From edgy new comedy English Teacher to a star-studded murder mystery starring Nicole Kidman, we round up our top 10 shows to watch this week
1. BBQ High – Sunday, September 1, Magnolia | Series Premiere
Anyone who’s been to Texas knows they take their barbecue seriously, and this new docuseries follows a group of teenage Texans as they battle it out in a unique culinary competition in which students from high schools all over the state fire up their grills to find out who’s barbecue is the best of the best.
2. The Chosen – Sunday, September 1, KTLA | Season Premiere
Back for its fourth season, The Chosen continues to dramatize the life of Jesus Christ (Jonathan Roumie). As series creator Dallas Jenkins told The Hollywood Reporter, he envisioned a series modelled after The Wire, telling the story of Christ by focusing on supporting characters and viewpoints. “I thought, ‘Man, this could be so cool. Whoever does this is going to look really smart,’” he said. It’s been an amazing journey so far; this season raked in more than $60 million during its theatrical run earlier this year — the first time an entire season of a TV series was shown in cinemas.
“Clashing kingdoms. Rival rulers. The enemies of Jesus close in while His followers struggle to keep up, leaving Him to carry the burden alone,” reads the season’s synopsis. “Threatened by the reality of Jesus’ growing influence, religious leaders do the unthinkable — ally with their Roman oppressors. As the seeds of betrayal are planted and opposition to Jesus’ message turns violent, He’s left with no alternative but demand his followers rise up.” To watch trailer, click here.
3. English Teacher – Monday, September 2, FX Canada | Series Premiere
Abbott Elementary raised the bar when it’s come to classroom comedies, and another worthy addition to the genre arrives with FX’s English Teacher.
Brian Jordan Alvarez stars as Evan Marquez, a high school teacher in Austin, Texas, whose stubborn refusal to back down from his principles frequently lands him in hot water with his school’s principal, Grant Moretti (Enrico Colantoni). Evan receives some unwelcome news when Grant informs him that he’s being investigated over a long-dormant incident that’s resurfaced, in which some students saw him kissing his boyfriend Malcolm (Jordan Firstman), a former teacher at the same school. Realizing he’s now under increased scrutiny, Evan vows to avoid relationships with other faculty members.That strategy, however, goes out the window when an attraction sparks with new teacher Harry (Langston Kerman).
Meanwhile, Evan depends upon the support of his fellow faculty members: Gwen (Stephanie Koenig), the history teacher who tends to see the best in people, even when she shouldn’t; PE teacher Markie Hillridge (Sean Patton), whose gruff and abrasive exterior conceals a keen understanding of human nature; and guidance counsellor Rick (Carmen Christopher), who sees himself as an entrepreneur first, educator second.
According to Alvarez (also the series’ creator, writer and director), setting the show in Austin — a liberal oasis within the predominantly conservative state of Texas — provides the opportunity to comedically explore both positions. “I think the show lives on the edge and we have fun there,” he says. “The show really thrives in the grey area . . . when it’s sort of asking these questions and answering them in a variety of ways and having the characters discuss them.” To watch trailer, click here.
4. The Chicano Squad – Monday, September 2, A&E
During the 1970s, the crime rate in Houston, Texas, was out of control and getting higher by the day. A solution arose in 1979, when top brass at the Houston Police Department launched a groundbreaking initiative, creating a hand-picked team of bilingual patrol officers plucked from their beats and suddenly promoted to detectives to form the first all-Latin homicide unit dedicated to tackling Houston’s soaring rate of Latin murder cases. Dubbed “The Chicano Squad” by the Houston media, these men went on to earn the trust of the community and the department, becoming one of the most highly decorated law enforcement units in the history of the city. Meanwhile, the officers faced some major hurdles, including unchecked racism and discrimination at all levels of the department, a corrupt police union, an immigrant community that is inherently distrustful of the police, and the fact that none of them had any prior homicide experience, forcing them to learn on the job. However, the experiment was deemed an immediate success; after just 90 days, the Chicano Squad successfully cleared 80 per cent of its cases, ultimately revolutionizing the Houston P.D. and providing the inspiration for similar squads in other parts of the U.S. This two-part doc (concluding on Tuesday) tells the story through firsthand accounts of original squad members and those impacted by their work.
5. Phil Wang: Wang in There Baby – Tuesday, September 3, Netflix
The British-Malaysian standup treads the boards at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London, waxing comedic on such universally relatable and intriguing topics as reheated rice, the importance of fact-checking and octopus intelligence.
6. Outlast – Wednesday, September 4, Netflix | Season Premiere
A harrowing reality battle dubbed by The Guardian as “a brilliant survival show that ends up in full-on Lord of the Flies wildness” returns for its second excursion into both the Alaskan tundra and the depths of the human soul.
Sixteen survivalists are dropped, Alone-style, into Little Duncan Bay, Alaska. As with Alone, they have minimal supplies with which to weather the “freezing temperatures, constant wetness, limited sunlight and few fresh-water sources.” Unlike Alone, to win that million-dollar prize, they’ll have to work together!
