Watchable the week of May 31, 2021

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Sweet Tooth (June 4, Netflix)

Up until I watched “Sweet Tooth” I wouldn’t have thought a dystopian drama could be heartwarming, but this series based on the Jeff Lemire comic books is one of the most moving shows I’ve seen.

It’s not that there isn’t darkness here; the story is, after all, set 10 years after a virus has laid waste to the world as we know it, so there’s death and fear, cruelty and ignorance, but also goodness and innocence and, yes, sweetness and hope.

Most of that is down to the title character, a boy named Gus who’s part human and part deer, nicknamed Sweet Tooth for his love of candy. And he’s not the only hybrid, the term for children who began to be born with the physical features of animals at the same time the virus emerged. But Gus was raised in isolation so, when he finally emerges into what’s left of the world, he’s a naif: able to fend for himself in a practical sense but with no real idea of just how dangerous humans can be.

His protector and his teacher in that regard, reluctantly so, is a jaded ex-football player named Tommy Jepperd (Nonso Anozie) who has just enough humanity left in him not to turn his back on Gus.

There are others who seek to protect the hybrids, including an orphaned young woman who calls herself Bear (Stefania LaVie Owen) and Aimee (Dania Ramirez), a former therapist who has set up a sanctuary for hybrids at an abandoned zoo. But they’re up against a paramilitary force known as the Last Men who are intent on wiping out the hybrids, whom some blame for causing the virus.

The other key character is Dr. Singh (Adeel Akhtar), whose only concern is keeping his sick wife alive and her condition hidden from nosy and potentially murderous neighbours.

These character strands are pursued separately at first, but it’s obvious they’ll eventually be pulled into Gus’s orbit, which is a good thing. The series is at its best whenever Gus is onscreen. He is truly the heart of the story, and the casting gods were smiling on the production team (which includes actor Robert Downey Jr. and his wife Susan as executive producers, and Jim Mickle as showrunner and director) when they found Christian Convery to play him.

The young Canadian actor perfectly embodies Gus’s guileless innocence and his persistent faith that things will work out, even when everything around him suggests otherwise.

On the face of it, a postapocalyptic drama might not seem like the optimal entertainment for a pandemic-weary world, but “Sweet Tooth” reminds us of the human capacity for good even at the worst of times.

Netflix also has Season 2 of “Feel Good,” debuting May 28, the dramedy in which Canadian comedian Mae Martin plays a fictionalized version of herself. As the season begins, Mae returns to Canada and to rehab, leaving George (Charlotte Ritchie) behind in London.

Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten (May 31, 9 p.m., PBS)

Monday is Memorial Day in the U.S., which honours that country’s military. It’s also the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, a confluence that lends a certain irony given that members of the National Guard were reportedly present when a white mob razed a Black neighbourhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, from May 31 to June 1, 1921, murdering as many as 300 Black citizens, leaving thousands more homeless.

If you don’t know anything about the massacre, you’re not alone. This doc makes the point that even some Tulsa residents didn’t know about it until fairly recently. I personally had never heard of it before viewing the 2019 fantasy series “Watchmen.” 

But this film, directed by Jonathan Silvers and produced by Washington Post reporter DeNeen L. Brown, both recounts the history of the atrocity and draws a line from it to ongoing anti-Black racism, not just physical violence but mental, emotional and economic oppression of Black communities.

At the time, Tulsa’s Greenwood area was a thriving neighbourhood, known as the Black Wall Street for its wealth. In just 16 hours more than 35 square blocks were destroyed, a tragedy that was blamed on its victims. 

It began after a young Black man was falsely accused of assaulting a white woman in an elevator and other Black men went to the city’s jail, some with guns, to protect him from being lynched by the crowd of white men that had gathered. After a melee broke out and the Black men fled back to Greenwood, the attack began. 

The white mob was unimpeded by the city’s police, some of them even deputized by the force. None of those men, some of whom can be seen proudly posing in photographs, were ever held accountable.

And the story of what’s called one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history is still being written: the legal fight for reparations to survivors and descendants of victims is ongoing; and this summer, bodies that might belong to massacre victims will be exhumed from a mass grave in a city cemetery. 

Girls5eva (June 3, 9 p.m., W Network)

Think of “Girls5eva” as the TV equivalent of a pop song: fun, a little frothy and catchy enough to get stuck in your head.

The latest from executive producers Tina Fey and Robert Carlock (“30 Rock”), created by Meredith Scardino, a writer on Fey’s and Carlock’s “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” “Girls5eva” lampoons 1990s and early 2000s girl groups, and the sexism and commercialism surrounding them. 

