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Tag: what to watch (Page 4 of 10)

Watchable on FX, Crave, CBC Gem Aug. 29 to Sept. 4, 2022

August 29, 2022 /

Please note: My show of the week is “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” which debuts on Prime Video on Sept. 2, but reviews are embargoed until Wednesday morning, when I will be out of town on an overnight trip. I will post a review here either later this week or next Monday.

The Patient (Aug. 30, Disney Plus)

Steve Carell as Dr. Alan Strauss and Domhnall Gleeson as Sam Fortner in “The Patient.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Suzanne Tenner/FX

The series is called “The Patient,” but it’s the doctor who’s the star.

Steve Carell gives a wonderfully nuanced and sympathetic performance as a psychiatrist being held prisoner by a serial killer in this drama from Joel Fields and Joseph Weisberg, showrunner and creator, respectively, of “The Americans.”

It’s clear from the moment that “Gene” (Domhnall Gleeson, “Star Wars,” “Harry Potter”) shows up at Dr. Alan Strauss’s home office that something is off about him. From behind purple sunglasses, Gene gives a superficial account of his father’s violent abuse and the fact it has fucked him up.

When Alan says they have to go deeper to make real progress, Gene unilaterally decides on an exclusive course of treatment by kidnapping Alan and confining him to a dingy room in the basement of the home he shares with his mother Candace (Linda Emond), convinced that the doctor can cure him of his homicidal urges.

Obviously, Sam, which is Gene’s real name, is grossly bastardizing the therapeutic process, but we are rooting for Alan, hoping against hope he can connect with whatever shred of conscience Sam possesses. To fail to do so implies he’ll end up like the rest of Sam’s mostly nameless and faceless victims, his possessions inside Sam’s box of prosaic trophies.

Gleeson also does very good work as Sam, although he has less to dig into than Carell. The series doesn’t elucidate Sam’s psychopathy beyond his father’s violence and references to him being an odd kid. We know he’s good at his job as a restaurant inspector, loves food and Kenny Chesney, was married once and indulges in daily extra-large Dunkin’ Donuts coffees. But we skim the surface of his psyche.

Our emotional foothold comes through Alan, who’s grieving the recent death of his wife Beth (Laura Niemi, “This Is Us”), a cantor at a Reform Jewish synagogue, and his rift with his son Ezra (Andrew Leeds, “Barry”), whose adoption of Orthodox Judaism angered both his parents.

Alan is not physically mistreated in his captivity beyond the injury of being chained to the floor but — though Sam is mostly courteous and apologetic — the horror is palpable of being confined by a murderous, emotionally unstable captor with only words to use in your defence.

We explore Alan’s fear and confusion and despair and resolve through nightmares and flashbacks and imaginary sessions with his own therapist Charlie (David Alan Grier, “The Carmichael Show”).

These forays into Alan’s mind break up his two-hander scenes with Sam, while Candace, Sam’s ex Mary (Emily Davis), a few of his co-workers and a couple of his victims also figure in the action. (The series benefits from half-hour instalments that keep the show’s talkiness palatable.)

But it’s Alan who commands our attention and our empathy, and in whose fate we’re most invested.

Short Takes

Franz Linda and Tom Wlaschiha return in Season 3 of “Das Boot.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC Gem

Das Boot (Sept. 1, CBC Gem)

The first two seasons of this World War II drama were stealthy, kind of like the submarine of the title, in the way they hooked you on the tale of individuals on opposite sides of the conflict in Nazi-occupied France. Season 3, set in 1943, relocates the action to Germany and Britain. In the former, a push is on to build and crew new U-boats to destroy Allied supply lines; in Britain, the navy is refitting its own ships in a bid to destroy those U-boats. Our key characters initially are German engineer Robert Ehrenberg (Franz Dinda), who played a seminal role in the turmoil aboard U-boat 612 in Season 2; British commander Jack Swinburne (Ray Stevenson), who is fixated on wiping out as many submarines as possible after his son’s supply convoy is torpedoed by one; and German investigator Hagen Forster (Tom Wlaschiha of “Game of Thrones” and “Stranger Things”), who’s sent to Lisbon to try to discover who killed a Gestapo spy there. Trust me, there will be plenty more plot threads to follow as the season continues, both on land and sea, with U-949 about to go into service with a young, inexperienced commander and criminals among the crew. I would recommend catching up on seasons 1 and 2 on Gem before you dive into this one since that will deepen your appreciation of returning characters like Ehrenberg and Forster.

CBC Gem also has the original YA comedy “Fakes” (Sept. 1) about two best friends in Vancouver (Emilija Baranac and Jennifer Tong) who build one of the largest fake ID operations in North America; and Season 2 of charming YA period drama “Malory Towers” (Sept. 1) about the adventures of the inmates at a British girls’ boarding school after WWII. You can also check out Season 1 of the Canadian YA series “The Next Step” (Sept. 2), which is set at an elite dance school.

McEnroe (Sept. 2, Crave)

For those old enough to remember John McEnroe before he was the narrator of “Never Have I Ever,” this documentary is a nostalgia trip to a time when tennis giants walked the Earth, McEnroe among them. The documentary by Barney Douglas revisits the glory days of the late 1970s and early ’80s when McEnroe was ranked first in the world and played greats like Vitas Gerulaitis, Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors. It also recounts the not so great parts of his life and career, including the on-court tantrums that made McEnroe an enfant terrible, his turbulent marriage to actor Tatum O’Neal amid drug use and infidelity, his failings as a father to the children from his first marriage and his difficult relationship with his own dad. McEnroe gives his own perspective on all of it, while walking the streets of New York City over a single night. Current wife, singer Patty Smyth weighs in as do his kids, and friends and colleagues like Borg, former women’s No. 1 player Billie Jean King and even Rolling Stone Keith Richards.

Crave also has Season 2 of “1 Queen 5 Queers” (Sept. 1), in which drag royalty Brooke Lynn Hytes moderates unfiltered conversations about queer life and culture.

Odds and Ends

Cast members socialize in “Dated & Related.” PHOTO CREDIT: Ana Blumenkron/Netflix

We have another dump of content of dubious quality from Netflix, led by the “reality” series “Dated & Related” (Sept. 2), in which pairs of over-endowed, under-dressed siblings travel to France ostensibly to find love — and cash — while their brothers or sisters look on. Reviews are embargoed, but I doubt I’d have anything to say that would make you want to watch it. Then there’s the movie “Fenced In” (Sept. 1), a comedy about a man who has to endure loud neighbours; the comedy special “Liss Pereira: Adulting” (Sept. 1); the rom-com “Love in the Villa” (Sept. 1), which if nothing else will let you hear Tom Hopper of “Umbrella Academy” use his native British accent; French series “Off the Hook” (Sept. 1), in which roommates decide to abandon their phones and other devices; yet another real estate series, “Buy My House” (Sept. 2), in which Americans try to get real estate investors to purchase their properties; limited series “Devil in Ohio” (Sept. 2),ß about a young girl taken in by a psychiatrist (Emily Deschanel) after she escapes a cult who — surprise! — turns out to be a cuckoo in the nest; Season 2 of “Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives” (Sept. 2); Turkish movie “The Festival of Troubadours” (Sept. 2); witchy Spanish YA series “You’re Nothing Special” (Sept. 2); and the South Korean series “Little Women” (Sept. 3), based on the Louisa May Alcott novel.

I would have screened “The Midwich Cuckoos” (Sept. 1, 9 p.m., Showcase/StackTV), an adaptation of the 1957 sci-fi novel about all the women in a British town mysteriously becoming pregnant, if only because it stars Keeley Hawes of “Spooks,” “Line of Duty,” “Bodyguard” and much more.

AMC+ has animated sci-fi series “Pantheon” (Sept. 1), about a bullied teen who receives messages from the consciousness of her dead father (Daniel Dae Kim).

Finally, if you’re a “Rick and Morty” fan, the much hyped Season 6 of the animated comedy debuts on Adult Swim and StackTV Sept. 4 at 11 p.m.

NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs 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. The Odds and Ends section includes shows that I have not watched.

Watchable on Crave, AMC+ and Netflix Aug. 22 to 28, 2022

August 22, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK 1: House of the Dragon (Now on HBO/Crave with new episodes Sundays at 9 p.m.)

Matt Smith, Emily Carey and Milly Alcock in “House of the Dragon.” PHOTO CREDIT: Ollie Upton/HBO

If you long for a certain brand of backstabbing betrayal and political discord, stomach-churning violence and frank sex, the “Game of Thrones” prequel is here. But it’s not rival families jockeying for power, but members of one family turning on each other in this story about the ancestors of Dragon Queen Daenerys Targaryen.

As “House of the Dragon” begins, things start out well enough for King Viserys I, an amiable but weak-willed monarch played appealingly by Paddy Considine. He was chosen as king over a cousin who had a better claim to the Iron Throne but was discounted because she was a woman, Princess Rhaenys Velaryon (Eve Best).

But there is peace in the kingdom, Viserys has a queen he loves, who he’s certain is about to bear him a son, and a daughter, Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock), who seems content to play second fiddle to an infant. Yet childbirth is the battlefield of women, as mother Aemma (Sian Brooke) reminds Rhaenyra, and a shattering loss leaves Viserys without his longed for heir.

By tradition, Daemon, the violent, impulsive and vain brother of the king (played with sinister panache by Matt Smith), would inherit the throne, but he finally exceeds the forbearance of Viserys when he mockingly toasts the king’s dead son while partying in a brothel, which leads Viserys to name Rhaenyra as heir — despite the prejudices against women on the throne.

