From the long-awaited return of King of the Hill to a new season of Tim Burton’s Addams Family spinoff Wednesday, we round up our top 10 shows to watch this week
1. Providence Falls: Chance of a Lifetime – Saturday, August 2, W Network
Another epic romance with a dash of time travel comes courtesy of the good folks at Hallmark.
Based on Jude Deveraux and Tara Sheets’ novels, Providence Falls is a three-movie event unrolling over the next three Saturdays. Tonight, we open in 1844 Ireland, where con man Liam (Lachlan Quarmby) falls for humble squire’s daughter Cora (Katie Stevens) — disrupting the cosmic path she was meant to take. A couple lifetimes later, in North Carolina, the “Angels” try to set things right, tasking a still-smitten Liam to be the reincarnated Cora’s guardian matchmaker, setting the girl up with her true soulmate.
Stay tuned to W for the next two weekends to catch the sequels: An Impossible Promise and Thief of Fate. Click here to watch trailer.
2. The Great Food Truck Racer – Sunday, August 3, Food | Season Premiere
Host Tyler Florence welcomes nine new teams of food truckers to put the pedal to the palate in hopes of scoring a US$50,000 prize.
In tonight’s two-hour season 18 premiere, trucks from across the United States — including New Jersey’s Burger Walla, Oregon’s Fat Kid Food Co. and Colorado’s Rising Tiger — roll up to the starting line in Savannah, Georgia, to kick off an eight-city race. Their first challenge comes via the “world’s funniest baseball team,” the viral-sensation Savannah Bananas. Naturally, it’s a fruit-themed affair that begins with a hectic sales day and ends in a truly shocking elimination.
The weeks to come will subject our competitors to “no-mercy judging from guest chefs Kardea Brown and Rodney Scott in Charleston, South Carolina; a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dash around Darlington Raceway and cook for NASCAR’s Mamba Smith and Todd Gilliland; and a secret surveillance challenge in Newport News, Virginia.” That leads to a high-octane finale in which “the top two teams compete in a sales frenzy to feed the sailors of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier in port at Naval Station Norfolk.”
Said Betsy Ayala, Food’s head of content, in a release: “This season’s trucks drew massive crowds and excitement in each city — viewers are in for a fantastic culinary ride!”
3. King of the Hill – Monday, August 4, Disney+ | Season Premiere
The comedy canon of Mike Judge is as eclectic as it is impressive, including cartoon hit Beavis and Butt-Head, live-action features Office Space and Idiocracy (which, these days, could be mistaken for a documentary) and HBO’s Silicon Valley.
However, it’s fair to say that Judge’s most beloved creation has been King of the Hill, the animated sitcom focusing on Texas propane purveyor Hank Hill, wife Peggy and son Bobby. After enjoying a 13-season run that concluded a decade-and-a-half ago, Judge and series co-creator Greg Daniels (who went on to The Office, Parks and Recreation and other series) are gifting fans with a 14th season, streaming on Disney+.
This new iteration of King of the Hill is marking the passage of time, with Hank (voiced by Judge) and wife Peggy (Kathy Najimy) returning to Arlen following several years spent in Saudi Arabia, where Hank worked a propane job in order to build up a retirement nest egg. “Where it clicked for me was when we started talking about aging the characters,” Judge said during a panel at the ATX Television Festival. “Because it’s such a grounded, realistic show, it just felt right that they would be older.”
In that vein, Bobby (Pamela Adlon) is all grown up, employed as a sushi chef. Also returning are the Hills’ neighbours, Bill Dauterive (Stephen Root), Boomhauer (Judge) and conspiracy-loving Dale Gribble (the latter now played by Toby Huss after the recent death of voice actor Johnny Hardwick, while Laotian neighbour Kahn, who’d been voiced by Huss, is now played by Ronny Chieng).
As Judge explained, Hank is irked by the changes Arlen has undergone during his absence. “He comes back and there’s a bike lane and a scooter lane,” the creator mused. “He’s looking at all the stuff that’s happened in the last 15 years, and there’s a whole world of things that would annoy Hank.” Click here to watch trailer.