The group of the title is sort of a New York version of the Spice Girls . . . if the Spice Girls faded into obscurity after one hit.

When hip-hop star Lil Stinker (Jeremiah Craft) samples that hit, “Famous 5eva” (cuz 4eva’s too short), the four surviving “girls” get booked to back Stinker on “The Tonight Show,” leading to dreams of renewed stardom.

Easier said than done, of course, for a group of 40somethings in an industry in which, as their sleazy former manager Larry (Jonathan Hadary) says, “For ladies, 35 is checkout time. That’s a quote from our greatest president.” (The point is made in an even  funnier way by legendary producer Alf Musik, played by Stephen Colbert, who writes Girls5Eva a song called “Invisible Woman.”)

But “chill one” Dawn (Sara Bareilles), “hot one” Summer (Busy Philipps), “fierce one” Wickie (Renee Elise Goldsberry) and gay one Gloria (Paula Pell) persevere through others’ indifference and their own self-doubt, learning to write their own songs (with the help of a fantasy Dolly Parton, played by Fey) and to think outside the boxes they were put in by the music biz.

The first season culminates in a snatched moment of glory that is preposterous, predictable and emotionally satisfying all at once.

It took me a few episodes to warm up to “Girls5eva” but, once I did, I was fully invested in the group making good, even narcissistic Wickie (Goldsberry), who gets the best lines.

Speaking of lines, the jokes fly by fast so best pay attention. Same goes for the clever lyrics of the songs, written mainly by Scardino and composer Jeff Richmond, with real life singer/songwriter Bareilles pitching in on a couple of them. (My favourite, though it’s not a Girls5eva tune, is “New York Lonely Boy,” which pokes fun at Gen X parents and their fedora-wearing, sushi-eating only children: “The Strand is his Disneyland.”)

“Girls5eva” isn’t particularly deep or envelope-pushing but, like an earworm, it doesn’t have to be to grab your attention.

Short Takes

Querencia (June 1, 11 p.m., APTN lumi)

This is the first original series for APTN lumi, the streaming service of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. It’s about the relationship between two Indigenous queer women, winningly played by series creator and director Mary Galloway and Kaitlyn Yott. Daka (Yott) has come to Vancouver to try her luck as a dancer, despite her misgivings and those of her family. Abe (Galloway), a musician, has been on her own for a while and, unlike Yott, is out of touch with her Indigenous traditions. A misunderstanding on the part of Daka’s new roommate brings them together, even though Daka has previously identified as straight, and a spark is struck. The series, a clear-eyed and compassionate look at two young women growing into the people they want to be, will be part of the Inside Out Festival, screening virtually beginning June 2 at noon. There will also be a premiere event June 1 hosted by imagineNATIVE with musical performances and a Q&A.

Ballerina Boys (June 4, 9 p.m., PBS)

Anything that brings together the art forms of ballet and drag seems like a good thing to me, which would seem to be proven by the fact Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo has been in existence for some 47 years. This documentary, a Pride Month offering from PBS’s “American Masters,” makes it clear that behind the comedic aspect of men in tutus with faux Russian names there is serious discipline and respect for ballet tradition. Started in New York in the years following the Stonewall riots as “kind of a lark,” in the words of co-founder Peter Anastos, the Trocks grew into a genuine ballet company, one that tours all over the world when it’s not locked down. Despite early disapproval by what Anastos calls “the muckety muck dance establishment,” the company persevered, quite a feat in the ’90s when it lost half its dancers to AIDS. It brings ballet to audiences who wouldn’t know a plie from a pirouette, and to places that aren’t exactly gay-friendly. And it’s clear the dancers love what they do, despite the pain of pointe shoes; they talk in the doc about how performing in drag makes them feel like themselves. The film ends fittingly with a 2019 performance in Central Park of George Balanchine’s “Stars and Stripes” commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

Odds and Ends

I didn’t get an advance look at “Lisey’s Story” (June 4), the Apple TV Plus series that Stephen King adapted from his own novel, although reviews I’ve read suggest that’s not a bad thing. You’ll have to judge for yourself. The cast is certainly top notch, including Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, Joan Allen and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Amazon debuts “Dom” (June 4), a crime series based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and based on a true story about a man who’s part of the drug trade and his police officer father.

The Smithsonian Channel has the original series “Searching for Secrets” (June 6), which digs into hidden history in “the world’s most iconic cities.” The list includes New York, London, San Francisco, Berlin, Paris and Singapore. Sorry Toronto.