If you’ve read up on Targaryen family history or you just have an appreciation for foreshadowing, you’ll know this can’t end well.

The six episodes that were made available for review trace the fallout of that decision.

Also jockeying for position are the hand of the king, Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), and Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint, read my interview with him here), husband of spurned Queen That Never Was Rhaenys. Both men use their daughters to try to solidify their power by offering them as new wives to Viserys, though one is just 12 and the other, Rhaenyra’s best friend Alicent (Emily Carey), is 15. I know that sort of thing was actually done in the times that inspired George R.R. Martin’s novels, but that doesn’t make it any more palatable.

And while we’re on the subject of creepy couplings, incest among the Targaryens is apparently still on the table in “House of the Dragon.” Jon Snow doing it with his Aunt Daenerys was not a highlight of “Game of Thrones” for me, but at least they were consenting adults. Daemon taking his 15-year-old niece to a “pleasure palace” is considerably ickier.

This spinoff appears to be trying to give its female characters more of a voice although women still get the short end of the stick in the Seven Kingdoms. I suppose if Rhaenyra doesn’t end up power-mad, scorching the streets of King’s Landing with her dragon, that will be an improvement.

Speaking of dragons, they are a regular feature here and the CGI is passable, but just as Targaryen rulers can’t depend too much on their dragons, as Viserys warns Rhaenyra, a TV series can’t either.

“House of the Dragon” has a lot going for it. It’s handsomely shot and expertly acted, and great care obviously went into the production.

But a lot has happened in the world since “Thrones” signed off in 2019, so one question becomes whether the brutality inherent in the “Thrones” universe is as palatable now in a war-weary, pandemic-pooped and politically fragile milieu.

Heads, limbs and other body parts are lopped off when Daemon and his City Watch go on a rampage; fights between knights end with skulls getting caved in; and there’s a childbirth scene bloody enough to make women of child-bearing age book tubal ligations.

What’s more glaring are the things that “Thrones” had that “Dragon” does not, chiefly humour and variety. There is no Tyrion Lannister here for comic relief, for instance. And the action is mostly confined to King’s Landing and Dragonstone, with some brief forays to places like Pentos, Harrenhal and the Stepstones, where Daemon and Corlys combine to quash a rebellion of the Free Cities.

It’s not that characters like Rhaenyra and Daemon aren’t of interest, but the glorious — as well as the sometimes maddening — thing about “Game of Thrones” was how widely it ranged within Westeros and beyond, and how many plots and people it presented for our regard.

It remains to be seen whether the travails of one family in a small part of the vast Seven Kingdoms is enough to hold viewers’ attention in an even more competitive TV landscape.

Annie Murphy as Allison and Mary Hollis Inboden as Patty in “Kevin Can F**k Himself.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Robert Clark/Stalwart Productions/AMC

SHOW OF THE WEEK 2: Kevin Can F**k Himself (Aug. 22, 9 p.m., AMC/AMC+)

If you worried where Season 2 of “Kevin Can F**k Himself” would go, with Allison’s (Annie Murphy) plot to kill her husband Kevin (Eric Petersen) foiled and exposed to his best friend Neil (Alex Bonifer), you can exhale.

Season 2 brings a satisfying, if dark, conclusion to this tale of the behind-the-scenes torment of a sitcom wife.

It begins where Season 1 left off, with Neil on the floor of Allison’s kitchen, which is where his sister Patty (Mary Hollis Inboden) put him after he tried to strangle Allison. He’s still threatening to tell about the murder plot, though, which brings another blow to the head and an abduction.

That chain of events causes trauma for all three characters, puts a dent in Allison’s and Patty’s friendship, and sees Neil spending more time in the single-camera dramatic universe of “Kevin Can F**k Himself.” He tries to resume his position as the faithful sidekick in Kevin’s brightly lit, laugh-tracked, multi-cam world, but he has seen behind the curtain of his own and Kevin’s dysfunction, and that knowledge won’t stay buried.

Alison, meanwhile, knows that she can’t murder Kevin, not least because his bid for public office has brought him temporary fame after a ridiculous campaign ad goes viral.

If she can’t kill Kevin, what about herself? She hatches a new scheme to fake her own death, into which she draws to varying degrees Patty, her former lover Sam (Raymond Lee) and her aunt Diane (Jamie Denbo). But, as is usual for Allison, the more she tries to fix things the more they go awry.

What is gratifying is that Allison, like Neil, gains greater self-awareness, a realization that not everything that’s gone wrong in her life is Kevin’s fault and that she can be selfish in her own right, particularly when it comes to Patty.

That’s not to say that Kevin gets any less reprehensible. He continues to sow chaos for everyone in his orbit while pursuing his own gratification. Allison even begins to use Kevin’s talent for getting himself out of jams to her advantage, telling Sam that after 15 years of Kevin taking from her she’s starting to get something back.

But when Patty’s police officer girlfriend Tammy (Candice Coke) begins to unravel Patty’s part in the murder-for-hire scheme, Allison takes drastic action to keep her friend safe.

Along the way, she gains the confidence to do what she should have done from the beginning rather than plotting murder. I won’t tell you how it ends, but Kevin is torn from his sitcom cocoon — finally — by Allison’s honesty. And when the chips fall, Patty is still by Allison’s side.

It turns out “Kevin Can F**k Himself” was a love story all along, just not one that had anything to do with matrimony.

Odds and Ends

Mohammed Amer, right, created and stars in ” Mo.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

Sorry folks, I’m still not up to full screening speed yet, so I don’t have any short takes this week. As usual, Netflix has a plethora of new offerings. The one that seemed of most interest to me was “Mo” (Aug. 24), a semi-autobiographical comedy in which comedian Mohammed Amer stars as a Kuwait-born Palestinian refugee in Houston, hustling to make a living while seeking asylum for himself, his mother and brother. Also on the menu: the prank comedy “Chad & JT Go Deep” (Aug. 23); kids’ show “Lost Ollie” (Aug. 24); luxury real estate reality series “Selling the OC” (Aug. 24); legal drama “Partner Track” (Aug. 26), starring Arden Cho as a young New York City lawyer; gearhead docuseries “Drive Hard: The Maloof Way” (Aug. 26) about the racing, stunt-driving Maloof family; and the film “Me Time” (Aug. 26), a dads on a wild weekend comedy starring Mark Wahlberg and the ubiquitous Kevin Hart.

I had every intention of screening “The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe” (Aug. 23, Britbox), a new true crime drama about a man who faked his own death with the connivance of his wife. It stars the excellent Eddie Marsan (“Ray Donovan”) and Monica Dolan (“Vanity Fair”). And it’s just four episodes, so get binging.

There’s been buzz around the docuseries “Welcome to Wrexham” (Aug. 24, 10 p.m., FX), about actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney buying a football club in the scrappy Welsh town of Wrexham. The “Ted Lasso” comparisons are inevitable, but I have to say it looks pretty darn heartwarming in the trailer. FX also has Season 13 of animated comedy “Archer” (Aug. 24, 10 p.m., FXX) and new animated comedy “Little Demon” (Aug. 25, 10 p.m., FXX), starring Danny DeVito as the voice of Satan and his real-life daughter, Lucy DeVito, as the devil’s offspring.

Mike Tyson has made his feelings clear about the bio-series “Mike” (Aug. 25, Disney+ Star) — hint, he’s not happy — but I guess you can make your own judgment about the miniseries starring Trevante Rhodes as the heavyweight champion.

Apple TV+ has the third and final season of “See” (Aug. 26), starring Jason Momoa as a warrior and father in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has lost the sense of sight.

Finally, if you’re partial to Sylvester Stallone and/or aging superheroes, Prime Video has the film “Samaritan” (Aug. 26), in which Sly stars as a superhero who has to come out of retirement to save the world again. Of course he does.

NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs 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. The Odds and Ends section includes shows that I have not watched.

Edited because, duh, I mixed up Arden Cho’s name with her character name.

Watchable on Crave, Netflix, Apple Aug. 15 to 21, 2022

August 15, 2022 /

Here’s the deal: I didn’t screen anything last week, partly because of the usual embargoes, partly because some screeners weren’t available, partly because — after more than two years of working seven days a week to feed the blog while also fulfilling my duties as a Toronto Star editor and writer — I gave myself permission to take a weekend off. So unfortunately, I haven’t sampled any of the shows I’m presenting below, but these are the things that seem to me to be worth a shot.

Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman in “Better Call Saul” Season 6.
PHOTO CREDIT: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

The sixth and final season of “Better Call Saul” has been like summer: over way too soon. In the series finale (Aug. 15, 9 p.m., AMC), we presumably find out how things end for Gene Takavic, the post-“Breaking Bad” alias of Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman, after Marion (Carol Burnett) dropped a dime on him in the penultimate episode. You better believe if I’d been able to get my hands on a screener I would have watched this one in advance.

Manti Te’o in “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist.” PHOTO CREDIT: Netflix © 2022

Most promising for Netflix this week, in my view, is “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist” (Aug. 16), a docuseries about the catfishing scam that befell Hawaiian college football player Manti Te’o in 2012. The streamer also has the film “Look Both Ways” (Aug. 17), in which a young woman (Lili Reinhart) lives two parallel realities, one in which she becomes a single mother, one in which she pursues a career in L.A. There’s also the Spanish series “The Girl in the Mirror” (Aug. 19), about a teenager with amnesia after a bus crash that kills most of her classmates, and “Echoes” (Aug. 19), an Australian series about twin sisters who trade lives.

