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.