Watchable the week of Nov. 30, 2020

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Your Honor (Dec. 6, 10 p.m., Crave)

One boy goes out for a drive to honour the memory of his dead mother; another takes a ride on his early birthday gift, a vintage motorcycle: their lives collide, quite literally, in ways that will have dire consequences far beyond them and the people who love them.

It begins when Adam (Hunter Doohan), the son of respected New Orleans judge Michael Desiato (Bryan Cranston), decides to leave a memorial at the place where his mother was killed in the impoverished Lower Ninth Ward. When gang members threaten him, he drives away in a panic, hits and kills 17-year-old Rocco Baxter (Benjamin Hassan Wadsworth), and flees the scene.

Both Michael and Adam intend to do the right thing and face the consequences, but when Michael learns that Rocco was the son of Jimmy Baxter, whom he describes as “head of the most vicious crime family in the history of this city,” the situation changes from a matter of right and wrong to one of life and death in Michael’s eyes. And so the lies begin.

Walter Scott certainly knew what he was about when he wrote, “Oh what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive.”

The lies Michael tells to save Adam grow in complexity and reach, affecting more and more people, none more horribly than Kofi Jones (Lamar Johnson), a low level gang affiliate who is blamed for the hit and run, and his family, who are Black and poor.

The drama extends beyond Michael’s and Adam’s moral dilemma — both are what you’d call good people, with Adam particularly plagued by guilt over what he’s done — to issues of corruption in the police, justice and political systems, and racial and economic disparity.

As the consequences of Michael’s and Adam’s lies spiral out of control it seems it’s only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down on their heads.

Bryan Cranston could spend the rest of his career coasting on his “Breaking Bad” accolades, but he gives his usual consummate performance as Michael, with the backing of an excellent supporting cast. It includes Michael Stuhlbarg, who proved he gives good gangster in “Boardwalk Empire,” as Jimmy Baxter; Hope Davis as his scarily vengeful wife; Isiah Whitlock Jr. as an aspiring mayoral candidate; Carmen Ejogo as Kofi’s lawyer; Amy Landecker as a police detective; and the formidable Margo Martindale as Michael’s senator mother-in-law and Adam’s grandmother.

Special mention goes to young actors Doohan and Johnson for making Adam and Kofi both relatable and empathetic. 

Earth at Night in Color (Dec. 4, Apple TV Plus)

Nature shows have been a thing for decades — think “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” or “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” — especially lately with the plethora of shows with the word “Planet” in the title.

So how do you stand out from the crowd and perhaps avoid viewer nature fatigue? If you’re  Apple TV Plus you use revolutionary new technology that turns night into day.

This six-part series, filmed with low-light cameras 100 times more sensitive than the human eye, provides an unprecedented look at what wild animals get up to at night, including lions, jaguars, bears, wolves, cheetahs, hippos, peregrine falcons, spectral tarsiers, one suburban mountain lion, one really annoyed elephant and more. (Random observation: hyenas seem like the assholes of the animal world.)

The team travels from the Maasai Mara reserve in Kenya, to rainforests in Southeast Asia, tropical wetlands in Brazil, the Boreal forest at the edge of the Arctic Circle and even North American cities before circling back to Maasai Mara. 

(Torontonians should pay special attention to Episode 5, which features just a few of our city’s 100,000 raccoons.)

I find nature shows both heart-warming and heart-breaking. For instance, in Episode 1, we see the bonding among a lion family (when two cubs get lost their mother spends four nights looking for them) but learn there are only about 20,000 lions left in the world.

Enjoy the wonderful cinematography (each episode ends with testimonials from the camera crew) and spare a thought for what we’ll be missing if human encroachment on nature continues unabated.

Apple TV Plus also debuts “Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special” and “Stillwater,” a kids’ show about three siblings and their panda neighbour, on Dec. 4.

Selena: The Series (Dec. 4, Netflix)

For millions of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, Selena Quintanilla was — and is — the biggest star ever to come out of Texas. When she was  shot and killed in 1995 by the president of her fan club, the impact of her death was compared to those of John Lennon, Elvis Presley, even John F. Kennedy.

This nine-part series is a faithful, if not particularly deep, recounting of Selena’s life and career, from her family’s discovery of her talent when she was 7 years old, to her earliest days playing English-language cover tunes with her brother, sister and father at the family’s restaurant through her eventual fame as a performer of Tejano music (it glosses over the resistance that Selena reportedly initially faced in the male-dominated genre).

Christian Serratos (Rosita on “The Walking Dead”), who bears a passing physical resemblance to Selena, plays her as sweet, sunny and largely uncomplicated, devoted to her family, her fans and her music. Conflict between Selena, sister Suzette (Noemi Gonzalez), brother A.B. (Gabriel Chavarria), mother Marcella (Seidy Lopez) and father Abraham (Ricardo Chavira) seems largely non-existent and/or easily resolved — at least until the final episode when Abraham angrily fires Selena’s future husband, guitarist Chris Perez (Jesse Posey), after discovering their relationship.

Chavira (“Desperate Housewives,” “Scandal”) makes the most impact onscreen as Abraham, portrayed as the relentless driving force behind Selena’s success.

Overall, the show is more reverential than revelatory — there’s nothing here you can’t find on Selena’s Wikipedia page — which is perhaps down to the fact her sister and brother are executive producers (they’re being sued along with Netflix by the producer of the 1997 Jennifer Lopez film “Selena,” who claims he owns the rights to her life story).

“Selena: The Series” will likely be welcomed by fans but, for a non-fan like me, it doesn’t adequately convey what made her such a massive star.

Odds and Ends

“Funny Boy” (Dec. 4, 8 p.m., CBC) is the Deepa Mehta movie version of the 1994 book by Shyam Selvadurai, about a young gay man in Sri Lanka coming to terms with his sexuality amid the tension between Tamils like his family and the majority Sinhalese ethnic group. 

The first two films in Steve McQueen’s acclaimed “Small Axe” anthology series are now on Amazon Prime Video in Canada: “Mangrove” and “Lover’s Rock.” The rest will arrive weekly beginning Dec. 4 with “Red, White and Blue.” I haven’t had a chance to screen them, unfortunately, but from what I’ve read they’re well worth your time.

You can’t stand in the streets of Toronto and watch a live Santa Claus Parade, but you can watch “The Original Santa Claus Parade” (Dec. 5, 7 p.m., CTV  and CTV2), a pandemic-friendly version that was filmed without crowds at Canada’s Wonderland.

Sundance Now has “The Commons” (Dec. 3), starring Joanne Froggatt of “Downton Abbey” as a neuropsychologist desperate to have a child in a near future beset by worsening climate change.

EDITED because I accidentally had Netflix premiering two Apple TV Plus shows.