Watchable the week of June 14, 2021

SHOW OF THE WEEK (Kevin Can F**k Himself, June 20, 9 p.m., AMC)

Toxic masculinity can come with a laugh track and a punch line.

That’s one of the takeaways from “Kevin Can F**k Himself,” an inventive new dramedy starring Annie Murphy in her first post-“Schitt’s Creek” role.

Murphy is Allison McRoberts, sitcom wife. She’s married to Kevin (Eric Petersen, “Kirstie”), a man child who’s more interested in beer and sports memorabilia than in anything his wife has to say.

In the parts of the series shot in brightly lit, multi-camera sitcom style, Allison is the butt of the jokes, trying unsuccessfully to rein in Kevin’s juvenile behaviour — which is abetted by his dim bulb best friend Neil (Alex Bonifer), his father Pete (Brian Howe) and Neil’s sister Patty (Mary Hollis Inboden) — while keeping the fresh beers and the scrambled eggs and hot dogs coming.

When the show switches into single camera mode we see the cost of Kevin’s selfishness. After 10 years of marriage, Allison feels like she has nothing to show for her life and that everything that was hers has been systematically taken away by Kevin, revealing an insidiousness to his pranks and his punch-line putdowns.

But Allison isn’t just mad; she plans to get her life back, hatching a deadly serious scheme of her own.

When Allison isn’t being minimized by Kevin’s buffoonery she comes across as intelligent and resourceful, which makes you wonder what she saw in Kevin all those years ago.

And in playing the role, Murphy, who gained fame as the ditzy Alexis on “Schitt’s Creek,” proves she’s not a one-trick pony.

Just as interesting as Allison’s journey from resignation to revenge is neighbour Patty’s transformation. She starts out being one of the boys, scoffing at Allison right along with them while denying the disappointment of her own dead-end life. By the end of the fourth episode, the only ones provided to critics for review, she’s become Allison’s friend and co-conspirator.

I’m curious to see, in the final four instalments, just how far Allison and Patty will go, and also how audiences will react given the show’s very unflattering portrait of male entitlement.

On the other hand, after a decade or two of Don Drapers and Tony Sopranos and Walter Whites, why shouldn’t we cheer when a woman gets mad as hell and decides she’s not going to take it anymore?

Penguin Town (June 16, Netflix)

We’re all used to earnest nature documentaries that seek to inspire our empathy by showing us the majesty of the animals that share our planet. Those are worthy programs, but there’s something to be said for treating members of one of the most beloved of bird species like reality TV stars.

“Penguin Town” anthropomorphizes the heck out of a particular group of African penguins spending their summer (our winter) in Simon’s Town, South Africa, but that doesn’t distract from the knowledge that these creatures are endangered. Arguably, the viewer’s sympathies are even more engaged by the series’ focus on specific birds, who are given names and storylines.

Narrator Patton Oswalt tells us that these penguins, also known as jackass penguins for their distinctive braying cry, arrive in Simon’s Town every November to mate and have babies: activities that are essential given that “if they get it wrong they face extinction.”

The birds are inherently comical as they waddle around town in their tuxedo-like plumage. The comedy is enhanced by the narration as we follow several couples, the middle-aged Bougainvilleas, the newlywed Culverts and “aristocrats” Lord and Lady Courtyard (named after the spots where they make their nests); a misfit named Junior and a group of disaffected singles called the Car Park Gang.

But there’s also tragedy to be found: a mother penguin who disappears while out catching fish for her chicks, possibly eaten by a Cape fur seal, or eggs that are swept away by the rushing waters of a storm.

The dangers are many, the quest to survive and reproduce daunting — Oswalt tells us one of every three chicks born here won’t live to adulthood — but that just makes the successes feel all the more important.

And the birds have some help from the “giants,” as humans are dubbed in “Penguin Town,” thanks to the work of SANCCOB, the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds. If you’d like to help too you can adopt a penguin here.

Netflix also has Season 2 of zombie apocalypse drama “Black Summer” (June 17) and Season 4 of Spanish teen drama “Elite” (June 18).

Catching Up

I wasn’t allowed to share a review of “Flack” (Amazon Prime Video) last week because of an embargo, but I can tell you that I like this second season better than the first, which I found overly cynical despite the hits of humour. The female PR fixers that we met in Season 1 are still doing deals for monstrous celebrity clients and Robyn (Anna Paquin) is still spinning dangerously out of control in her personal life, but in Season 2 we learn something about the women’s backgrounds, which makes them more relatable. Sam Neill guest stars as the ex-husband of imperious boss Caroline (Sophie Okonedo) and Martha Plimpton as Robyn’s suicidal mother. We also meet the mother of Eve (Lydia Wilson) and the parents of Melody (Rebecca Benson). The professional world these women inhabit is still a sordid one, but now I see them more as canny survivors than as predators.

You can read my interview with Paquin and her husband Stephen Moyer, who directed two episodes of “Flack,” here.

Another show I couldn’t talk about was “Loki,” now on Disney Plus. Tom Hiddleston is reliably entertaining as the arrogant God of Mischief, and he and Owen Wilson, playing a civil servant at the Time Variance Authority, mesh well when they’re onscreen together. After the events of “Avengers: Endgame,” Loki gets scooped up by the TVA and is about to be sentenced for crimes against the “sacred timeline” when Wilson’s Mobius convinces the powers that be to lend him Loki for a mission. Variants of the god are wreaking havoc on the timeline and Mobius wants Loki to help him stop them. Naturally, with Loki involved, things don’t go quite as planned. The series will probably appeal most to viewers who are up on their Marvel lore.

Short Takes

The Real Manhunter (June 14, Acorn TV)

I quite enjoyed the Acorn drama “Manhunt,” in which Martin Clunes played a fictional version of Colin Sutton, the real-life detective who solved a 2004 murder in London’s Twickenham neighbourhood and caught a serial killer in the process. If you liked how that miniseries showed the methodical way that Sutton and his team cracked the crime, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy this companion series about Sutton and eight of his cases. The murder of Amelie Delagrange in Twickenham Green is covered in the second episode. The first — and the longest at almost two hours — details perhaps Sutton’s most famous case, the capture of a serial burglar and rapist known as the Night Stalker who terrorized senior citizens in Southeast London between 1992 and 2009.

Odds and Ends

Adult Swim has Season 5 of animated comedy “Rick and Morty” (June 20, 11 p.m.) with sociopathic Rick (series co-creator Justin Roiland) dragging grandson Morty (also voiced by Roiland) and the rest of his family along on dangerous intergalactic adventures.

Family Channel has the new competition series “Baketopia” (June 14, 7:30 p.m.), hosted by YouTube star Rosanna Pansino, in which the competitors are tasked with creating Instagram-worthy desserts.

It’s finale time for Season 4 of “The Handmaid’s Tale” (June 16, Crave) and since past season finales have traditionally brought big, cliffhanger twists it’s anybody’s guess what this season ender will bring.

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 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.