Tatiana Maslany in “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Marvel Studios

Superhero shows are usually not my thing, but I want to give “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” (Aug. 18, Disney+) the benefit of the doubt because it stars talented Canadian actor Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black”). Here she plays a lawyer who is also a six-foot-seven hulk. She gets advice from her cousin Smart Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), and Tim Roth (Emil Blonsky) and Benedict Wong (Wong) are among the MCU veterans who are along for the ride.

Anne-Marie Duff, Sharon Horgan, Eva Birthistle, Sarah Greene and Eve Hewson in “Bad Sisters.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Apple TV+

The dark comedy “Bad Sisters” (Aug. 19, Apple TV+) sounds very promising. It was created by Sharon Horgan, known for “Catastrophe,” “Pulling” and “Divorce”; it stars some talented actors besides Horgan, including Anne-Marie Duff (“Shameless”), Eva Birthistle (“Brooklyn”), Sarah Greene (“Dublin Murders,” “Normal People”) and Eve Hewson (“The Knick”); and it’s set in Ireland, which is always a plus for me. Although the official synopsis describes it as being about five sisters bound by the premature death of their parents, from what I’ve read it has more to do with the death of John Paul (Claes Bang), the husband of Grace (Duff) and who killed him.

Four adolescents search for three teenage girls who mysteriously disappeared in “Paraiso.”
PHOTO CREDIT: CBC Gem

“Mi’kma’ki” (Aug. 19, all shows CBC Gem) is a short documentary series about Indigenous people and their connections to their land, culture and community. The first three episodes stream Friday with the fourth to follow at a later date. “Paraiso” (Aug. 19) is a sci-fi series that sounds like a Spanish “Stranger Things.” Three 15-year-old girls disappear from a nightclub in 1992 and four other kids set out to find them, discovering that supernatural beings are involved. Finally, the documentary “The River of My Dreams: A Portrait of Gordon Pinsent,” about the revered Canadian actor, makes its TV debut on Aug. 20.

Eve Best in “House of the Dragon.” PHOTO CREDIT: Ollie Upton/HBO

“House of the Dragon” (Aug. 21, 9 p.m., HBO/Crave) is the big one if you’re a “Game of Thrones” or fantasy TV fan. I will get screeners at some point, since I’m interviewing Steve Toussaint, who plays Lord Corlys Velaryon, on Thursday. I just don’t know when. In the meantime, I can tell you that “Dragon” is a “GoT” prequel set 200 years before the events of that series that focuses on the forebears of Daenerys Targaryen. Crave also has the premiere of “Drag Race Philippines” (Aug. 17) for those of you who can’t get enough “Drag Race” and the streaming debut of the movie “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (Aug. 19), with Jessica Chastain channelling the late Tammy Faye Bakker in an Oscar-winning turn.

“Cinema A to Z” (Aug. 21, 9 p.m., Hollywood Suite) does what its title suggests, explore a film topic from A to Z with interviews and clips. First up is “Books,” already available online and making its broadcast debut on Sunday. Expect insights into everything from Jane Austen adaptations to Stephen King to J.R.R. Tolkien and Stefan Zweig (“The Grand Budapest Hotel,” for one, was inspired by his literature).

NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs 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 on Apple, Crave, Netflix Aug. 8 to 14, 2022

August 8, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Five Days at Memorial (Aug. 12, Apple TV+)

Vera Farmiga as Dr. Anna Pou in “Five Days at Memorial.” PHOTO CREDIT: Apple TV+

It seems to me the best way to take in a catastrophic event is to bring it down to an individual, human scale.

“Five Days at Memorial” tackles the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina by focusing on a particular group of people inside Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans and what they faced when the levees broke, and a place of refuge became a place of horror and hopelessness.

Vera Farmiga leads a strong cast as surgeon Anna Pou alongside Cherry Jones as nursing director Susan Mulderick and Julie Ann Emery as Diane Robichaux, an administrator at the private LifeCare unit on Memorial’s seventh floor.

(Full disclosure, a relative of mine by marriage, Katie Boland, plays a nurse at LifeCare.)

When the show begins, the hospital staff are battening down for Hurricane Katrina, expecting the building will weather the storm just as it has others for 80 years.

There are frightening moments in the first episode as the winds hurl debris through windows and nearly collapse a walkway between wings. Then the power goes out and water leaks into the basement where food and water are stored.

But by morning, the sun is shining and the hospital’s generators have kicked in. Anna, Susan and their colleagues believe the worst is behind them.

Viewers know differently since the series opens with the discovery of 45 bodies in the hospital chapel, the empty hallways strewn with debris and ominously empty wheelchairs.

But life at the hospital continues to hum along on Day 2 until the water rushing through the city from the broken levees starts to advance on the building.

It becomes clear the basement will be flooded, knocking out the generators and cutting off access to what’s left of the water and food. And thus begins the arduous effort to evacuate the hospital, including more than 200 patients, some of whom have to be carried on stretchers and in wheelchairs on a 40-minute journey to the helicopter pad on the roof.

The hospital becomes a microcosm of the chaos in the city at large, of poor planning, unreliable information and an abdication of responsibility by all levels of government. And while the main characters inside the hospital are white — aside from Cornelius Smith Jr. as Dr. Bryant King and Adepero Oduye as nurse Karen Wynn — it’s clear from the news footage interspersed throughout the series that the city’s poor, Black residents are the worst off.

“This is something that happens in a third world country, not here,” Anna says on Day 4, when the generators have failed, the medicine has run out, the water is nearly gone, the building is like a furnace and patients are dying.

By Day 5, when the New Orleans police finally show up and give the staff just five hours to evacuate the rest of the building, it’s clear some patients will be impossible to move.

At issue is whether some of those patients were then euthanized, with suspicion in the subsequent investigation settling on Anna and two nurses.

If you’re familiar with news reports about the real-life events that “Five Days at Memorial” is based on (along with the book by Sheri Fink), you’ll already know how it turns out. And if you’re not, I won’t spoil it for you.

But the series makes clear just how harrowing those five days were, and the life-and-death decisions they engendered.

Short Takes

Instant Dream Home (Aug. 10, Netflix)

With the plethora of home renovation shows out there, it’s getting harder to up the ante. This new series’ conceit is that abodes are renovated in just 12 hours — or less. In the first episode, for instance, a cramped two-bedroom bungalow is remade with new paint, new storage space, new furniture, a newly landscaped front and backyard, a new room for the coming baby carved out of the entryway, even a new prefab kitchen that has to be forklifted in, in two giant pieces. The recipients are the original homeowner of more than 40 years, who has gone blind due to treatment for a brain tumour, her expectant daughter and son-in-law, who all share the small home. So there’s definitely a feel-good element to go along with the design porn. Danielle Brooks, who you’ll remember as Taystee if you watched “Orange Is the New Black,” is the energetic host.

Netflix also has the docuseries “I Just Killed My Dad” (Aug. 9), about the Anthony Templet murder case; Season 3 of “Locke & Key” (Aug. 10); Season 2 of “Indian Matchmaking” (Aug. 10); Season 3 of “Never Have I Ever” (Aug. 12); and the films “Day Shift” (Aug. 12), starring Jamie Foxx as a vampire hunter, and the family coming-of-age comedy “13: The Musical” (Aug. 12).

Children of the Underground (Aug. 12, 8 p.m., FX)

This is one of those docuseries where what you think you’re getting at first isn’t what you end up with. It starts off as a straightforward story about an American organization called Children of the Underground, led by a woman named Faye Yager to protect kids from sexual abuse, then detours into the satanic panic of the 1980s and the men’s rights movement. It’s a multi-layered story with huge swaths of grey. Yager’s campaign to rescue women and children began after the courts gave custody of her own daughter to the father who was molesting her, despite physical evidence she was being sexually abused. Yager started to help other women in similar circumstances go on the run and you can’t listen to a story like April Meyers’ — whose own very young daughter, like Faye’s, was found to have a sexually transmitted disease — and not comprehend why these women lost complete faith in the family court system. But Faye starts to seem more zealot than saviour as the series goes on, not least because she perpetuated the now discredited myth that there were satanic cults all over America whose rituals included child sexual abuse, and used faulty interview techniques to elicit tales of those rituals from children. Despite that, Yager seemed nearly invincible until she helped disappear a woman and children who hadn’t been molested because the wife alleged physical abuse by her husband. That rich husband launched a punitive lawsuit against Yager that, combined with others, hounded her out of the underground. The series, directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, known for the killer whale doc “Blackfish,” includes many voices, including allies and enemies of Yager’s, and now grown children who were both helped and harmed by their time on the run. But it will leave you with no doubt there are still desperate women and children out there being endangered by a system that continues to give the benefit of the doubt to men.

