From the series finale of Rob Lowe’s 9-1-1: Lone Star to Amy Schumer’s new Netflix comedy, we round up our top 10 shows to watch this week
1. 9-1-1: Lone Star – Monday, February 3, CTV & Fox | Series Finale
The end is nigh for the valiant first responders of Lone Star, and the show’s writers have come up with an appropriately apocalyptic storyline to cap things off after five seasons. And even by the notoriously unhinged standards of this franchise, what happens in the finale is a doozy, as the city of Austin braces for an honest-to-goodness asteroid!
“This will be the most casualty-strewn rescue since the pilot, when the entire team except for Judd blew up and died,” executive producer Rashad Raisani told TV Insider. “We decided who should get hurt and who should get hurt the worst, in a way, to show the depths of both their own characters and the character of the people next to them.”
Raisani further explains that tonight’s out-of-this-world premise actually originated years ago when two of the series’ writers, Molly Green and James Leffler, were inspired by a real-life meteor strike in Siberia. Once Fox announced season five would be their last, the pitch’s time had finally come. Yet beyond just a big, flashy emergency to end on, Raisani et al. took care to ensure this episode was structured to wrap up the personal storylines of its most conflicted life-savers — Owen, Tommy and Judd.
“If we’ve done our jobs,” the showrunner explained, “you’re watching these three characters, each carrying around what they believe is an existential burden, about to unburden themselves with each other. And just at that moment — if you remember what happened in Hawaii a few years ago [in real life] when there was that missile detection alert — everybody’s phones go off.”
“Even though it’s, of course, this sort of absurd, billboard-level kind of thing that could happen,” he continued, “we wanted to ground it because . . . as crazy as it is, it all ends up coming back to a place of character and how these people go through this crucible.”
2. The Hunting Party – Monday, February 3, City & NBC | Series Premiere
Former FBI profiler Bex Henderson (Manifest alum Melissa Roxburgh) must once again plunge into the minds of demented killers after a mysterious explosion at a prison unleashes hundreds of inmates onto an unsuspecting public.
Worse yet, this particular prison wasn’t supposed to exist and the convicts housed therein were all on record as having been executed for their crimes. Known as “The Pit,” the folks in charge of this black site — a combination of big pharma and shady operators in the government and military — conducted experiments that turned these homicidal maniacs all the more maniacal. It’s a revelation that shocks Bex, especially since she has a very personal connection to one of the bad guys. Now, she has to join up with a task force of fellow agents to track down these perps, while also unravelling the conspiracy behind their inexplicable jailbreak. On that team is her estranged FBI mentor Oliver Odell (Revenge’s Nick Wechsler) — who happens to be the warden of this secret prison.
Note: The show makes its official debut tonight following a special post-football preview that aired on Sunday, January 19. Click here to watch trailer.
3. Kinda Pregnant – Wednesday, February 5, Netflix
Fresh off the cancellation of her romantic dramedy series Life & Beth, Amy Schumer leads another messy, quirky — yet oddly relatable — tale about finding your true love as you struggle to find yourself.
This time, the story in question takes the form of a Netflix original movie about Lainy, a schoolteacher who’s dreamt of having a baby since she herself was a child. When her best friend Kate (Rough Night’s Jillian Bell) gets pregnant first, Lainy — in a moment of neurotic insanity — decides to pop on a fake belly and pretend that she too is with child. Naturally, it’s a lie that quickly escalates, spreads and spirals. Complicating matters further, as she’s in the midst of spinning this web of deceit, Lainy meets a guy (Will Forte) who might just be her soulmate.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Schumer noted she considers Kinda Pregnant her “return to movies” given that — despite recent supporting roles in a number of films, like Jerry Seinfeld’s Unfrosted — her last proper star turn came in 2018’s I Feel Pretty.
“I think I waited for something that I felt really connected to,” she told EW. “I was waiting to have something to say . . . the idea of what you think it means to get married and have a child vs. the reality of it . . . Everybody has their own journey with deciding whether or not to become a parent, or fertility, or infertility.”
Given the premise, it is, of course, tempting to categorize Kinda Pregnant as a “rom-com.” And while that’s not entirely inaccurate, the actress/co-writer feels there’s far more than just romantic love at play in her latest picture.
“I don’t think we should ignore the romance,” Schumer said, “but the takeaway from it for me is definitely about finding love for yourself through your friendships and how much you love your friends.”
4. Celebrity Bear Hunt – Wednesday, February 5, Netflix | Series Premiere
One of the more popular “celebreality” formats in the U.K. has been I’m a Celebrity! Get Me Out of Here! Now in its 24th season, the show is essentially Survivor with a cast of B-list British stars, who live together in the wilderness while enduring the discomfort of their inhospitable surroundings — all while annoying the heck out of each other.
