From the return of creepy, crawly docuseries A Real Bug’s Life to an action-comedy starring Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz, we round up our top 10 shows to watch this week
1. Baylen Out Loud – Monday, January 13, TLC | Series Premiere
This new reality series introduces viewers to Baylen Dupree, a free-spirited 21-year-old living her best life while coping with Tourette syndrome, which causes her to experience involuntary vocal and motor tics. Because of her condition, Dupree is prone to profane outbursts that can often be shocking to those who don’t know her, but have become part of the fabric of her family life. “Having a sister with Tourette’s is very crazy,” says her younger sister, Sammy. “You don’t know if you’re gonna get slapped in the face, or get a hug.” Per TLC’s synopsis: “Baylen Out Loud will inspire audiences as they watch Baylen push herself outside her comfort zone in pursuit of the independent life she’s always dreamed of. After years of feeling self-conscious about her condition, Baylen is finally ready to live freely, embracing her authentic self and showing the world that Tourette doesn’t define her. With the support of her family and friends, Baylen is ready to stretch her wings.” Click here to watch trailer.
2. Ari Shaffir: America’s Sweetheart – Tuesday, January 14, Netflix
For his second Netflix special, the New York cut-up tries to “find the positive in gun violence, racism, censorship, political upheaval, gay rights, antisemitism and opioid abuse” — while also offering his cheerful spin on domestic terrorism and troubled rapper Kanye West.
3. A Real Bug’s Life – Wednesday, January 15, Disney+ | Season Premiere
Crawling back for a second season, this nature docuseries inspired by the hit Pixar movie demonstrates that the lives of actual insects are just as fascinating and dramatic as those of their animated counterparts. Along with narration from Awkwafina, the show boasts cutting-edge filming technology — including motion-controlled cameras, ultra-high-speed lenses, macro filming, photogrammetry, probe and microscope lenses and racing first-person drones. Viewers are taken on a globetrotting adventure, from the tropical beaches of Malaysia and the misty forests of the Smoky Mountains to the wetlands of Derbyshire and even all the way Down Under, where the tiniest of creatures face the biggest of challenges.
“Audiences will follow incredible stories of tiny heroes, exploring their daily dramas, unique quirks and remarkable superpowers,” notes the synopsis. Among the bugs featured this time out: peacock spiders that can see more colours than humans and can jump 40 times their body length; fireflies that create cold light with an enzyme called “luciferase;” and damselfly nymphs that can grab their prey in just 40 milliseconds, less than half the time it takes to blink an eye.
As a bonus, one of these five new episodes offers a behind-the-scenes look at what went into filming this epic series, spanning two seasons featuring 130 bug species across six continents with 450 experts and crew. Click here to watch trailer.
4. Double the Money – Thursday, January 16, CBC | Series Premiere
The latest season of Dragons’ Den just capped off, but fans of entrepreneurial reality competitions need not fret. Sliding right into its timeslot is this U.K. game show — which was previously available over the summer on streamer CBC Gem, but makes its Canadian broadcast debut Thursday night.
Host Sue Perkins (late of The Great British Baking Show) welcomes 13 pairs of business-savvy contestants into “The Vault,” where they’re given some cash and challenged to head out into the real world and double it. If they return with even £1 less than double, they are eliminated.
In episode one, they’re all afforded the fairly modest sum of £250 and have 36 hours to turn it into £500 through various entrepreneurial endeavours. As the season goes on, both the money and the time limits increase until, in the finale, they have four weeks to turn £10,000 into £20,000.
It’s an eclectic array of competitors — from sex therapists and social media influencers to mother-daughter duos and twin sisters, and the method of maximizing profit is left entirely up to the teams themselves.
In tonight’s premiere, per a press release from U.K. network Channel 4, we see everything from “cake sales to cocktail classes, from buying and selling flowers to flogging gaudy glasses. In the Midlands, father-and-son team Dale and Harvey are opening a carwash, but a poor choice of location might be their undoing, bringing past frictions in their relationship to the fore. Meanwhile, in Liverpool, competitive pub landladies Cath and Lynn are trying to double their money by selling picnic boxes for a punchy £15 each. Best friends Radhika and Seema think the key to a fortune is an immigration-themed walking tour of London’s East End — but at £25 a ticket, can they find enough customers?”
5. XO, Kitty – Thursday, January 16, Netflix | Season Premiere
Teenaged matchmaker Kitty Song-Covey (Vancouver’s own Anna Cathcart) returns for a second semester at the Korean Independent School of Seoul (KISS), as this spinoff of the Netflix’s To All the Boys romantic comedy films continues expanding its universe.