Diana, Princess of Wales, in a scene from “The Princess.” PHOTO CREDIT: HBO

The Princess (Aug. 13, 8 p.m., HBO/Crave)

This documentary, directed by Oscar nominee Ed Perkins (“Black Sheep”), purports to be about the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, but it’s only about the part of her life that intersected with the Royal Family, up until her death in Paris and the worldwide mourning that followed. It’s the 25th anniversary of that sad event on Aug. 31 — one of those “where were you when you heard the news?” happenings for those of us old enough to remember it — which explains why we’re seeing this doc now. There are no talking heads; the film is entirely composed of archival footage and commentary, but it’s a potent reminder of the outsized popularity of the princess, plucked from relative obscurity at the age of 19 in 1981 to become the wife of Prince Charles. If you were a consumer of media during those years, or even if you watched the most recent season of “The Crown,” you won’t learn anything new here about the disastrous turn the marriage took. Nor does it shed any new light on her death at the age of 36 in a car crash in a Paris tunnel. But I defy anyone to not feel moved watching that old footage of her sons William and Harry walking behind her coffin, nor to feel regret for what might have been had Diana lived.

Crave also has Season 2 of “RuPaul’s Secret Celebrity Drag Race” (Aug. 12, 8 p.m.); Oscar and TIFF People’s Choice Award-winning film “Belfast” (Aug. 12); and Season 2 of “Power Book III: Raising Kanan” (Aug. 14, Starz).

Odds and Ends

Series co-creator Abbi Jacobson as Carson Shaw in “A League of Their Own.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Nicola Goode/Amazon Studios

Reviews were embargoed for “A League of Their Own” (Aug. 12, Prime Video), which reimagines the 1992 movie about a team in the wartime All-American Girls Professional Baseball League by fleshing out the ball players, including one portrayed by series co-creator Abbi Jacobson, and not just those in the AGPBL. Chante Adams plays a Black woman who finds an alternate path to baseball after racism keeps her out of the league. And look for Canada’s own Kelly McCormack (“Killjoys,” Letterkenny”) — whom I’m interviewing later this week — as one of the Rockford Peaches.

“Rutherford Falls” is back for a second season on Showcase and StackTV (Aug. 9, 9:30 p.m.) with even more Canadian content. Besides scene-stealing Cree actor Michael Greyeyes and Dustin Milligan of “Schitt’s Creek,” Mohawk actor Kaniehtiio Horn (“Letterkenny”) joins the cast as villainous gym owner Feather Day.

Disney+ has the animated shorts series “I Am Groot” (Aug. 10), featuring Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) from the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films.

Finally, Prince Charles might not be your favourite royal, especially if you watch “The Princess,” above, but he judges the new reality series “The Prince’s Master Crafters: The Next Generation” (Aug. 10, 10 p.m., Makeful), in which six British folks learn heritage crafts like basket-weaving, blacksmithing and kilt-making.

NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs 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. The Odds and Ends section includes shows that I have not watched.

Watchable on Disney, Prime Video, Netflix Aug. 1 to 7, 2022

August 1, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Bear (Aug. 3, Disney+)

From left, Jeremy Allen White, Lionel Boyce and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in “The Bear.”
PHOTO CREDIT: FX

First things first, if the behind-the-scenes operation of a restaurant is as chaotic as in the fictional Original Beef of Chicagoland in “The Bear,” it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to open one.

But it’s to viewers’ advantage that sandwich shop Original Beef is up and running. If you’ll forgive the bad food pun, there’s a lot to chew in this story about a hot shot young chef (Jeremy Allen White, “Shameless”) who returns to Chicago to take over the restaurant he was willed by his dead brother.

When Carmy Berzatto takes on Beef, it has a tired menu, an inefficient kitchen and recalcitrant staff who resist the changes he wants to make, especially his so-called “cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “Girls”), an aggressive loudmouth who was the best friend of Carmy’s brother, Michael (Jon Bernthal).

Michael was a drug addict who committed suicide and has left a pile of debt behind, including hundreds of thousands owed to his Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt). Carmy could wipe out the debt by selling to Jimmy, but against all odds he wants to keep the place and fix it up.

New employee Sydney (Ayo Edebiri, “Big Mouth”), an ambitious young woman who has her own ideas about how to run things, tries to help Carmy whip the kitchen into shape, which adds to the tensions among the staff, particularly with long-time employee Tina (Liza Colon-Sayas) and with Richie.

And Carmy, on top of everything else, is still processing his grief about Michael’s death, particularly since they were estranged for a couple of years before the suicide. He also has a tenuous relationship with his sister Natalie (Abby Elliott), who’s partly on the hook for the restaurant’s unpaid back taxes.

Add in mundane screw-ups like incorrect orders from suppliers, kitchen accidents, a bad rating from the board of health, an exploding toilet and a power failure, and it’s a wonder anyone’s getting fed.

Series creator Christopher Storer told Esquire he saw the chaos of a restaurant kitchen firsthand when he spent a couple of days as a line cook, but there was also a lot of research done and the show has a secret weapon in Canadian chef Matty Matheson, a co-producer who also plays the Beef’s resident handyman, Neil Fak.

If it seems like a restaurant kitchen is an unlikely setting for drama, I can tell you the show is fast, intense and never boring, and some of its most dramatic scenes take place in that cramped space .

In particular, in Episode 7, part of which was filmed in one continuous shot, something as ordinary as a restaurant review kicks off a nightmare of a shift in which many harsh words are exchanged, two people quit and another is accidentally stabbed.

But there is a resolution — a little too neat of one, but one that points the way to the already greenlit Season 2 — and the team pulls together.

Cooking is life for people like Carmy, Sydney and aspiring pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce).

For those of us who would rather just enjoy the end result, a show like “The Bear” makes it entertaining to see how the sausage is made.

Paper Girls (Prime Video)

From left, Fina Strazza, Sofia Rosinsky, Riley Lai Nelet and Camryn Jones in “Paper Girls.” PHOTO CREDIT: Amazon Studios

(Note: I don’t normally include shows that have already debuted on the Watchable list, but I missed out on reviewing “Paper Girls” last week because of an embargo.)

There’s been an inevitable linking of “Paper Girls” with Netflix juggernaut “Stranger Things,” but aside from the fact both start in the 1980s with bike-riding preteen protagonists confronted by supernatural forces, they’re not anything alike.

The girls of the title — 12-year-olds Erin (Riley Lai Nelet), Tiffany (Camryn Jones), KJ (Fina Strazza) and Mac (Sofia Rosinsky) — are battling humans, not monsters, albeit ones that possess advanced technology and can jump through time. And our heroines, despite their youth, shed their innocence more quickly than the Hawkins gang of “Stranger Things” and in ways that feel truer to real life.

In the early hours of Nov. 1, 1988, the girls are on their paper routes when they band together to avoid Hell Day hooligans and finish their deliveries. But it looks like nobody in this part of Stony Stream, Ohio, is getting their paper on time, because Erin is jumped by a couple of men in black who steal the walkie talkie that Tiffany lent her and the quartet gives chase.

That pursuit kicks off a series of events that puts them smack in the middle of a fire fight between two groups of time travellers known as the Old Watch and the Standard Time Fighters, or STF.

The walkie thieves save the girls’ lives but at the cost of them travelling 31 years into the future. They spend the rest of the eight episodes trying to get back to 1988, while avoiding an Old Watch assassin (Adina Porter) who is hunting them, with the help of an STF member named Larry (Nate Corddry) and older versions of Erin (Ali Wong) and Tiffany (Sekai Abeni).

That last wrinkle adds depth to “Paper Girls.” Each of them learns disappointing or confusing things about their futures and the people they become. Youthful optimism runs smack into the compromises that adult life demands and the girls don’t take it gracefully.

But they’re 12, so why would we expect them to?

The time-travel plot line is fine if not always well explained. It’s the performances of the show’s young and relatively unknown stars that elevate the material.

These girls have layers that are sympathetically and thoughtfully excavated, whether it’s KJ, who’s from a wealthy Jewish family, glimpsing a sexuality she doesn’t even know how to name; Tiffany, who is African-American, fighting to preserve her vision of what success means; Chinese-American Erin coming to terms with fractures in a once close family; or Mac, who lives in the rough part of town, realizing she might never escape the violent blight of her upbringing.

The girls straddle the line between childhood and young adulthood. One moment they’re eluding Old Watch travellers after seeing people they know die; the next they’re trying to figure out how a tampon works after Erin gets her period.

They start out as near strangers and end up friends, and it feels both earned and rewarding.

There is one other way that “Paper Girls” is like “Stranger Things”: it’s at its best when its young characters come together to grapple with whatever is plaguing them, whether it’s warring time travellers or the pain of growing up too fast.

Short Takes

Concert-goers dance as what’s left of Woodstock ’99 burns in “Trainwreck.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 (Aug. 3, Netflix)

The title of this three-part docuseries is appropriate because, as with the proverbial train wreck, it’s hard to look away as it documents this disaster of a music festival day by day and hour by hour. If it all seems familiar, it might be because HBO’s “Music Box” series also covered the chaos in the doc “Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage” last summer. The Reader’s Digest version is this: what was supposed to be a three-day sequel to the blissed out hippie vibe of the 1969 Woodstock festival turned into a sort of “Lord of the Flies” nightmare of anger and violence that culminated in a riot on the final night. “Trainwreck” (whose original title was “Clusterf**k,” also very appropriate) is long on details of the mayhem but short on explanations. Promoters Michael Lang and John Scher; musician Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit; untrained security guards; aggressive, young men in the crowd: all get fingered for some part of the blame. Scher, in particular, still seems determined to deflect any responsibility for what happened and still seems to blame the women who got raped at the festival for their own misfortune. As far as I can tell, the die for the catastrophe was cast the minute it was decided the festival would be more about squeezing participants for every possible dollar than keeping them comfortable and safe. And as I said in my review of “Peace, Love, and Rage,” “One does wonder what geniuses thought packing 220,000 or so people onto a largely asphalt surface in searing July heat was a good idea.” This series makes no mention of the one (and only one, surprisingly) death from the festival: that of David DeRosia due to hyperthermia from overheating. But it does provide a cross-section of voices, including Lang (who died three months after he was interviewed), Scher, event staff, musicians, reporters, MTV personalities who covered it live and concert-goers, a couple of whom say they’d do it all over again despite the fear they felt that weekend. Lucky for them and for us, there will never be another Woodstock.