A new British reality competition arrives this week, borrowing generously from I’m a Celebrity! “Holly Willoughby hosts this action-packed competition show that sees a group of unlikely British celebrities dropped into the Costa Rican jungle as prey for one of the world’s most fearsome predators — Bear Grylls,” reveals the Netflix logline for the new series, Celebrity Bear Hunt. “Bear believes there’s an action hero inside us all — even the celebs — but how strong is their will to survive? As Bear puts them through their paces, those who fail to impress will face the dreaded ‘Bear Hunt’ — a brutal game of cat and mouse where they’ll be hunted down by Bear himself and, if captured, eliminated from the show.”
A few of the 12 celebrities chosen for the show will be familiar to Canadian viewers, while most will not. The 12 are: Spice Girls’ erstwhile Scary Spice, singer and TV personality Mel B; German tennis legend Boris Becker; British TV presenter and journalist Steph McGovern; former rugby star Danny Cipriani; fashion model (and younger sister of Kate Moss) Lottie Moss; actor Kola Bokinni, best known as AFC Richmond player Isaac McAdoo in Ted Lasso; interior designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen of BBC home-improvement show Changing Rooms; Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas; rapper Big Zuu; singer Una Healy of girl group The Saturdays; model and TV host Leomie Anderson; and actor Joe Moss of British soap The Inbetweener.
5. Cassandra – Thursday, February 6, Netflix | Series Premiere
As advancements in artificial intelligence continue to dazzle and rattle us in equal measure, this timely thriller out of Germany follows a family who move into a state-of-the-art smart home — only to discover that the abode’s virtual assistant has a sinister agenda that goes beyond catering to their every whim. Click here to watch trailer.
6. Adam Richman Eats Britain – Thursday, February 6, Flavour Network | Series Premiere
American culinary personality Adam Richman takes his lifelong taste quest across the pond for a 10-part series that finds the erstwhile Man v. Food emcee “using the map as his menu.” More specifically, Adam ventures to British locations that share the name of iconic foods/dishes.
It starts tonight with two episodes. In the first, he lands in Yorkshire to sample a Yorkshire pudding straight from the geographical source. While in town, he also nibbles at Yorkshire parkin (i.e. oatmeal gingerbread), some local rabbit and a spot of Yorkshire-tea-inspired dessert.
In the evening’s second course, our host heads to the town of Sandwich for a very special . . . well, you get the idea. Also on the menu in this half-hour: Whitestable oysters and fish-and-chips. Click here to watch trailer.
7. Apple Cider Vinegar – Thursday, February 6, Netflix | Season Premiere
Described as “a true-ish story based on a lie,” Apple Cider Vinegar dramatizes the quasi-fictionalized saga of Belle Gibson (Booksmart’s Kaitlyn Dever), a real-life Australian wellness influencer who grew popular during the early days of Instagram. Claiming she cured her terminal brain cancer through diet and home remedies, Gibson amassed a massive social media following of like-minded people who bought her assertion that serious illnesses could be cured without traditional medicine. As it turned out, though, Gibson never had cancer at all, despite referencing her bogus brain tumour in social media posts, the mobile app she developed and its companion cookbook.
As series creator Samantha Strauss (Nine Perfect Strangers) told Tudum, the title references claims of apple cider vinegar being an all-purpose cure-all. “I wanted something that would capture this idea of hope in a bottle and that could be a bigger umbrella than something that would relate only to Belle,” she explained. Click here to watch trailer.
8. The Kardashians – Thursday, February 6, Disney+ | Season Premiere
“Challenges, milestones and new adventures” abound for the first family of reality TV in season six as Kim, Khloé, Kendall, Kylie, Kourtney and Kris must lean on each other as never before to thrive, both as businesswomen and as mothers.
9. Invincible – Thursday, February 6, Prime Video | Season Premiere
Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman’s cartoon superhero satire is back with season three, as burgeoning crusader Mark Grayson (voiced by Steven Yeun) faces new foes, in a new suit.
“Going into the third season, it seemed like a good time to bring a new Mark to the forefront after everything he’s been through in season two,” Kirkman told Variety. “He’s in a different headspace and that gets reflected in his costume. Anyone who has read the comic book series knows the blue suit era of Invincible is the darkest and the most intense, and there’s a lot of really big things that are around the blue suit.”
That’s saying a lot for a character whose origin story entailed grappling with the revelation that his Superman-esque father (J.K. Simmons) was actually a murderous alien invader — culminating in a brutal, city-smashing melee between father and son. And yet, as Kirkman elaborated to Games Radar+: “The stakes of the season are really high and the content of the season is really dense. We’ve set up a lot of stories in season one and season two that are kind of coming to a head in season three . . . Every episode does kind of feel like a finale . . . There’s something big about every episode, there’s a massive conclusion in every episode, there’s some kind of huge evolution of a character or story turn that happens in every episode.” Click here to watch trailer.
10. Newtopia – Friday, February 7, Prime Video| Series Premiere
In this tongue-in-cheek horror-comedy from South Korea, a soldier (Park Jeong-min) is dumped by his girlfriend (Blackpink singer Jisoo) — right on the cusp of a zombie apocalypse that brings Seoul to a standstill as people start dropping like flies and the undead begin to rise. He fights to win her back while also fighting for his life.