4. Atomic People – Monday, August 4, WTVS & KCTS
The decision by the United States to drop atomic bombs on two Japanese cities — Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later — was among the most momentous and destructive in human history. Now, 80 years later, this unique film gathers the testimony of some of the last “Hibakusha” survivors of those two fateful attacks, before their voices are lost forever. With an average age of 85, most Hibakusha were children when the bombs hit, and their personal accounts are combined with archival footage to tell the stories of this vanishing group, the only people to have survived the horrors of a nuclear assault.
5. The Las Culturistas Culture Awards – Tuesday, August 5, Bravo
An offshoot of their wildly popular and downright bonkers Las Culturistas podcast, SNL cast member Bowen Yang and comedian Matt Rogers are bringing their shtick to Bravo as hosts of the first-ever edition of the Culture Awards. Devoted to celebrating the zeitgeist’s most iconic and consequential moments of the year, the gala features more than 100 crazy categories, along with live musical performances and celebrity guests. Those categories, by the way, are about as out there as it gets, such as the “Reneé Rapp Award for Power in Lesbianism,” with one of the nominees listed as “Probably your grandma even though she was married to your grandpa for 50 years.” Then there’s the “Artist of the Millennium” category, with nominees including Miss Piggy, Pamela Anderson, Jack Antonoff, Mulan and Betty Boop-inspired Broadway musical BOOP!
6. Platonic – Wednesday, August 6, Apple TV+ | Season Premiere
Hot off earning a slew of Emmy nominations for Hollywood satire The Studio, B.C.’s own Seth Rogen returns for season two of his other Apple TV+ series. For the uninitiated, Platonic tracks the charmingly messy saga of man-child beer brewer Will (Rogen) and lawyer turned stay-at-home mom Sylvia (Rose Byrne) — two estranged best pals who reconnect in their 40s, swiftly becoming thick as thieves again in a way that reinvigorates both of their lives . . . while causing utter chaos for just about everyone else.
As the new season opens, Will seems to finally have his act together, prepping to tie the knot with his girlfriend Jenna (Rachel Rosenbloom). And given her new career as an event planner, who better than Sylvia to bring their holy matrimony to fruition? But, if you’ll recall, the conflict that drove Will and Sylvia apart years ago was her disapproval of his first wife . . . and as we see in Wednesday’s premiere, it’s not long before some fresh friction arises between Will’s bride and his best friend. Worse yet? It turns out Will himself may not be ready to take the plunge again, leading to serious complications for not only his personal life but his professional one, given that Jenna is also his boss at restaurant mega-chain Johnny 66. Meanwhile, Sylvia’s husband Charlie (Luke Macfarlane) chases his longtime dream of competing on Jeopardy! — with truly unexpected, life-altering results.
On that note, keep an eye out for Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings in a cameo, while other season-two guest stars include Saturday Night Live greats Beck Bennett, Kyle Mooney and Aidy Bryant.
All told, Platonic remains a light yet thoughtful riff on the complexities of friendship, anchored by the chemistry between its two leads — and, in particular, an indelible performance from the endlessly versatile, irresistibly goofy Ms. Byrne. Click here to watch trailer.
7. Wednesday – Wednesday, August 6, Netflix | Season Premiere
After teaming up on the 2024 Beetlejuice sequel, director Tim Burton and star Jenna Ortega return to the spooky Netflix series that first brought them together: Addams Family spinoff Wednesday. Debuting in 2022, season one saw teen outcast Wednesday Addams enrol at Nevermore Academy, where she stumbled into a murder mystery tied to sins from the magical school’s past. As co-creator Miles Millar teased to Tudum: “Nothing is what it seems in season two. Wednesday goes into this season thinking she knows Nevermore. It’s the first time she’s returned to a school willingly. But as soon as she gets back, nothing happens that she’s expecting. She thinks she’s going to be in control, that she knows where all the bodies are buried . . . and she doesn’t.”
