Watchable the week of April 5, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Short Takes

This Is a Robbery (April 5, Netflix)

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

Hemingway (April 5, PBS)

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

Them (April 9, Amazon Prime Video)

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

Ghosts (April 9, CBC Gem)

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

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