From a Grammy tribute to Earth, Wind & Fire to Ethan Hawke in The Lowdown, we round up our top 10 shows to watch this week
1. A Grammy Salute to Earth, Wind & Fire Live: The 21st of September – Sunday, September 21, CBS
“Do you remember the 21st night of September?” Fans of Earth, Wind & Fire sure do, and they won’t want to miss this concert special airing (not coincidentally) on that very date. In addition to a performance from the band itself, an array of top music stars will take to the stage to pay musical tribute.
2. 99 to Beat – Sunday, September 21, Fox | Series Premiere
Already a fixture on Fox hit The Masked Singer, Ken Jeong steps out from behind the judges’ desk to host this new game show alongside sportscaster Erin Andrews. Here, a whopping 100 contestants “go head-to-head in a range of visually distinctive and hilarious games in an arced competition game show like we’ve never seen before . . . Anyone can win, and there’s only one thing players must do for a chance of walking away with the cash prize: Don’t. Finish. Last. As contestants battle it out against each other, each round sees the number of players whittled down until one person is left standing and they take home the life-changing top prize of $1,000,000.”
The show will have a special debut on Fox’s NFL Sunday. That premiere episode will then repeat this Wednesday, before airing new episodes on Wednesdays thereafter.
3. Cristela Alonzo: Upper Classy – Tuesday, September 23, Netflix
Avid sitcom viewers will remember Texas funnywoman Cristela Alonzo from her eponymous sitcom, which was among the most-buzzed series on ABC’s 2014-2015 schedule — and yet, did not live to see 2015-2016.
Like any good standup, Alonzo didn’t let rejection keep her down. She’s continued appearing across the TV landscape on series like His Dark Materials and The Upshaws — all while honing her act on the standup circuit. That in mind, her latest special, Upper Classy, debuts this Tuesday on Netflix.
Per Deadline, the new set finds Cristela “in pursuit of happiness. Whether finding out she’s doing better than her high school bully, visiting a spa and getting too much self-care, or taking her family on their first vacation ever, Cristela teaches her family (and herself) how to enjoy life, whether they like it or not.” Click here to watch trailer.
4. The Lowdown – Tuesday, September 23, FX Canada | Series Premiere
Despite sporting the face of a matinee idol, Ethan Hawke has, over the past three decades or so, built himself a most eclectic career. From acclaimed indies (the Before trilogy) to Oscar-winning crime thrillers (Training Day) to twisted horror flicks (The Black Phone) to directing a documentary about Golden Age Hollywood power couple Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward (The Last Movie Stars), you never can tell where Mr. Hawke will pop up next.
For his latest, he’s teamed with another pop-culture iconoclast, writer Sterlin Harjo, whose dramedy Reservation Dogs carved out a bold new space for Indigenous storytelling in the mainstream.
Premiering with two episodes tonight, this noir comedy casts Hawke as Lee Raybon, a bookstore owner who moonlights as a wannabe journalist (or, to hear him tell it, “truthstorian”) in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Juggling a failing business with obligations to his ex-wife Samantha (Kaniehtiio Horn) and teen daughter Francis (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), Lee isn’t where anyone would want to be in their life in their mid-50s. But all of a sudden, his latest story catches fire, as an exposé on the sordid past of local power players the Washberg family sends our hero and his family down a rabbit hole of conspiracy and absurdity, after one Washberg (Tim Blake Nelson) commits suicide just as another (Kyle MacLachlan) is running for governor.
As Harjo teased to TV Insider: “I think that [Lee’s] fight for truth supersedes his need to be a journalist. And sometimes that gets him in trouble but sometimes that puts the people that he loves in danger. That’s sort of the dance that he does throughout the season. The fun is to see where that goes, how scary the crosshairs are and what else he uncovers as he’s navigating the trouble he’s caused.” Click here to watch trailer.
5. Hotel Costiera – Wednesday, September 24, Prime Video | Series Premiere
Set against the backdrop of Italy’s stunning Amalfi Coast, Hotel Costiera is a series that is singularly unique while offering a hint of familiarity. Grey’s Anatomy fan favourite Jesse Williams stars as Daniel De Luca, a half-Italian, half-American former U.S. Marine employed by the owners of a posh hotel as a fixer, using his particular set of skills to smooth out problems for the hotel’s guests. From rescuing an abducted dog from local thieves to retrieving stolen valuables to solving far darker mysteries, he gets it done.
In this character-driven procedural, Daniel — DD to his friends — tackles a new case each episode, assisted by the oddball team he’s assembled — “a band of misfits,” Williams described them during an interview with Variety — in the nearby town of Positano: streetwise Bigné (Antonio Gerardi), Daniel’s childhood friend from Naples; mysterious and glamorous British ex-pat Genny (Jordan Alexandra); and Tancredi (Sam Haygarth), an eccentric Brit with a talent for espionage.
According to Williams, his character is “caught in limbo in his life . . . somebody who was just planning to drop in for a couple months . . . but he’s drawn in and stuck and staying there” as he “finds himself propelled into escapade after escapade.”
The combination of the gorgeous setting along with elements of action, comedy, drama and whodunit-style mystery strikes just the right tone, resulting in a new series that’s as entertaining as it is lovely to look at.
“You have really joyful, blissful, wonderful, spontaneous comedy and high stakes and tension and action,” Williams explained. “You have speed boats and motorcycles and Maseratis. And then you also have really heartfelt characters on the precipice in different ways and real threats. They’re things that keep you hooked. But a lightness, a real lightness, a real combination of Italian and British humour, which I really love.” Click here to watch trailer.
