Watchable the week of June 14, 2020

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Beecham House (June 14, 10 p.m., PBS)

It’s inevitable that whenever a new period drama comes to PBS, viewers think wistfully of “Downton Abbey.” Alas, “Beecham House” is not an heir apparent to that beloved show.

It has some upstairs-downstairs dynamics, a regal setting and a cast member in common (Lesley Nicol, a.k.a. Mrs. Patmore), but it lacks its predecessor’s heart and soul.

It was co-created and directed by Gurinder Chadha, who’ll forever be known for giving the world “Bend It Like Beckham,” but the Indian characters here serve less as well-rounded people in their own right than as means of advancing the plot for the white characters.

Hunky British actor Tom Bateman (“Vanity Fair”) stars as John Beecham, an Englishman in late 18th-century Delhi, India, who has quit the rapacious East India Company and set up house in a beautiful Indian mansion with his half-Indian infant son.

John, though seemingly honourable, has a serious case of white saviour syndrome. He abhors his previous employer’s treatment of the native population and aims to set up a trading network with fair pay for the Indian artisans who supply the goods, but various obstacles intervene. They include a French general (Gregory Fitoussi, “World War Z”) and Indian emperor (Roshan Seth, “Gandhi”) who think he’s a British spy; an interfering mother (Nicol) who wants him back in England and is predictably xenophobic about Indian culture; a wastrel of a brother (Leo Suter, “Sanditon”); a duplicitous business partner (Marc Warren, “State of Play”); and an English governess and potential love interest (Dakota Blue Richards, “Endeavour”) who doesn’t trust him. 

So yes, there’s a lot going on, including a couple of love triangles and a mystery involving the mother of Beecham’s child, but the various plot lines and relationships don’t get enough breathing space over six episodes for us to become truly invested in the characters. Since the show was cancelled after one season in the U.K., that’s perhaps beside the point.

It’s not devoid of charm, particularly the locations in Rajasthan, India, so if you’re in the mood for a period soap opera with beautiful scenery, sets and costumes, this might fit the bill.

Grantchester (June 14, 9 p.m., PBS)

I confess the last time I watched “Grantchester” James Norton (“Happy Valley”) was still in the lead. But, as Season 5 begins, new vicar Will (Tom Brittney, “Outlander”) seems to have settled into a nice rhythm solving crimes with detective Geordie (Robson Green).

On the surface, it’s TV comfort food with its 1950s setting in verdant Cambridgeshire, but it touches on serious issues such as homophobia, women’s rights, PTSD and sexual exploitation, and that’s just in the first two episodes of the new season.

Its life lessons are delivered with a gentle touch, a spark of humour, a minimum of gore and a healthy does of humanity.

Besides Brittney and Green, Tessa Peake-Jones returns as Mrs. Chapman and
Al Weaver as Leonard, and Lauren Carse provides a love interest for Will as nosy local reporter Ellie.

Mae West: Dirty Blonde on American Masters (June 16, 8 p.m., PBS)

Mae West’s bump and grind physicality and double entendres might seem quaint these days given the varied sexual menu available in both movies and television. But in 1930s Hollywood she pushed the envelope about as far as it could go and became rich and famous in the process.

This doc makes the case for West as a proto-feminist and savvy businesswoman. She invented her blond, buxom, man-eating persona at a time when women weren’t expected to be overtly sexual, let alone own their sexuality. And she became the highest paid actress in America and helped pull Paramount Pictures out of bankruptcy.

She was no social justice warrior, but she put men in drag onstage in the play “The Drag” in the 1920s and gave Black women speaking roles in her 1930s films. She was jailed on obscenity charges in 1927 for the play “Sex,” in which she played a prostitute.

Mae’s movie supremacy lasted just a few years before Hollywood caved in to calls for censorship from religious groups and established a production code administration that vetted scripts in advance. She was replaced at the top of the food chain by Shirley Temple.

But the documentary makes clear that West never lost her self-confidence or her drive. She took her act to Las Vegas in the 1950s, and continued to play the blond bombshell into her 70s and 80s in movies like “Myra Breckinridge” and “Sextette.” She died in 1980 at the age of 87.

Odds and Ends

“Mohawk Girls” (June 16, 9 p.m., CBC) was billed as an Indigenous “Sex and the City” when it debuted on APTN in 2014, but Tony Wong wrote in the Toronto Star at the time that it also examined “issues of racism, sexuality and culture in a frank and oftentimes subversive way that would not be out of place on edgier cable” – although sex and love are definitely on the minds of its four protagonists as they navigate life on the rez.

I didn’t get to see the documentary “Dads” (June 19, Apple TV Plus) in advance, just the same trailer as everybody else, but it looks sweet enough. If you want to see famous fathers talking about the highs and lows of being dads – and probably shed some tears along with them – then check it out. It’s directed by Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of filmmaker Ron Howard, who of course is included in the doc.

More than once, conservative lawyer Roy Cohn is described as “evil” in the documentary “Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn” (June 19, 8 p.m., HBO) and the film does nothing to disabuse us of this notion. That’s probably no surprise given that it was made by Ivy Meeropol, granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, whom Cohn sent to the electric chair for allegedly selling the Soviets secrets about the atomic bomb.