtv. (NOW Magazine has an interesting story about that unlikely pairing, if you’d like to read it here.) Whereas “The Parker Andersons” focuses on British widower Tony Parker (Arnold Pinnock, “Travelers”) and his new American wife Cleo Anderson (Kate Hewlett, “Degrassi”), who each have a son and daughter, “Amelia Parker” is mainly about Tony’s daughter (Millie Davis, “Odd Squad”), who has stopped talking since her mother died (which, in the episodes I saw, no one treated as anything to be alarmed about). Of the two shows, I found “Amelia Parker” the more interesting, engaging take. I found “Parker Andersons” a little saccharine, but then again so was “The Brady Bunch.”

L. Frank Baum, centre, with cast members of his Oz-themed “Fairylogue and Radio-Plays”
stage show in 1908. PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Public Domain

American Oz (April 19, 9 p.m., PBS)

There is no question that American author Lyman Frank Baum left the world an enduring piece of art when he published “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” in 1900. But did you know he wrote 14 Oz sequels, among his dozens of other novels? I didn’t until I watched this episode of “American Experience.” Baum was a 44-year-old father of four who had failed at various careers — chicken breeder, theatre impresario, storeowner, travelling salesman, newspaper publisher — when he wrote the children’s book that fulfilled his dream of becoming a great author. “American Oz” paints Baum as a literary pioneer, a prolific creator, a dedicated father and a champion of women’s rights, but he was also a purveyor of the racism of his time. In his South Dakota newspaper, he called for the extermination of the Native Americans who remained after being robbed of their land, even slaughtered, in the name of white progress. That and the racial stereotypes in some of Baum’s other books are blemishes on a life otherwise lived in aspiration and imagination.

Odds and Ends

Even nine seasons in, it can be fun watching people cook on alarmingly tight deadlines. So yes, “Top Chef Canada” is back, despite the pandemic, with 11 new competitors (April 19, 10 p.m., Food Network Canada/StackTV). Unfortunately I can’t really tell you more than that because reviews are embargoed until after the show airs.

I would have liked to get a look at “Secrets of the Whales” (April 22, Disney Plus), executive-produced by Canada’s own James Cameron (“Titanic,” “Avatar”), but alas, I never got the chance. Still, it looks like the kind of nature show that will both exhilarate you and break your heart.

I haven’t checked out Netflix’s “Shadow and Bone” (April 23) because, frankly, there’s no point watching shows that I can’t write about due to embargoes, but if you like CGI-laden fantasy series full of telegenic young actors who speak with British accents then have at ‘er.

A new season of “Black Lady Sketch Show” comes to HBO and Crave (April 16, 11 p.m.), with Robin Thede and her cast of, well, Black ladies.

WHOOPS! I had “Top Chef Canada” listed as airing on Global TV rather than Food Network Canada. Apologies. Guess I was extra tired Monday morning.

Watchable the week of April 12, 2021

April 12, 2021 / Debra Yeo

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Mare of Easttown (April 18, 10 p.m., HBO/Crave)

Kate Winslet, Evan Peters and Justin Hurtt-Dunkley in “Mare of Easttown.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Sarah Shatz/HBO

Give me a detective, particularly a female one, who feels like a real human being and I’m a happy viewer.

“Mare of Easttown” does that with a lead performance from Kate Winslet that reminds us of why she’s an Oscar, Emmy and multiple BAFTA-winning actor.

In Winslet’s hands, detective Mare Sheehan is believable right down to the Delaware County accent, which the British Winslet told TV critics in February was one of the hardest she’s ever had to learn.

Mare has been beaten down by life, but she’s a survivor, devoted to both her family and her job. That job becomes more challenging after a teenage single mother turns up dead in the woods — just a year after another girl from Easttown went missing, an unsolved case that already had Mare under considerable pressure.

Stubborn, prickly and pragmatic, Mare tries to do the right thing but also does some boneheadedly wrong ones, though Winslet makes you understand the why of them.

She’s backed by an estimable supporting cast, including Jean Smart as her mother Helen; Julianne Nicholson (“The Outsider”) as her best friend Lori; Evan Peters (“American Horror Story”) as her police partner Colin; and Guy Pearce (Winslet’s “Mildred Pierce” cast mate) as her love interest Richard (although I note that Mare’s interactions with Richard struck the one false note in the show for me).