Netflix also has the rom-com “Wedding Season” (Aug. 4) and, of far more interest, “The Sandman” (Aug. 5), based on the comic book series by Neil Gaiman about what happens to the Master of Dreams (Tom Sturridge) and the world after he is imprisoned for a century. Reviews for this one are embargoed until release.

Odds and Ends

CBC and CBC Gem have “FreeUp! Emancipation Day” (Aug. 1, 8 p.m.), celebrating the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire, including Canada, on Aug. 1, 1834. The two-hour show includes a special about Emancipation Day celebrations across Canada, talks about what emancipation means, and performances by Jully Black, TiKA and Measha Brueggergosman. CBC Gem also has Season 2 of the Quebec series “C’est comme ca que je t’aime” (Aug. 1) and reality sitcom “Bobby & Harriet Get Married” (Aug. 5) in which a real-life couple, Brit Harriet Kemsley and Canadian Bobby Mair, play heightened versions of themselves.

Crave has the second season of workplace drama “Industry” (Aug. 1) about young traders in London, England. And if you missed Guillermo del Toro’s latest Toronto-shot, Oscar-nominated movie, “Nightmare Alley” comes to Crave Aug. 5.

Speaking of movies, “Toy Story” spinoff “Lightyear” is on Disney+ Aug. 3.

Apple TV+ has the animated film “Luck” (Aug. 5) and Season 2 of “The Snoopy Show.”

Finally, Prime Video has another film, “Thirteen Lives” (Aug. 5), a fictionalized account directed by Ron Howard of the rescue of young members of a soccer team from a flooded cave in Thailand. I’m sorry I missed the chance to screen this one because the Disney+ doc about the event (“The Rescue”) was fascinating. Also new to Prime Video is Season 2 of “The Outlaws” (Aug. 5), about ne-er-do-wells banding together while doing community service in London.

Watchable on Crave, Netflix, Prime Video July 25 to 31, 2022

July 25, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: City on a Hill (July 29, Crave)

Kevin Bacon as Jackie Rohr and Aldis Hodge as DeCourcy Ward in “City on a Hill.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Francisco Roman/SHOWTIME

Jackie Rohr is a bastard: a corrupt ex-FBI agent, a murderer, a booze- and drug-abusing philanderer, someone who’ll throw just about anyone under the bus to save his own skin. There’s no good reason to root for him and yet the character, as played by Kevin Bacon, compels you to watch him.

As Season 3 of this Boston-set crime drama opens, Jackie — having quit the FBI last season rather than be fired — is tending bar and burning through his emergency funds when his old FBI mentor offers him a private security job at $2,000 a week, which would be a real windfall in 1993.

But it soon becomes clear that his rich boss, Sinclair Dryden (Corbin Bernsen), is doing reprehensible things, which means Jackie has to decide whether to take the high road or keep his mouth shut for the money.

The other star of the series, Jackie’s sometime nemesis, sometime collaborator DeCourcy Ward (Aldis Hodge), who is as moral as Jackie is bent, has a shot at becoming Suffolk County district attorney if he gets his boss some high profile wins. But he resists quickly prosecuting the case of an alleged police killer when it becomes clear the young Black man was likely set up.

Both Jackie’s and DeCourcy’s wives are dealing with their own trauma: Jenny Rohr (Jill Hennessy) from sexual abuse at the hands of her estranged father and Siobhan Quays (Lauren E. Banks) from being shot last season and having a miscarriage.

Jenny finds new purpose volunteering at a community centre, where she re-establishes contact with Irish priest Diarmuid Doyle (Mark Ryder), which angers Jackie. And Siobhan, who has quit her law firm to work with the American Civil Liberties Union, goes up against the powerful forces behind the Big Dig megaproject when a worker is injured on the job.

This season also gives Boston police officer Chris Caysen (Matthew Del Negro) way more to do, helping root out corruption within the force.

The series is reminiscent of “The Wire” in its focus on the rot within the political and justice systems, although it doesn’t have that series’ finesse. There’s also a little “Homicide: Life on the Street” DNA, with Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson executive-producing both shows. (Boston boosters Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are also EPs on “Hill.”)

“City on a Hill” doesn’t tread new ground in the genre, but if you’ve already seen seasons 1 and 2 — and I’d recommend doing so before digging into Season 3 — you’ll want to keep following its characters, particularly the reprehensible but irresistible Jackie.

As Siobhan’s therapist says, “Most of life falls into grey areas,” which is certainly the case in “City on a Hill.”

Crave also has the spinoff “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” (July 28), in which a new set of teenagers is tormented by someone who goes by the initial “A”; and the comedy special “Dave Merheje: I Love You Habibi” (July 29).

Short Takes

Charlotte Law, a mother who fought to take down the Is Anyone Up? porn site after her daughter
was victimized, in “The Most Hated Man on the Internet.” PHOTO CREDIT: Netflix © 2022

The Most Hated Man on the Internet (July 27, Netflix)

I’ll be honest, I watched this docuseries because the Netflix releases that I most wanted to review were embargoed, but I only got through two of the three episodes. I was so thoroughly disgusted by Hunter Moore, the “man” of the title, who started a repository of internet evil in 2010 known as IsAnyoneUp.com, that’s all I could stomach. Sure, the series is meant to be about the victims and the people who brought Moore down, chiefly Charlotte Law — a mother whose daughter’s topless photos were hacked and displayed on the “revenge porn” site — but it also devotes time to the nastiness spewed by Moore and his degenerate cult of followers. Do we need this show to remind us that crap posted on the internet can ruin people’s lives to the point of making them want to kill themselves? I’m not sure we do but, if you disagree, “The Most Hated Man on the Internet” is there for the watching.

Netflix also has “Keep Breathing” (July 28), the British Columbia-filmed drama about a lawyer (Melissa Barrera) who has to fend for herself when a small plane crashes in the wilderness; “Uncoupled” (July 29), the Neil Patrick Harris comedy about a gay real estate agent whose life is upended when his partner leaves him; the docuseries “Street Food: USA” (July 26); the third season of “Dream Home Makeover” (July 27); Season 4 of car-flipping show “Car Masters: Rust to Riches” (July 27) and rom-com “Purple Hearts” (July 29).

Odds and Ends

Fina Strazza, Sofia Rosinsky, Riley Lai Nelet and Camryn Jones in ” Paper Girls.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Anjali Pinto/Amazon Studios

“Paper Girls,” the sci-fi drama about four 12-year-olds who get caught in a war between time travellers while out delivering papers in 1988, would have likely been my show of the week had reviews not been embargoed until July 29, the day it debuts on Prime Video.

Apple TV+ has “Surface” (July 29), which stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a woman trying to rebuild her life after a suicide attempt, and “Amber Brown” (July 29), based on the Paula Danziger books, about a young girl using art and music to cope with her parents’ divorce.

Disney+ has Season 3 of “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” (July 27); and “Light & Magic” (July 27), a behind-the-scenes look at  Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects arm of “Star Wars” creator George Lucas’s Lucasfilm,

Before he was Jean-Luc Picard on “Star Trek,” Patrick Stewart was a science professor who helped the British government solve dangerous cases in “Eleventh Hour,” which comes to BritBox on July 26.

Finally, if you’re a fan of Gordie Lucius’s daffy science show “Frick, I Love Nature,” CBC Gem has a bonus episode on July 27 about animals that live in the Arctic.

NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs 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. The Odds and Ends section includes shows that I have not watched.

Watchable on Netflix, Crave, Prime Video July 18-24, 2022

July 18, 2022 /

There is no show of the week this week, partly because I didn’t have that much to screen and partly because I didn’t have much time to screen what I did have.

Short Takes

From left, Trenton Quiocho, Rob Stern, evaluator Katherine Gray, John Moran, Claire Kelly, Maddy Hughes, Dan Friday, host Nick Uhas, Brenna Baker, Minhi England, John Sharvin and Grace Whiteside
in Season 3 of “Blown Away.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

Blown Away (July 22, Netflix)

Reality competition series are a dime a dozen these days, but this Canadian-made entry has managed to stand out and accumulate a loyal following. Fans are in for more of what they love in the third season as a new group of 10 contestants competes in the Hamilton hot shop for a chance at $60,000 in prizes. They’re a delightfully diverse group, each with their own unique reasons for their devotion to the art of blowing glass. There’s something almost hypnotic about watching the pieces take shape although, at the same time, it looks frenetic, sweaty and extremely difficult, especially given the time constraints for each challenge. And part of the fun is not knowing who’ll come out on top week to week since victory does not alway go to the most experienced glass blowers or those with the most high profile reputations. Former “Big Brother” contestant Nick Uhas returns as genial host and Canadian glass artist Katherine Gray as resident evaluator with a rotating cast of guest judges.

Netflix also has Season 4 of “Virgin River” on July 20, a bandwagon I confess I have yet to jump on; and action movie “The Gray Man” (July 22), which was unavailable to screen. Blow-em-up and shoot-em-up films are not generally to my taste, although I might have watched this one just to see what else “Duke of Hastings” Rege-Jean Page can do.

