Watchable the week of May 10, 2020

Happy Mother’s Day! Here’s what caught my interest this week.

I Know This Much Is True (May 10, HBO, 9 p.m., also Crave)

This show is first a testament to the talent of Mark Ruffalo. He plays twin brothers in this series about the ravages of mental illness and family dysfunction – paranoid schizophrenic Thomas and his fiercely loyal but volatile brother Dominick – and you’d swear they were played by two different people. 

Ruffalo shot Dominick’s scenes first, then spent five weeks gaining 30 pounds and researching mental illness before playing Thomas.

Credit is also due to Philip Ettinger, who plays both twins as young men.

If you’re looking for an easy breezy isolation watch, this six-episode series isn’t that. Based on Wally Lamb’s Oprah-endorsed 1998 novel, it begins with Thomas mutilating himself in a public library in what he sees as a necessary sacrifice to end the Gulf War. Things spiral from there, with Thomas sent to a forensic psychiatric institution and Dominick fighting to get him out while fighting demons of his own, including grief over the loss of his mother, wife and baby daughter, and the fallout of a bad childhood with a violent stepfather.

The series casts light on the relentlessness of mental illness and the human wreckage it leaves in its wake; the multi-generational poison of toxic masculinity but also the power of human connection. 

It is at times harrowing but also deeply absorbing.

This is Ruffalo’s show, but other fine actors play supporting roles, including Melissa Leo as the twins’ mother; Rosie O’Donnell and Archie Panjabi as a sympathetic social worker and psychiatrist, respectively; Kathryn Hahn as Dominick’s ex-wife; and Canadians Bruce Greenwood and Michael Greyeyes as the head of the forensic hospital and its janitor.

A Confession (May 12, BritBox)

A young woman missing for days. A detective racing to try to get her back alive. A suspect who in an apparent burst of remorse leads him to her body, plus that of another woman police didn’t even realize was dead. And then it falls apart for the detective and the mother of one of those girls. Those are the basic outlines of this BritBox original, based on a real 2011 case that cost detective Steve Fulcher his job. Prolific English actor Martin Freeman (“The Office,” “The Hobbit,” “Fargo,” “Sherlock” and too many others to mention) plays Fulcher. He is joined by other top-notch British stars, including Imelda Staunton (“Harry Potter,” “Vera Drake,” “Shakespeare in Love”) and Siobhan Finneran (“Happy Valley,” “The Stranger,” “Downton Abbey”) as the mothers of the two victims. The series makes clear the enormous amount of work that goes into catching a killer, the fact that not all victims of crime are considered equal, and that justice and the law are not necessarily the same thing.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend (May 12, Netflix)

I’m not a Kimmy aficionado, but there are worse time wasters than this special that has Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) about to marry her prince (Daniel Radcliffe) when she stumbles on another plot by the Reverend (Jon Hamm) who imprisoned her and other women in a bunker. Because this is an interactive show, with numerous places where you get to choose the characters’ actions, it can eat up quite a bit of time. Some critics apparently spent hours exploring the different scenarios. I ran through it once, long enough to say that it maintains the charm and gee whiz goofiness of the series. And thanks to creators Tina Fey and Robert Carlock and their writing team there are some zingers in among the “fudging” and “what the h-e-single-c-single-k.” The gang is all back to support Kimmy, including Tituss Burgess, Carol Kane (in a double role) and Jane Krakowski. 

Dr. Miami (May 14, CBC and CBC Gem at 8 p.m.)

I should say up front that I’m not a fan of plastic surgery, which is the bread and butter of Dr. Michael Salzhauer, the Dr. Miami of the title. He has parlayed Snapchat videos and livestreams of his breast and butt lifts into pop culture fame, at least among the people who seek self-fulfilment in bigger boobs, flatter tummies or Kardashian-style bubble butts. It’s clear that Salzhauer is as vain and insecure as the people he treats, but he’s also skilled at what he does, and he’s an observant Orthodox Jew whose wife and five children tolerate his social media obsession. As abhorrent as I found parts of this documentary I also found it hard to look away. It’s part of the “Hot Docs at Home” series.

Hotel Paranormal (T+E, May 15, 9 p.m.)

Like his “Ghostbusters” character, Canadian actor Dan Aykroyd is a believer when it comes to things that go bump in the night, which is why he’s narrating this spooky new series for Canada’s Blue Ant Media and Saloon Media. Although it’s a Canadian-made show, the haunted hotels it features are in the U.S. and Europe, at least in the first two episodes. The one I screened featured a poltergeist that escalated into demonic possession in Texas, an evil entity unleashed by teens on a school trip to Rome and a grabby phantom in New England. The subjects of the encounters narrate their tales with assists from re-enactments, alleged “actual” photos and video, and paranormal experts. Whether you believe is up to you, but at the very least it should give you a shiver.

Odds and Ends

“Call Your Mother” (May 10 at 10 p.m. on CTV Comedy Channel) has various comedians paying tribute to their moms, including Louie Anderson, Awkwafina, Jimmy Carr, Judah Friedlander, Jim Gaffigan and more. If you’re in the mood for nostalgia, you might like “The Happy Days of Garry Marshall” on ABC May 12 at 8 p.m. It features stars like Henry Winkler and Julia Roberts recalling the late Marshall’s classic shows and movies, including “Happy Days,” “Laverne and Shirley,” “Mork and Mindy,” “Pretty Woman” and so on. On May 13 at 8 p.m., CBS and Global TV have the 40th season finale of “Survivor: Winners at War”: the reunion and other live elements have, of course, been shot remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.