The show’s many characters make Easttown feel like a real community rather than just a place where bad things happen, which is also down to creator and writer Brad Ingelsby, who grew up in the Pennsylvania county next door. (Craig Zobel, known for “The Hunt” and “The Leftovers,” directed.)

But that wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans if the series didn’t work as a captivating crime drama, which it does. It has the usual tropes — the detective with personal demons, the interloper from another police force who becomes a trusted colleague, the reluctant witnesses, the red herrings — but that didn’t impair my enjoyment of the show and my eagerness for the next episodes (I’ve seen five of the seven), each of which ends with a twist that propels the plot forward.

If I had to compare “Mare of Easttown” to another series, I’d pick “Happy Valley” because of that show’s similarly flawed but dedicated female cop protagonist, but “Mare” is its own thing and a notable addition to the genre, one that’s worthy of your attention.

Kim’s Convenience series finale (April 13, 8 p.m., CBC/CBC Gem)

From left, Simu Liu, Jean Yoon, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Andrea Bang, Andrew Phung and Nicole Power
of “Kim’s Convenience.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC

Let’s be honest: Canada punches way below its weight when it comes to producing television. It’s not about lack of talent: it’s a combination, in my view, of the geographic inconvenience of being next door to the United States; lack of funding; and risk adverse TV executives, who’d rather spend money on U.S. imports than develop homegrown content that might fail. And when you look at the Numeris broadcast ratings week after week, you can understand their reticence.

Judging by those, Canadians would rather watch American sitcoms and by-the-numbers medical and police procedurals than anything made here in Canada, with the exception of news and hockey. In the last week of March, for instance, the only homemade TV that cracked the top 30 outside of those two commodities were “MasterChef Canada” and “Big Brother Canada.”

We Canadians also tend not to value anything made here unless someone else tells us it’s good, the most spectacular example of which is “Schitt’s Creek.” This week, we lose another well-made Canadian sitcom that gained fans outside the country thanks to the gargantuan reach of Netflix: “Kim’s Convenience.”

In case you haven’t heard, “Kim’s” is ending a season earlier than expected (stars Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and Andrew Phung talk about why in this Canadian Press article), so this season finale has become a series finale.

This episode won’t give fans the closure that “Schitt’s” fans got when that show ended on its own terms, but it’s a reasonable facsimile of a series ender.

The characters are looking ahead — Uma and Appa (Jean Yoon and Lee) to retirement, Jung (Simu Liu) and Janet (Andrea Bang) to their professional futures — while Kimchee (Phung) and Shannon (Nicole Power) resolve some personal issues.

When everyone gathers for dinner, Appa looks back to how he and Uma came to Canada from Korea and made a life for themselves, the most important part of which is family. That seems a fitting epitaph for a show that imbued its comedy with lots of heart.

My wish is that Canadians sit down and watch Tuesday, or at least catch up later in the week, and that the next “Kim’s Convenience” or “Schitt’s Creek” or “Cardinal” or “Trickster,” or any other quality Canadian show we’ve lost, is just around the corner.

Made for Love (April 16, Amazon)

Ray Romano and Cristin Milioti in “Made for Love.” PHOTO CREDIT: John P. Johnson/HBO Max

This HBO Max series is described as a dark comedy, but I’d say it’s more of a horror story.

It begins with Hazel (Cristin Milioti, “Palm Springs”) fleeing from her husband Byron (Billy Magnussen, “Tell Me a Story”). The tech billionaire — whose company is called, ahem, Gogol — has insulated himself, and her, from reality in a high tech hub where every material wish is granted but genuine human interaction is non-existent.

After a decade of having her every move monitored and controlled, the last straw for Hazel is the chip that Byron has had implanted in her head, a prototype of his latest invention, a means of connecting the brains of couples and thus eliminating independent thought.

If you’re thinking this is the sort of thing only a man could dream up, yes exactly. Byron describes his invention, called Made for Love, as a way to banish miscommunication, but it’s really patriarchal subjugation in technological form.

Though Hazel has escaped physically, Byron can monitor everything she sees, says and hears, and wages a campaign to wear her down and get her back to the hub, while Hazel is equally determined to get a divorce, lose the chip and gain her freedom.