6. Marvel Zombies – Wednesday, September 24, Disney+ | Series Premiere
Set in an alternate timeline within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this new animated series takes place in a bleak future in which a mysterious virus has transformed most of the world’s population — including the Avengers — into ravenous zombies. A group of survivors discover the secret to ending the plague, but in order to do so must risk their lives by journeying through a dystopian hellscape, battling superpowered zombies along the way.
Those survivors include Xu Shang-Chi (voiced by Simu Liu) and pal Katy (Awkwafina); father-daughter duo Red Guardian and Yelena Belova (David Harbour and Florence Pugh); Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson); IronHeart (Dominique Thorne); U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell); Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) and more. Also in the mix is Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) — or, to be more precise, Ant-Man’s severed head, kept alive and preserved in a jar after being removed from his virus-infected body in order to prevent him from going full zombie.
7. The Golden Bachelor – Wednesday, September 24, City & ABC | Season Premiere
The spinoff that reinvigorated the Bachelor-verse returns to make us believe in love, at any age, all over again. Following inaugural Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner and Golden Bachelorette Joan Vassos is 66-year-old ex-footballer Mel Owens.
“My goal is to meet someone that I can enjoy life with,” Mel assured Entertainment Weekly. “Whatever comes from that, it comes from that. I had an open heart and an open mind, and without spoiling anything, it’s going to be good.”
In that same Entertainment Weekly article, showrunner Jess Castro mused on the fact that this season will be different simply by virtue of the fact that the original Golden Bachelor was a widower, while Mel is a divorcé. “In season one, there was a lot of conversation around loss. But that’s not the only thing that happens to you later in life. In season two, we are going to see what happens after divorce. We are going to go on a completely different journey with Mel than we were with Gerry.”
Among the ladies that Mel will court are: a luxury yacht sales representative, a former model, a retired IRS employee, a fitness professional, a librarian, a state park employee, a casino VIP host, a retired bomb tech and a longevity nurse.
8. Wayward – Thursday, September 25, Netflix | Series Premiere
First making a splash by creating and starring in acclaimed dramedy Feel Good, Canadian comic Mae Martin has distinguished themself as one of the most distinct, exciting artistic voices to emerge from our home and native land in the past decade.
For this latest endeavour, Martin takes a turn for the dramatic and the horrific — while still leaving a little room for the darkly comedic.
Wayward finds Martin playing Alex, a cop who moves to the small town of Tall Pines with his pregnant wife Laura (Sarah Gadon). At first, all seems idyllic, as Alex and Laura are gifted a picture-perfect, white-picket-fence home to start their new life. Alas, the town is also home to an institute for “troubled youth,” presided over by a mysterious headmistress named Evelyn (Toni Collette) whose therapy proves destructive to mind, body and soul. Soon enough, Alex realizes that beneath its dreamy exterior, Tall Pines is a nightmare.
As Martin told Tudum: “I often talk around adolescence [in my work] or I write characters who are processing their teens. It was such an intense time for me, and is for everyone, but I’ve always known I wanted to more directly dive into that time and all the visceral feelings of adolescence . . . I was a wayward teen in the early 2000s, and my best friend was sent to one of these troubled teen institutes when she was 16. She came back and had just the craziest stories about it.”
Adds Martin’s co-creator, Ryan Scott: “I wanted to explore why one generation always ends up hating the next. We were all teenagers once (or still are) and then we slowly transformed into adults who forget. Wayward is about this metamorphosis. About those of us that fight it and try to hold on to our teenage selves, and those that surrender to adulthood.” Click here to watch trailer.
9. Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything – Thursday, September 25, ABC
Trail-blazing, groundbreaking journalist Barbara Walters was a television ficture for decades, raking in huge ratings for her star-studded Oscar night specials and breaking the glass ceiling of network TV news before creating The View, the female-led daytime talk show that just entered its 29th season.
Following her 2022 death at age 93, filmmaker Jackie Jesko took a deep dive into Walters’ life and career with this feature-length documentary that combines archival footage, behind-the-scenes moments from some of her most iconic interviews and new sit-downs with the likes of Joy Behar, Connie Chung, Katie Couric and Andy Cohen.
Meanwhile, Jesko chronicles Walters’ climb to the top, exploring how her tenacity and demanding work ethic assisted her in overcoming the systemic sexism she constantly encountered as a woman in a male-dominated industry.
“We really wanted to make sure that we understood all angles of her,” director Jesko told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s not only her record-breaking insane television career in which she interviewed dictators, celebrities and all these different kinds of people with equal skill and publicity, it’s also who she was, what made her tick, and really her greater contribution to the industry.”
10. The Savant – Friday, September 26, Apple TV+ | Series Premiere
This Apple thriller — starring another Oscar winner — makes its debut this week.
Jessica Chastain both produces and stars in this eight-part series loosely inspired by a 2019 Cosmopolitan article about an unnamed ex-Marine/ex-cop who, even in retirement, kept fighting for justice, using her finely honed investigative skills to go undercover online, infiltrate hate groups and keep tabs on their activities — sounding the alarm if their vitriol ever turned to violence.
“I was really moved by this woman’s story,” Chastain told L’Officiel USA magazine. “This idea that she spends most of her time having to read these incredibly sexist and racist and horrible comments of hate and she has to kind of slip into a character to navigate those waters, but she’s doing it all for the greater good — I found that really compelling.” Click here to watch trailer.