After popping up occasionally in season one, the rest of the Addams clan will have a larger role this semester, including mum Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), dad Gomez (Luis Guzmán) and the illustrious arrival of Grandmama, played by Absolutely Fabulous’ Joanna Lumley.
“The world that they’ve created here, it looks sensational,” Lumley gushed in a chat with Tudum. “It’s gothic, sometimes quite bone-chilling, but it’s kind of playful.”
The first four episodes premiere this Wednesday, followed by four more on Wednesday, September 3. Click here to watch trailer.
8. Ralph Barbosa: Planet Bosa – Friday, August 8, Disney+
A plucky young standup out of Dallas, Texas, Ralph Barbosa — ironically enough — got a big boost in fame after comedy legend George Lopez, in a 2023 episode of his OMG, Hi! podcast, said: “Nobody knows who that motherf***er is! Why are you saying his name?” when guest Steve Treviño brought up Mexican-American comics at large.
Lopez has since apologized, but Barbosa didn’t need Lopez’s shade to make a name for himself. He was already on the rise via appearances on The Tonight Show, various standup showcases and a solo 2023 Netflix special titled Cowabunga. It’s a trend that continues now with his second special, Disney+’s Planet Bosa.
Shot at San Diego’s Balboa Theatre, per Deadline you can expect Mr. Barbosa to quip about “dating, controlling his temper, working on cars and his views on current events.”
9. Plan B – Friday, August 8, CBC Gem | Season Premiere
The homegrown sci-fi anthology returns with season three, introducing viewers to another traumatized protagonist who’s given an unexpected chance to skip back in time and change the past.
Abigail Walker (Painkiller alum Carolina Bartczak) is a popular morning show host who devotes her show — and her whole life, really — to championing issues like women’s rights. Her hard-charging approach has led to a lot of professional success and breakthroughs for her chosen causes, but it’s also split her family apart. She’s separated from her husband Nick (The Porter’s Arnold Pinnock), who now lives a few doors down the street with his new partner. And her teen daughter Lucy (newcomer Arianna Shannon) is buckling under the weight of her perfect mom’s expectations and overbearing parenting.
Then one day, Abigail comes home to find Lucy has downed a bottle of pills and taken her own life. Devastated, she spends the next few days stumbling around in a haze of pain, shock and guilt, wondering how she could have prevented this tragedy that she still can’t quite bring herself to accept. Acceptance becomes all the more difficult when a former talk show guest approaches her with the card for a service called Plan B — which she claims could bring Lucy back. Skeptical at first, Abbie can’t help but call. That’s when the show’s now-iconic van, with its bleach-blonde twin drivers, rolls up and Abigail is suddenly, miraculously reliving the hours leading up to her daughter’s suicide.
Yet as with every season of creator Jean-François Asselin’s mind-bending character study, our heroine finds that redeeming past sins isn’t so simple — and every “solution” just creates another problem for her loved ones. In the end, Abigail must confront some hard truths about herself before she can “save” anyone else.
10. Outlander: Blood of My Blood – Friday, August 8, Starz 1 & Starz 2 | Series Premiere
The era-crossed romance of Second World War nurse Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Scottish Highlander Jamie (Sam Heughan) will return for an eighth and final season later this year. A premiere date has yet to be announced, but in the meantime, we have this new prequel, which delves into the equally fraught — and equally steamy — love story of their respective parents.
Outlander: Blood of My Blood is, like its predecessor, set in 18th-century Scotland, where Jamie’s eventual mom Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater) and dad Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy) are inching their way towards a fateful coupling when they suddenly cross paths with Claire’s eventual parents, Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield) and Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine). The latter lovebirds met during the First World War and were thought to have died in a car crash in 1910 — yet it turns out were actually sent on a time trip of their own via the same magic stones of Craigh na Dun that will one day whisk their daughter away to her destiny.
Note that while the original Outlander remains on W Network in Canada, this spinoff will air on Starz. Click here to watch trailer.