Dougray Scott as detective Ray Lennox in “Crime.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC Gem

Crime (July 22, CBC Gem)

This is a fairly standard crime drama, complete with young adolescent girl kidnapped and murdered, but with the added distinction of being set in one of my favourite cities, Edinburgh, and being the maiden TV effort of Irvine Welsh, the author whose “Trainspotting” novel was turned into a seminal film by Danny Boyle. Several well-worn tropes are found here: the tortured lead detective (although Ray Lennox, played by Dougray Scott, is more tortured than most); the clever serial killer who’s eluded the police for years; the bureaucratic boss (Ken Stott) who wants the case tied up fast, to hell with the evidence. That being said, Scott does some decent work as Lennox, who’s battling not only an alcohol addiction but trauma from his own past that’s stirred up by the case. Joanna Vanderham (“The Paradise,” “Warrior”) holds her own as a young detective partnered with Ray and Jamie Sives (“Frontier,” “Guilt”) stands out as an uncouth, bigoted, sexist cop investigating a murder of his own. If this seems familiar, it’s because the BritBox original first debuted on that streamer in December.

CBC Gem also has the British real estate reality series “Extraordinary Extensions” (July 18) and the Canadian broadcast premiere of the Charles Officer film “Akilla’s Escape” on July 23 at 9 p.m., also on CBC TV.

Odds and Ends

KaMillion and Aida Osman in “Rap Sh!t.” PHOTO CREDIT: Alicia Vera/HBO Max

Sisters are trying to do it for themselves in “Rap Sh!t” (July 21, 10 p.m., Crave). The comedy from Issa Rae (“Insecure”) follows two high school friends who decide to form a rap duo, and try to rise above the sexism and misogyny of the rap music industry. I only watched one episode, not enough to give it a fair review. Crave and CTV also have Season 4 of “Love Island USA” (July 19, 9 p.m.), with episodes every Tuesday to Friday and Sunday, and who the hell has that kind of time?

Prime Video’s premiere of the week is “Anything’s Possible” (July 22), the feature film directing debut of Billy Porter of “Pose.” It’s a high school romance in which one half of the couple is a transgender girl, played by trans actor Eva Reign.

Apple TV Plus offerings include Season 3 of parenting comedy “Trying” (July 22) and “Best Foot Forward” (July22), which follows Josh (Logan Marmino), an engaging youngster with a prosthetic leg, as he switches from home-schooling to public school in Grade 7. It’s based on the true story of paralympic athlete Josh Sundquist.

NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs 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. The Odds and Ends section includes shows that I have not watched.

Watchable on Crave, FX, StackTV, Netflix July 11-17, 2022

July 11, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Rehearsal (July 15, 11 p.m., HBO/Crave)

Nathan Fielder in the New York bar meticulously recreated on set for a scenario in “The Rehearsal.”
PHOTO CREDIT: HBO

It struck me after watching all six episodes of “The Rehearsal” that an alternative title might be “A Fool’s Errand,” since the idea that variables in a life event can be controlled by repeated rehearsal of the event is inherently preposterous, which is clearly the point here.

But I suppose it also works if you think of Canadian comedian Nathan Fielder as a fool in the sense of a person employed by royalty or other aristocratic households to entertain.

In this case, HBO is the one paying the bills and I’m thinking they must have been enormous.

In the first episode, for instance, Fielder has an entire Brooklyn bar recreated in a studio in meticulous detail, right down to the balloon stuck in a corner of the ceiling. All this so that a man who’s been lying to his trivia teammates for years about the master’s degree he doesn’t have can rehearse coming clean to the teammate he thinks most likely to react badly to the lie.

Fielder also rehearses his own interactions with the subject, using a look-alike actor and a replica of the man’s apartment — secretly digitally mapped during a fake visit by the gas company.

It’s a staggering amount of preparation for something so relatively mundane, and the awkwardness between Nathan and his subject shows that the rehearsal hasn’t really done the trick.

Likewise, the real-life meeting between the man and his teammate doesn’t go as it did in the 13 rehearsals; I won’t spoil things by telling you how it turns out.

Nevertheless, Fielder persists and his next rehearsal is a doozy: a 44-year-old woman named Angela is considering whether she wants to have a baby. So Fielder moves her into a house in rural Oregon where she parents a fake child named Adam, who’s meant to grow from infant to 18 years over two months.

Adam, of course, is really a series of child actors. It’s a trip watching crew members quietly sneak a replacement baby through a window into a crib to conform to Oregon’s child labour laws while simultaneously maintaining the seamlessness of the illusion.

Touches like that emphasize the falsity of the whole endeavour. Crew members “plant” store-bought vegetables in the garden — Angela’s idea of playing house includes living off the land — and she maintains a fake business selling fake skin-care products that a fake mail carrier picks up to fake ship.

Fielder, meanwhile, manipulates his subjects every step of the way, not just the ordinary people he aims to help with these rehearsals, but the actors he’s hired to stage the scenarios.

The trivia player compares Fielder to Willy Wonka, an analogy that seems to disturb Fielder — or does it? It’s difficult to distinguish Nathan the person from Nathan the character, which I’m sure is by design.

Mind you, after he gets more deeply involved in the fake parenting rehearsal — the network has asked media not to reveal how — things seem to get very real.

There appears to be genuine conflict between Angela, who is aggressively Christian, and Nathan, who is Jewish, on the subject of religion. Nathan’s attempts to rehearse his way into a detente with Angela, with an actor playing her, get uncomfortably nasty.

And there are heartbreaking side effects on one of the youngsters playing Adam at age 6. Fielder seems genuinely stricken by the development. Are those real tears in his eyes when he visits the child and his mother? Or is it just another part of the spoof?

With Fielder, it’s hard to say. As he himself says, “How do you ever know you truly understand someone?” The short answer is that you don’t.

“The Rehearsal” is billed as a comedy but, like Fielder himself, the show’s true nature is hard to pin down. Poking through the absurdity is a sense of melancholy, that no matter what bridges we strive to build in life there will always be some detail we get wrong and real connection will elude us.

Short Takes

Kayvan Novak as Nandor and Harvey Guillén as Guillermo in “What We Do in the Shadows.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Russ Martin/FX

What We Do in the Shadows (July 12, 10 p.m., FX)

The TV world’s most entertainingly dysfunctional vampire household is back, but it’s not quite business as usual in Season 4 of the comedy. For one thing, their Staten Island house is falling apart given that Laszlo (Matt Berry) couldn’t be bothered to maintain it while Nadja (Natasia Demetriou) and Nandor (Kayvan Novak) were off on a year of adventures. (Look for cameos amid the decrepitude by one of Toronto’s better known creatures, the raccoon.) Laszlo was too busy raising the thing that crawled out of dead Colin Robinson’s chest at the end of last season — and props to the special effects crew for doing such a great job of putting Mark Proksch’s head on various child bodies. Guillermo (Harvey Guillen) is back as well, having survived two trans-Atlantic sea voyages in a crate with nothing but Oreos and Pedialyte for sustenance. But his plan to finally stop catering to the vampires is derailed when Nandor announces he’s getting married — to a yet unknown bride — and asks Guillermo to be his best man. And Nadja is determined to open a vampire nightclub in the vampiric council headquarters to the alarm of the Guide (Kristen Schaal). If you already love this incorrigible group of undead narcissists and their human caretaker, you’re in for more of what you love. And if you don’t, the seasons and episodes are short, so go ahead and catch up.

Felix Scholkmann takes part in a Swiss LSD study in “How to Change Your Mind.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix

How to Change Your Mind (July 12, Netflix)

If I can shamelessly paraphrase American LSD proponent Timothy Leary, why not turn on, tune in and drop your preconceptions with this docuseries about psychedelic drugs? Based on the book by Michael Pollan, who also narrates the series, it considers the potential benefits of demonized substances like, yes, LSD, psilocybin (magic mushrooms), MDMA (ecstasy) and mescaline. In the 1950s, for instance, Pollan tells us there was much promising research into LSD and other psychedelics that got buried when the United States under Richard Nixon began its war on drugs, a destructive and counterproductive campaign that continues to this day. It was the Swiss who jumped back into LSD research more than three decades later and now the drug is being studied as a possible antidote to depression, anxiety and pain, while people in the U.S. are doing their own experimentation with microdosing. Pollan proposes that psychedelics offer a way to penetrate the mystery of consciousness itself. No one’s telling you to go out and drop acid — the show includes a disclaimer that it’s meant as entertainment not medical advice — but it offers at the very least a drug-free opportunity for some mind expansion.

Netflix also has the comedy special “Bill Burr: Live at Red Rocks” (July 12), the horror series “Resident Evil” (July 14) and the animated series “Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight” (July 14). And while I hear the Jane Austen purists are up in arms over the new movie version of “Persuasion” (July 15), starring Dakota Johnson, this Austen devotee will reserve judgment until she’s seen it for herself.