Most of the series rests on Milioti’s shoulders and she acquits herself well. The other standout is Ray Romano, playing her widowed father Herbert. When Hazel returns to her rundown hometown she finds that he’s taken up with a sex doll, whom he treats as a living, breathing partner. One could argue that Herbert’s love for his inanimate companion is more authentic than what Byron claims to offer Hazel, which is surely what we’re meant to think.

Based on the book by Alissa Nutting and adapted for TV by her and Patrick Somerville (“Maniac”) it’s an odd and sometimes absurd series. What kept me watching was a desire to see Hazel break free of Byron’s smothering imitation of a marriage once and for all.

I won’t spoil things by telling you how it ends, but love plays a role, though perhaps not in the way you’d expect.

Amazon also debuts “Frank of Ireland” this week, on April 16. It boasts a decent Irish cast, including brothers Brian and Domhnall Gleeson, and Sarah Greene (“Dublin Murders,” “Normal People”), but personally I’m over comedies about irresponsible men-children. One episode of this was all I could handle.

Short Takes

Ginger and David, who are profiled in the first episode of “My Love,” have been married 60 years. PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix

My Love: Six Stories of True Love (April 13, Netflix)

If you’re put off by the dysfunctional partnership in “Made for Love,” this docuseries could be your antidote. It profiles six senior couples in six countries. I watched the first episode, about David and Ginger Isham of Williston, Vermont. They met at a barn dance, married soon after Ginger graduated from high school and raised six kids while running the farm that had been in David’s family since 1871 and which they’ve passed down to their oldest son. Now in their 80s, we watch them over a full year, essentially just living, everything from preplanning their funerals and celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary to doing chores and napping over their afternoon newspapers. There’s beauty in the mundanity and poignancy in the ordinary, a portrait of love that’s both real and aspirational.

Netflix has a few other offerings this week, including Season 2 of social media reality competition “The Circle” (April 14); the Jamie Foxx sitcom “Dad Stop Embarrassing Me!” (April 14) and the animated film “Arlo the Alligator Boy” (April 16).

Odds and Ends

Lorna (Elvira Kurt) and Mom Persona (Jane McClelland) get married
on the kids’ TV show “Miss Persona.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Treehouse

The Treehouse channel is getting a dose of LGBTQ Pride this week with two episodes of its Canadian children’s show “Miss Persona.” In the episode “Love Every Moment” (April 17, 11:45 a.m.) Miss Persona’s mom (Jane McClelland) marries her partner Lorna (Elvira Kurt). In “I Wanna Wear” (April 18, 11:45 a.m.), Miss Persona (Kimberly Persona) takes Brandon Bear to his first Pride parade, complete with drag kings and queens, including Toronto’s Baby Bel Bel.

On PBS, the documentary feature “Picture a Scientist,” about gender and racial biases in science, airs on “Nova” (April 14, 9 p.m.).

I didn’t get a chance to screen the John Stamos-led sports drama “Big Shot,” about a men’s NCAA basketball coach forced to coach a girls’ high school team, but it debuts April 16 on Disney Plus. The same day, the screener releases “Earth Moods,” a travelogue series with music that “gives the audience an opportunity to relax and reset,” according to the press materials.

BritBox has an odd couple comedy about a bigoted white woman who’s forced to re-examine her prejudices after meeting an African asylum seeker in “Kate & Koji” (April 13). Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn is cafe owner Kate and Jimmy Akingbola (“Arrow”) is displaced doctor Koji.

For more Brit TV, Acorn TV has Season 3 of “Keeping Faith” (April 17), starring Eve Myles (“Broadchurch,” “Torchwood”), and CBC Gem has “The Secrets She Keeps” (April 14), starring Laura Carmichael (Lady Edith in “Downton Abbey”) as a troubled pregnant woman with a dangerous secret.

Watchable the week of April 5, 2021

April 5, 2021 / Debra Yeo

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Exterminate All the Brutes (April 7, 9 p.m., HBO/Crave)

Director Raoul Peck and actor Josh Hartnett during the making of “Exterminate All the Brutes.”
PHOTO CREDIT: David Koskas/Velvet Film/HBO

This docuseries by Raoul Peck, the Haitian-born filmmaker behind the Oscar-nominated “I Am Not Your Negro,” is fascinating, horrifying and deeply thought-provoking.