As fans will recall, season one saw the American high-schooler studyin’ and snugglin’ abroad — ultimately realizing that, much as she may have viewed herself as an expert in matters of the heart, she still had a lot to learn when it came to love. On that note, her long-distance romance with boyfriend Dae (Choi Min-young) came to a bittersweet end last year, as Kitty’s horizons broadened — thrillingly and confusingly. “By the end, she’s like, ‘I literally have no idea about anything. I am figuring it out. There are so many new people now that are a possibility,’” Cathcart told Tudum after that first season. “To see her world expand is a huge, huge difference and will be a really fun thing to follow.”
Added co-showrunner Jenny Han: “I write so many romantic stories about young people. Everyone wants the ‘happily ever after’ and to feel like two people are together forever — but they are really young. What was exciting about Kitty’s story [is] that it shows you can really explore different people for different times of your life.”
On that note, in season two, as Kitty returns to KISS, she’s looking to leave the epic star-crossed drama behind in favour of some casual dating. Alas, things do get a tad dramatic after “a letter from her mother’s past sets her on a wild journey, and new faces at KISS bring change. As secrets unravel and bonds are tested, Kitty will learn that life, family and love are more complicated than she ever imagined.”
Speaking of “the past,” To All the Boys breakout Noah Centineo will cameo this year, as Kitty gets a visit from her sister’s studly beau, Peter.
6. Unstoppable – Thursday, January 16, Prime Video
When They See Us Emmy-winner Jharrel Jerome stars in this acclaimed biopic of Anthony Robles, who — despite being born with only one leg — pushed himself to become an elite, championship-winning NCAA wrestler. Jennifer Lopez co-stars as his mother, Judy, along with Michael Peña and Don Cheadle.
7. Fake – Thursday, January 16, Super Channel Fuse | Series Premiere
Based on the harrowing real-life experiences of reporter Stephanie Wood, this Australian thriller casts Asher Keddie (The Flowers of Alice Hart) as Birdie Bell, a magazine writer who thinks she’s met the man of her dreams when a dating app pairs her up with Joe Burt (The Lord of the Rings’ David Wenham), a rancher who shares her love of literature, and seems ready to build a new life with Birdie. Eager to believe in this apparent fairy-tale romance come true, our protagonist’s journalistic instincts detect something off about Joe.
As their courtship is undermined by a “dramatic ex-wife, medical crises and business emergencies,” Birdie begins to realize that, beneath Mister Right’s beguiling façade, there is an “intricate web of lies and deception.”
8. Back in Action – Friday, January 17, Netflix
In April of 2023, Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx suffered a medical emergency while shooting a movie in Georgia, sending him to the hospital and, indeed, death’s door. Thankfully, the actor recovered and, in a recent Netflix comedy special called What Had Happened Was . . ., opened up about the specifics of his malady — sharing with audiences that he’d suffered a brain bleed that led to a stroke, and a period of incapacitation that lasted for almost a month.
Having finally heard the full story about a health crisis which was shrouded in mystery for almost two years, on Friday we get to see the movie the man was working on when that crisis hit.
The now-perfectly-titled Back in Action casts Foxx as Matt, who, along with his wife Emily (Cameron Diaz), was once an elite secret agent. But now, the duo are just your average suburban mom and dad.
“We’re on a mission,” Diaz told Netflix’s Tudum, “and we take this opportunity where people might think we’re dead, to disappear off the face of the planet and start a new life and raise our family.”
Of course, it’s not long before the sins/nemeses of the past resurface — forcing a reluctant return to the spy game. And indeed, much as Back in Action may seem like the exact right title for Foxx’s comeback, it also applies to Diaz, who, before this, had been in retirement since 2014! Click here to watch trailer.
9. Roy Wood Jr.: Lonely Flowers – Friday, January 17, Disney+
The former Daily Show satirist releases a new special that explores the isolation of modern life — and the “culture full of guns, protests, rude employees, self-checkout lanes and sex parties” that pushes us all away from true connection.
10. The Couple Next Door – Friday, January 17, Starz1 & Starz2 | Series Premiere
The latest season of Outlander is nearing its end, but Scottish heartthrob Sam Heughan will remain a fixture on your screens, courtesy of this psychosexual thriller.
The six-part limited series opens on schoolteacher Evie (Poldark’s Eleanor Tomlinson) and her partner Pete (How to Get Away With Murder’s Alfred Enoch) — young U.K. lovebirds who move into an upscale neighbourhood to start a family. Not only do they have a gorgeous new home, their neighbours aren’t too hard on the eyes either. That would be traffic cop Danny (Heughan) and his glamorous wife Becka (Arrow alum Jessica De Gouw). The two couples become fast friends, and life is all Champagne and roses . . . until a combination of tragedy and sordid attraction leads them to “become sexually entangled in a way that will change their lives forever.”
Teasing the show in an interview with U.K. network Channel 4, Heughan said: “Every episode, especially episode three, things really start to turn on their heads. It is sexy, it is dark, it’s a thriller, there’s relationships, so it’s kind of everything in one.”