Once again, we start with four teams of four. But over the course of the season, amidst the unbearable elements and devious gameplay twists, each team and each player can choose to combine forces, switch sides and leave their cohorts out in the cold. If any of the cast-offs can’t convince a new team to let them join within one day, they’re eliminated.
Naturally, like all reality series, Outlast has been accused of being “scripted.” Addressing that point in an interview with Screent Rant, season-one co-winner Nick Radner chuckled: “It would be easier if it had been! This was real and raw. The show had a life of its own, and was constantly evolving within itself by nature, and also by design. I lost 42 lbs. during the shooting of Outlast . . . If it was scripted, I would have demanded a Monster Rehab and a Snickers bar!”
7. The Perfect Couple – Thursday, September 5, Netflix | Series Premiere
This darkly comedic murder mystery based on “queen of the summer beach read” Elin Hilderbrand’s 2018 novel whisks us away to an ultra-posh oceanside estate in Nantucket. Here, bestselling author Greer Garrison Winbury (Nicole Kidman) and her husband Tag (Liev Schreiber) are set to host the wedding of their son Benji (Billy Howle) to a gal named Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson). Alas, as the “I Dos” approach, the usual wedding-day hustle and bustle is amped up, when a corpse washes ashore. As police chief Dan Carter (Mayor of Kingstown’s Michael Beach) digs into the case, he dredges up this wealthy family’s myriad secrets — along the way discovering that “every wedding is a minefield and no couple is perfect.”
The star-studded cast/suspect list also includes Dakota Fanning as the groom’s sister-in-law, The White Lotus breakout Meghann Fahy as the maid of honour and Midsommar’s Jack Reynor as the groom’s shady older brother.
The series is directed by Emmy-winner Susanne Bier, who previously worked with Kidman on another buzzy murder mystery — HBO’s The Undoing. To watch trailer, click here.
8. Whose Line Is It Anyway? – Friday, September 6, KTLA | Season Premiere
Amidst all the programming shakeups at The CW lately, one of the network’s longest-running series remains miraculously uncancelled, as Aisha, Ryan, Colin and Wayne return with another season of off-the-cuff hilarity.
9. Rebel Ridge – Friday, September 6, Netflix
Among the most exciting auteurs of indie thrillers working today, American writer-director Jeremy Saulnier has been dormant for the better part of six years now. Thankfully, the maker of Blue Ruin, Green Room and Hold the Dark returns this week with another crime flick that uses a typically “trashy” premise to unravel the human condition.
The Underground Railroad’s Aaron Pierre stars as Terry Richmond, a former Marine who rides into the seemingly sleepy little ’burgh of Shelby Springs to bail his cousin out of jail. It’s an innocuous errand that, alas, quickly brings him into conflict with shady local police chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson) — who flexs the iron grip he has on this community by seizing Terry’s life savings.
Unleashing his particular set of skills, Terry teams up with courthouse clerk Summer McBride (Dr. Death’s AnnaSophia Robb) to exact justice for himself, his family and a town that’s been under the boot of corruption for too long. But just how far is our troubled hero willing to go to complete his mission?
“I am very interested in examining corrupt systems — how they are built and what people tell themselves to disavow or justify their own part in them,” Saulnier said in an interview with Tudum. “For this movie, I wanted to tap into how the rest of us react to said systems, how infuriating they can be — from corrupt politicians down to the endless loop of a customer-service call gone wrong. There’s action and violence for sure, but it was fun to explore weaponizing words in a narrative sense, to make dialogue scenes play like high-stakes set pieces — to go more terrestrial and more grounded in order to play up an emotional charge that can resonate even more onscreen with two characters facing off verbally than when the pyrotechnics start exploding.”
10. Elisabeth Rioux: Unfiltered – Friday, September 6, Prime Video
The so-called, oft-derided “influencers” of the world are an easy target in today’s cultural landscape, with many folks viewing them as lazy kids who rake in millions of followers and dollars just for messing around on Instagram.
Yet that’s certainly not the case with Québécois phenom Elisabeth Rioux. Because while she is, indeed, best known for her social media posts featuring herself and other scantily clad models, often in exotic locales, Rioux is also the wunderkind founder of Hoaka — the fashion company that makes the bikinis shown off in her viral clips. Now, the college dropout turned revered business guru is inviting fans deeper into her wild world than ever before via a biographical reality series.
As the press release puts it: “After starting her own swimwear brand at just 17, she went on to become one of Canada’s most successful businesswomen and content creators. But who’s the real woman behind the brand? Elisabeth Rioux: Unfiltered is an inside look at the ups and downs the 26-year-old entrepreneur faces running a swimwear empire with her eclectic family.”
No doubt, some of that pressure stems from criticism at using her steamy photos to rack up clicks. But even there, Rioux is an innovator. “From the beginning of Hoaka, it was always really important to include everyone,” she told The Montreal Gazette in 2021. On that note, the company makes it a point to promote a diverse definition of beauty via customer-submitted images modelling their products, while Rioux uses her own beauty to “attract the eye of the person who always looks at the standard, and then that person will follow me, and I bring them a new vision. I don’t want to promote diversity to a public that already likes diversity, I want to attract the public that isn’t attracted to it and bring them a new vision.”