Peck, a Black man, upends what we think we know about the history of the western world, exposing the long and ugly pattern of racism, colonization and murder that is the basis of the capitalist system that governs our lives today, in which some people are seen, whether tacitly or overtly, as more important than others.

He does this through a combination of historical record, archival footage, clips of Hollywood films, animation, his own family photos and home movies, re-enactments of historical events starring actor Josh Hartnett, made-up dramatizations — a group of white children in chains, for instance, being herded through the jungle by their Black masters — and narration.

The title comes from the words spoken by the character Kurtz in the Joseph Conrad novella “Heart of Darkness” and also from a book written by Peck’s friend, late Swedish author Sven Lindqvist (authors Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Howard Zinn and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz also inspired Peck). The brutes are essentially anyone who is not white and of Western European origin: Blacks, Indigenous people, Muslims, South Asians — the list is long.

Among the many striking images in the series is a time-lapsed map of America, crammed with the the names of Indigenous tribes, which rapidly drop off the map as white settlements spread. In a heart-rending animation about the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation of thousands of Native Americans, Indigenous people are loaded onto a boat and their howling dogs jump into the Mississippi River in a vain attempt to follow them.

America, Peck says, was born as a colonial power (and although he doesn’t directly say so, Canada was as well). Genocide was not invented by the Nazis, he adds, but goes back centuries to the Crusades, which Peck argues were about taking over Muslim-controlled trade routes, while the Spanish Inquisition birthed the ideology of white supremacy.

There’s more, a lot more. The series is so loaded with ideas and imagery that it’s hard at times to keep up. Peck indicts everyone from Columbus and other explorers, to industrialists like Henry Ford, who helped fund the Nazi party, to politicians like slave-owning president Andrew Jackson, Winston Churchill and Donald Trump.

The series’ reach is so vast that it’s hard to adequately describe it in so few words, but it deserves to be seen and, unlike so much of pre-colonial history, to not be forgotten.

The Nevers (April 11, 9 p.m., HBO/Crave)

*Laura Donnelly as Amalia True and Ann Skelly as Penance Adair in “The Nevers.”*
*PHOTO CREDIT: Keith Bernstein/HBO*

Victorian London seems to be a fertile setting of late for TV shows featuring female protagonists (“Miss Scarlet and the Duke,” “The Irregulars”) and the women very decisively drive the plot in “The Nevers,” a supernatural action drama created by Joss Whedon.

(Whedon, the subject of accusations of abusive behaviour on other productions, stepped away in November, citing exhaustion, leaving Philippa Goslett to take over as showrunner.)

You wouldn’t want to get on the bad side of Amalia True (Laura Donnelly of “Outlander” and “The Fall”), a fierce protector of a group of mostly women and girls known as “the touched.”

They developed supernatural abilities after an otherworldly (and in the three episodes I screened so far, unexplained) event in London on Aug. 3, 1896. Amalia, for instance, can see glimpses of the future. Her best friend, Penance (Ann Skelly, “Vikings”), can see energy, which enables her to invent things.

Amalia manages a refuge for the touched, who are regarded variously as curiosities, freaks or abominations by greater society — particularly since one of them, a woman known as Maladie (Amy Manson, “Once Upon a Time”), is a deranged killer.

The foes of Amalia and Penance and their charges are many. The government, under the influence of Lord Massen (Pip Torrens, “Preacher,” The Crown”), sees the touched as a threat; people like libertine Hugo Swann (James Norton, “Happy Valley,” “Grantchester”) are out to exploit them; a dangerous group of masked men is kidnapping them off the streets. Amalia also has to contend with the violent criminal known as the Beggar King (Nick Frost, “Shaun of the Dead”) and with police detective Frank Mundi (Ben Chaplin).

That all adds up to a lot of chances to see Amalia kick butt, which she does proficiently, against both men and women, though not without physical cost.

Amalia also has secrets, as do many of the characters, both touched and untouched.

Most of the protagonists in the series are white, although Zackary Momoh (“Harriet”) plays a doctor with special healing powers, Rochelle Neil (“Das Boot”) is a fire-wielding member of Maladie’s gang of touched assassins known as Bonfire Annie, and there are several people of colour among the residents of the touched orphanage, funded by the aristocrat Lavinia Bidlow (Olivia Williams).