Theo (Mark Rendall) and Kendra (Archie Panjabi) on the scene of a train crash in “Departure.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Stranks/Shaftesbury/Deadpan Pictures

Departure (July 13, 9 p.m., Global TV/StackTV)

Buckle up for another season of this fast-paced series in which a crew of intrepid investigators solve transportation accidents with all the intensity of a true crime drama. Last season it was a plane crash over the Atlantic; this season an automated high-speed train has derailed between Toronto and Chicago. Kendra Malley (Archie Panjabi, “The Good Wife”) once again leads the probe. Some of the plot devices are well worn, such as the suspicious FBI agent (Karen LeBlanc) who won’t share information, but you tend to get swept along with the speed of the show. Panjabi is still magnetic as Kendra, ably backed by senior investigators Dom (Kris Holden-Ried) and Theo (Mark Rendall). And ex-boss Howard (the magnificent Christopher Plummer) is still helping from the sidelines, although he’s only ever seen on phone calls, with Plummer shooting all his scenes at his home in Connecticut, completing them before his death in February 2021. Welcome newcomers to the cast include Kelly McCormack as a new investigator, Donal Logue as a helpful local sheriff and Irish actor Jason O’Mara as an FBI prisoner who escapes the crash.

Odds and Ends

Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler and Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill in “Better Call Saul.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

I would have loved to get an advance look at the final episodes of “Better Call Saul,” but the fact I didn’t hasn’t diminished my enthusiasm for this masterful “Breaking Bad” spinoff, which concludes its sixth and final season beginning July 11 at 9 p.m. on AMC.

We “Bachelor” franchise fans are suckers for punishment, so of course we’ll watch “The Bachelorette” when Season 19 debuts July 11 at 8 p.m. on Citytv. One of the few good things to come out of the shit show that was Clayton Echard’s “Bachelor” season was the friendship between Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia, who are sharing the season as dual Bachelorettes. With 32 suitors to start out with, it’s going to be a lot.

Fans of Canadian fabulousness will want to check out the Season 3 premiere of “Canada’s Drag Race” (July 14, 9 p.m., Crave). There are 12 new artists competing to be Canada’s Drag Superstar; Brooke Lynn Hytes, Traci Melchor and Brad Goreski are back as judges; and the guest judges include legends like Carole Pope, JIMBO and Vanessa Vanjie Mateo. Crave also has the documentary “Julia” (July 11, 9 p.m.) for those who want to check out the real Julia Child.

Finally, you can catch “Forever Summer: Hamptons” (July 15, Prime Video) if you want to watch rich kids and townies mixing it up on the beach in the exclusive Long Island vacation destination.

NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs 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. The Odds and Ends section includes shows that I have not watched.

Watchable on Apple, AMC+, CBC, Netflix July 4 to 10, 2022

July 4, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Black Bird (July 8, Apple TV+)

Paul Walter Hauser and Taron Egerton in “Black Bird.” PHOTO CREDIT: Apple TV+

It’s not the crime scenes that are the most chilling in the miniseries “Black Bird”; it’s the moments when murderer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser) is describing to fellow prisoner Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton) what he’s done.

There’s one scene in particular in the fifth episode that is harrowing.

Jimmy, a charismatic cocaine dealer who’s cut a deal with the FBI to reduce his sentence in exchange for getting information from Larry about his victims, has finally got the cagey, paranoid killer to open up. As they sit across a table from each other in the prison woodworking shop, the camera jumps back and forth between their faces: Larry’s as he matter-of-factly recounts raping, beating and strangling a teenage girl; Jimmy’s as he listens and struggles to disguise his growing horror.

Later, when they return to their separate cells, Jimmy sobs quietly into his hands.

The stellar work of Hauser (“Cobra Kai,” “Richard Jewell”) and Egerton (“Kingsman,” “Rocketman”) is more than enough to recommend “Black Bird,” but it’s not the only reason.

Ray Liotta, who died at age 67 shortly after shooting wrapped on “Black Bird,” gives a performance that is in some ways the heart of the series. He plays Big Jim Keene, Jimmy’s father, an ex-cop whose love for Jimmy is never in doubt even when his actions put Jimmy in danger.

There’s a poignancy to the fact that Liotta’s character is in ill health; one wonders how much of Big Jim’s frailty was also Liotta’s with scenes in which you can see his hands shaking. But the acting is still top notch, fiercely and deeply emotional.

The bond between father and son explains why Jimmy takes the deal in the first place, which involves moving from a minimum-security institution where he’s well-liked and comfortable to a maximum security prison specializing in the criminally insane where his life might be in danger.

We go into the show knowing that Jimmy will survive since the series is based on the real James Keene’s memoir, “In With the Devil: A Fallen Hero, a Serial Killer, and a Dangerous Bargain for Redemption,” but that doesn’t make the prison scenes any less tense, especially after a guard outs Jimmy as a snitch.

The jail footage is intercut with scenes of the investigation into Larry’s crimes — in which both Greg Kinnear as detective Brian Miller and Sepideh Moafi as FBI agent Lauren McCauley also give excellent performances — and flashbacks to Larry’s and Jimmy’s childhoods.

These suggest that both men grew up with negligent fathers and indifferent mothers, although only Larry — a harmless weirdo to the cops in his hometown of Wabash, Indiana, who loved fixing up old vans and civil war re-enactments — turned into a killer.

In any event, the series doesn’t go too deeply into the why of Larry’s crimes — and in real life, he has never been convicted of murder, although he’s serving a life sentence for kidnapping. It’s about the cat and mouse game between Keene and Hall and is at its most gripping when Hauser and Egerton are onscreen together.

Short Takes

Emma McDonald as Bella Sway in “Moonhaven.” PHOTO CREDIT: Szymon Lazewski/AMC

Moonhaven (July 7, AMC+)

I preface this by letting you know I’ve watched only two episodes of this six-episode sci-fi series, so consider this more of a first impression than a full review. The premise is that Earth is dying (that part is clearly not entirely fiction), but there’s a plan to save the planet and all its people via a revolutionary new form of machine learning that’s been developed in a colony on the moon. But “the bridge,” the name given for the imminent transfer by a giant corporation of tech and colonists back to Earth, is threatened by a couple of murders in the Garden of Eden-like colony, which might be part of a larger plot to sabotage the mission. Caught up in all of this is an earther named Bella Sway (Emma McDonald), a pilot and smuggler whose half-sister was the first murder victim and who witnesses the murder of the second. She teams up with a moon detective named Paul (played by Dominic Monaghan of “Lost” and “Lord of the Rings”) to try to get to the bottom of the mystery. Monaghan is charismatic in the role and McDonald starts to grow on you once her character lightens up on the cynicism, but you have to wade through some hokeyness to get to the meat of the matter. The colonists come off as cultists, wandering around in colourful robes singing and dancing, and speaking in a stilted combination of very old-fashioned language and made-up words. If you can get past the new-agey trappings there might be a decent show under there. Joe Manganiello also stars.

Reel Black: Our Film Stories (July 8, CBC Gem; July 9, 8 p.m., CBC)

Got 20 minutes to spare? Then watch this documentary for a bit of a history lesson about Black filmmaking in Canada. It includes interviews with filmmakers Claire Prieto, Clement Virgo, Christene Browne,  Karen Chapman, Karen King and Kelly Fyffe-Marshall, some of whom have been making documentaries and feature films for decades. But even with that wealth of experience, barriers remain thanks to ingrained racism in the screen industry. Yet the doc also imparts a sense of hope, highlighting a new generation of artists such as Ajahnis Charley and Christian Anderson, part of a mentorship program through the OYA Media Group. As Ajahnis points out, it’s not just about getting more Black faces onscreen and behind the camera, but more Black crews, writers, producers and executives. “I want more slices or let’s make a new, better pie,” he says.

From left, Praneet Akilla, Morgan Holmstrom, Ace (Aason) Nadjiwon, Natasha Calis
and Mercedes Morris in “SkyMed.” PHOTO CREDIT: CBC

SkyMed (July 10, 9 p.m., CBC, CBC Gem)

If you like your medical dramas with liberal helpings of romantic entanglements this might be the show for you. The drama follows a group of young, attractive pilots and nurses providing medical care in northern Manitoba. Their ministrations are mostly provided in the back of a plane, which means they have to be fearless and quick on their feet. Back on the ground, the crews share a house, which means partying and hooking up are also on the agenda. But apart from the medical and relationship emergencies, the series — inspired by creator Julie Puckrin’s nurse sister and pilot brother-in-law, who met while serving on an airborne medical crew —also casts an eye on the racism and health care barriers faced by patients in remote Indigenous communities. And the natural scenery is a hell of a lot better than anything you’ll see on “Grey’s Anatomy.”

CBC and CBC Gem also have Season 2 of the sand-sculpting competition series “Race Against the Tide” (July 10, 8:30 p.m.). Gem has “Sorry for Your Loss” (July 4), which stars Elizabeth Olsen of “WandaVision” fame as a widow dealing with the loss of her husband; Season 3 of British comedy “Stath Lets Flats” (July 8) and Season 12 of “The Great British Baking Show” (July 10, 7 p.m., also on CBC TV).

Odds and Ends

Lana Condor as Erika in “Boo, Bitch.” PHOTO CREDIT: Erik Voake/Netflix

Netflix’s offerings this week include “Boo, Bitch” (July 8), which stars Lana Condor of “To All the Boys” fame as a high school senior who uses her death to catch up on all the life she missed when she was trying not to get noticed. It has the usual high school tropes and is intermittently entertaining but doesn’t resemble any ghost story I’ve ever seen in the two episodes I watched. There’s also reality series “How to Build a Sex Room” (July 8), in which designer Melanie Rose, yes, helps couples build hanky panky spaces in their homes. True crime doc “Girl in the Picture” and rom-com “Hello, Goodbye and Everything in Between” both debut July 6, and animated comedy “The Sea Beast” is out July 8.