Beyond the action scenes, “The Nevers” can be interpreted as carrying messages about the bonds of chosen families and the burden societies place on those who are seen as other, but it’s also just an absorbing adventure story told from a welcome female POV.

Short Takes

A view of one of the galleries of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum after the theft
in “This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix

This Is a Robbery (April 5, Netflix)

This docuseries is a worthy addition to the true crime canon, although it’s not a murder being dissected but the theft of extremely valuable works of art. In the early hours of March 18, 1990, as St. Patrick’s Day revels were still taking place in other parts of Boston, two men dressed as police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The two guards were bound with duct tape and works by revered European painters were cut from their frames, among them several Rembrandts, including his only known seascape. Was it an inside job? Was the heist the work of a seasoned art thief or at the request of a greedy collector? Did the thieves realize the works would be impossible to sell? Not having got through all the episodes, I’m not sure what the series concludes, but it was interesting enough for me to want to watch more and find out.

Ernest Hemingway in his 1923 passport photo. PHOTO CREDIT: Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

Hemingway (April 5, PBS)

The famous American author gets the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick treatment, which is to say exhaustive. Over six hours, this docuseries purports to uncover “the man behind the myth,” so it touches on the less heroic parts of Ernest Hemingway’s life, including his troubled family history, his philandering, his egoism, his occasional cruelty, while never losing sight of his towering talent as a writer. Toronto, Canada, and the newspaper I work for, the Toronto Star, claim a connection with Hemingway, who worked for the Star as both a correspondent and a staff writer in the 1920s, but it’s worth noting he only lasted four months in Toronto, finding neither the city nor the job to his taste, before fleeing to Paris.

Lucky (Deborah Ayorinde) and Ruby Emory (Shahadi Wright Joseph) in a screen grab from “Them.” PHOTO CREDIT: Amazon Prime Video

Them (April 9, Amazon Prime Video)

Like “Lovecraft Country” before it, this horror drama created by Little Marvin makes the point that the daily indignities experienced by Black Americans are as unsettling as anything the supernatural can throw at them. Deborah Ayorinde (“Luke Cage”) and Ashley Thomas (“24: Legacy”) star as Lucky and Henry Emory, a middle class Black couple who move with their daughters Ruby (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Gracie (Melody Hurd) into a hostile white 1950s neighbourhood in Compton, California. Outside, the neighbours, led by vicious housewife Betty Wendell (Canada’s Alison Pill), are scheming to get the Emorys out. Inside, other malevolent forces, otherworldly ones, are at work.

Alison (Charlotte Ritchie), left, and *Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe), right, have unexpected* company
in their new home in the comedy “Ghosts.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC

Ghosts (April 9, CBC Gem)

The pack of ghouls that haunt Button House won’t scare you, but they’ll probably make you laugh. The motley paranormal crew, who all appear more or less as they did at death, includes a caveman named Robin; Mary, who’s a little singed from being burned as a witch; lovelorn Romantic poet Thorne, who died in a duel; Lady Fanny Button, who was murdered by her cheating husband; sweet-tempered Georgian noblewoman Kitty; cheery Scout leader Patrick, with the arrow that killed him still stuck in his neck; headless Tudor nobleman Humphrey; bossy World War II soldier Captain; and perpetually pantsless politician Julian, who died in a sex scandal. At first the spirits want no part of Alison (Charlotte Ritchie, “Call the Midwife”), who inherits the dilapidated English manor house from a step-great-aunt, or her husband Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe). But after a fall and near-death experience — thanks to a nudge by Julian (Simon Farnaby) — Alison can see her paranormal roommates and they eventually learn to co-exist. Besides, ghosts can be useful in getting rid of interlopers, like a greedy neighbour or a rapacious hotelier. The series, created by cast members of the Brit comedies “Horrible Histories” and “Yonderland,” is both clever and charming.

NOTE: The dates and times listed here reflect information provided to me and cross-checked where possible against broadcast and streaming schedules, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of series reviewed here reflects what I’m given access to by networks and streamers, whether reviews are embargoed, how many shows I have time to watch and my own personal taste.

Month: April 2021

Watchable the week of April 26, 2021

Watchable the week of April 19, 2021

Watchable the week of April 12, 2021

Watchable the week of April 5, 2021

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