I don’t watch much reality TV anymore, despite my handle, but I do make time for “The Amazing Race Canada,” which returns July 5 at 9 p.m. on CTV after a three-year absence due to the pandemic.

BBC Earth has the latest David Attenborough nature show, “The Green Planet” (July 6, 9 p.m.), which explores “the hidden life of plants,” including maple trees in northern Ontario and lodgepole pines in British Columbia.

The big PBS offering this week is “The Great Muslim American Road Trip” (July 5, 10 p.m.), featuring rapper Mona Haydar and husband Sebastian Robins travelling Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles, and visiting Muslim communities and people along the way.

NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs 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. The Odds and Ends section includes shows that I have not watched.

Watchable on Netflix, StackTV, OUTtv June 20 to 26, 2022

June 20, 2022 /

SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Umbrella Academy (June 22, Netflix)

From left, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Elliot Page, David Castañeda, Aidan Gallagher and Robert Sheehan
in Season 3 of “The Umbrella Academy.” PHOTO CREDIT: Christos Kalohoridis/Netflix

One of the things I’ve always liked about “The Umbrella Academy” is that its stepsibling protagonists are more superhuman than superhero.

Sure, saving the world is pretty nifty, but it’s the human flaws and foibles in these six characters (seven including dead brother Ben, played by Justin H. Min) that have kept me watching. So the good news is that, despite being embroiled in yet another apocalyptic scenario in Season 3, the brothers and one sister of “The Umbrella Academy” (more on that later) are still very much a screwed-up family of misfits who happen to have superpowers.

In fact, this season ramps up the emotional stakes for our characters who, as the episodes begin, are just back from their near-death experience in 1963 and missing the people they left behind in that timeline. And, as we saw in the Season 2 finale, their home is no longer their home and Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) is no longer their father, having adopted a different group of seven superpowered children named the Sparrow Academy.

Unfortunately, the Sparrows aren’t there to do much more than be antagonists to the Umbrellas for the first few episodes — the season opener includes both an entertaining dance-off and an epic fight in which the Umbrellas get their asses handed to them — and to bring back Ben.

Aside from Ben and sister Sloane (Genesis Rodriguez), the six Sparrow brothers and sisters, and one cube, are mostly presented as personality-free villains. While the Umbrellas’ ghost version of Ben finally passed on to the afterlife in Season 2, the Sparrows’ Ben is very much alive but a real asshole.

Speaking of assholes, Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) undergoes a character transformation I really didn’t like. After leaving her beloved husband Ray (Yusuf Gatewood) in the 1960s, Allison learns that the daughter for whom she returned to the present is no longer part of her timeline. Her grief turns her into a gratuitously violent monster who focuses most of her rage on her brother Viktor, formerly her sister Vanya.

Yes, “The Umbrella Academy” acknowledges the coming out of Canadian actor Elliot Page as a transgender man by having Viktor undergo his own transition into his true self, which is handled with class and grace.

Viktor’s story arc is one of the most satisfying things about the new season as the angry, abused sibling of seasons past becomes a force for good, trying to make amends for the lives he’s taken.

The other star of the season is Tom Hopper, who displays a radiant sweetness and deep humanity as his character, Luther, finds love.

Diego (David Castaneda) reunites with Lila (Ritu Arya), who brings a visitor from her time travels, a kid named Stan (Javon “Wanna” Walton); Klaus (Robert Sheehan) manages to bond with Reginald, although it involves a typically abusive manipulation on Reggie’s part; Number Five (Aidan Gallagher) is as amusing as always as he wearily tries to save the world all over again.

It seems the Umbrella Academy has triggered something called the “Grandfather Paradox” and there’s a menacing ball of light called a Kugelblitz in the basement of the academy that is dissolving the world piece by piece.

There’s also a secret mission that Reggie is bent on fulfilling, called Oblivion, one that caused him to part ways in the Sparrow timeline with his chimpanzee assistant Pogo (Adam Godley), whom Five tracks down.

There’s also a callback to Harlan, the kid that Viktor accidentally imbued with superpowers in Season 2, that plays into Viktor’s reclamation, Allison’s villainization and the world-threatening time paradox.

It’s a rollicking sometimes silly season with the standard blend of quirky comedy, darkness (and this season, it sometimes goes really dark) and a killer soundtrack.

For me, the show is always at its best when the Umbrella Academy gets to be a family, which it does in some cathartic ways here, but they never get to stay a family for long. So, after a frenetic finale involving an evil plan of Reggie’s, the timeline is reset — Season 4 has reportedly already got a green light — and it seems as though the stepsiblings will scatter once again.

Netflix has a lot of other stuff debuting this week, including the made-in-Toronto film “The Man From Toronto” (June 24), starring Kevin Hart and Woody Harrelson, and the docuseries “The Future Of” (June 21), a look at technological innovations that could change human life, while “Money Heist” fans will want to check out the spinoff “Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area” on June 24.

Short Takes

Drag queen BeBe Zahara Benet in “Being BeBe.”

Being BeBe (June 21, OUTtv.com; June 22, 9 p.m., OUTtv)

It’s easy to get swept up in the glamorous artifice of drag and forget that it’s a hard, and not always lucrative, way to make a living. The documentary “Being BeBe,” which highlights 15 years in the life of drag artist BeBe Zahara Benet, is clear-eyed about this reality. It show’s BeBe’s successes — winning the first “RuPaul’s Drag Race” in 2009, creating her show “Creature” in 2012, doing “Drag Race All Stars” in 2018, touring “Nubia” in 2020 with other Black “Drag Race” alumni — but also the low points, like having to move back to Minneapolis from Brooklyn when the stage show “Reveal” fails to make money. Obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the lowest as it left BeBe, real name Marshall Ngwa, unemployed just when he was expecting a breakout year career-wise. But Ngwa, interviewed by friend and filmmaker Emily Branham, is philosophical about the setback: he has had to hustle before to make a living; he will do so again. He also has the advantage of a loving, supportive family, not something to be taken for granted coming from Cameroon in Central Africa. Branham juxtaposes footage of BeBe, who refuses to categorize his sexuality, with interviews with young queer men and women still living in Cameroon, shunned by their families and at risk of violence, even murder, in a country in which homosexuality is prohibited by law and even ordering the wrong drink can result in a jail sentence. In that context, that BeBe can choose to make a career out of drag is a triumph apart from any financial and artistic rewards. “Drag Race” has gone some way to humanizing drag artists for the viewing public; “Being BeBe” gives us a more intimate look at one of its stars.

Jesse James Keitel as Ruthie and Devin Way as Brodie in “Queer as Folk.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Alyssa Moran/Peacock

Queer as Folk (June 26, 9 p.m., Showcase/StackTV)

How do you reimagine “Queer as Folk,” the groundbreaking, sexually frank 1999 TV series about a group of gay men in Manchester? If you’re Canadian creator Stephen Dunn, you move it to vibrant New Orleans, expand its gaze to include non-white, transgender, non-binary and disabled characters, make the sex even more in your face and have your characters transformed by a tragedy. It’s no spoiler to say that the first episode of the new series includes a nightclub shooting inspired by the real-life slaughter at the Pulse bar in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 people died. The body count is mercifully lower in the show, which to its credit doesn’t dwell on the violence but on how its characters process it. And if you think that means just anger and sadness, think again. Lead character Brodie (Devin Way), for instance, decides the best way to honour a dead friend is to throw a big-ass party, turning ex-boyfriend Noah’s (Johnny Sibilly) spacious home into a makeshift nightclub he names Ghost Fag. Other key characters include Mingus (Fin Argus), a high school student and aspiring drag queen; Devin’s brother Julian (Ryan O’Connell), who has cerebral palsy; and his best friend Ruthie (Jesse James Keitel), a trans woman who’s just become a parent with her non-binary partner Shar (CG). Eric Graise adds snarky wit as Marvin, a bilateral amputee in a wheelchair; Armand Fields is wise drag mama Bussy; and ringers Kim Cattrall and Juliette Lewis play Brodie’s adoptive mother, Brenda, and Mingus’s mother, Judy. Yes, that’s a lot of characters, all with very distinctive arcs, and the show can be messy as it shifts from storyline to storyline, but these characters also really grow on you, at least in the four episodes I viewed. They can be selfish and self-defeating at times, but they represent a spectrum of queerness that’s so much more expansive than this series’ predecessor.

Odds and Ends

A couple of British detective series that I have personally enjoyed are back with new seasons. Season 3 of “Hidden” (June 20, Acorn) sees Welsh detectives Cadi John (Sian-Reese Williams) and Owen Vaughan (Sion Alun Davies) investigating two brothers after a body is found in a river. On BritBox, “Grace” returns for a second season on June 21, with Roy Grace (John Simm) and Glenn Branson (Richie Campbell) investigating several different murders from their home base of Brighton.

Apple TV+ has the comedy “Loot” (June 24), starring Maya Rudolph as a spurned wife who decides to try to use her billions for good.

Prime Video has “Chloe” (June 24), about a young woman’s obsession with a former friend she stalks on Instagram.

HBO and Crave have the true crime series “Mind Over Murder” (June 20, 10 p.m.) about six people convicted of killing a grandmother in Beatrice, Nebraska, in 1985 and later exonerated by DNA evidence.

NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs 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. The Odds and Ends section includes shows that I have not watched.

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