From the GOAT roast of Tom Brady to a Victoria-set crime drama starring Oscar-nominee Lily Gladstone, we round up our top 10 shows to watch this week
1. Katt Williams: Woke Foke – Saturday, May 4, Netflix
The annual “Netflix Is a Joke” festival rolls along with a new special from ever-explosive standup Katt Williams. It will be the second-ever live-streamed special in Netflix history. We don’t have any idea what he’ll be quipping about just yet, but expect to be provoked.
2. Star Wars: Tales of the Empire – Saturday, May 4, Disney+ | Season Premiere
Making its debut on May 4, a.k.a. Star Wars Day, the latest entry into the franchise is an animated anthology series, consisting of six shorts. Jumping around in time, Tales of the Empire follows the parallel journeys of two female characters as they navigate the ruthless Galactic Empire during different eras: vengeful and villainous Morgan Elsbeth (voiced by Diana Lee Inosanto), who forges a wicked alliance with Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen); and Barriss Offee (Meredith Salenger), a former Jedi who drifted to the dark side of the Force. Harry Potter alum Jason Issacs voices the Grand Inquisitor.
3. The Greatest Roast of All Time: Tom Brady – Sunday, May 5, Netflix
In this livestreamed event, part of the “Netflix is a Joke” comedy festival, seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady will be roasted by friends and frenemies, led by the Roastmaster General himself, Jeff Ross, with Kevin Hart as host.
4. The Tattooist of Auschwitz – Sunday, May 5, Showcase | Season Premiere
A romance set in one of history’s most infamous pits of despair, 2018 novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz — based on the actual experiences of Holocaust survivor Lale Sokolov — became an international bestseller. Now, it comes to TV with a six-part series.
As the Nazis lay siege to Europe, Lale (Jonah Hauer-King), a Slovakian Jew, is shipped off to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he’s given the job of branding his fellow prisoners with their I.D. numbers. One of the people he tattoos is Gita (Anna Próchniak), who turns out to be his soulmate. Amidst all the horrors to come, these young lovers cling to one another, struggling to keep hope alive in the most hopeless of places. But that’s only half the story.
Jumping back and forth from the 1940s to the early 2000s, Yellowjackets’ Melanie Lynskey plays New Zealand writer Heather Morris — real-life author of the aforementioned novel — who meets with an aging Lale (Harvey Keitel) at his post-war home in Australia to record the bittersweet swirl of memories which only seem to become more hauntingly vivid as Lale nears the end of his life.
5. Under the Bridge – Wednesday, May 9, Disney+ | Series Premiere
This four-part true-crime drama follows a cop (Lily Gladstone) and a reporter (Riley Keough) as they dig into the case of B.C. teen Reena Virk (Vritika Gupta) after she’s viciously, senselessly murdered by her peers at a party beneath Victoria’s Gorge Bridge.
6. Dark Matter – Wednesday, May 8, Apple TV+ | Series Premiere
One of the most celebrated science fiction novelists writing today, Blake Crouch saw his Wayward Pines trilogy adapted in 2015 with a Fox series that, despite only lasting two seasons, earned abundant praise from critics.
Now, another of his books is on its way to TV. But this time, Crouch is not only the author of the source material, he’s literally running the show.
Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Joel Edgerton stars as Jason Dessen, a Chicago physics professor who, while walking home one night, is kidnapped and wakes up in an alternate dimension wherein his life took a very different turn. The twist: Jason’s “kidnapper” is actually another version of himself, who decided to swap realities. Now, our hero must navigate an array of paths not taken to get back to his own world, his wife (Jennifer Connelly) and his son (Oakes Fegley).
7. Mother of the Bride – Thursday, May 9, Netflix
Not directlly connected to (though no doubt inspired by) the Steve Martin movies or their Spencer Tracy-led predecessor, this new rom-com casts Brooke Shields as Lana — a woman whose life is upended when her daughter (iCarly’s Miranda Cosgrove) gets back from travelling abroad and announces she’s in love. Not only that, she’s getting married . . . in a month . . . in Thailand.
It’s a lot to process, no doubt. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It turns out, the boy of her little girl’s dreams is also the son of the man (Benjamin Bratt) who broke Lana’s heart years ago. Uncomfortable reunions and unlikely romances ensue.
Behind the camera, Mother of the Bride is sporting a pair of genre vets, having been penned by Robin Bernheim (The Princess Switch) and directed by Mark Waters (Mean Girls, Freaky Friday).
8. Pretty Little Liars: Summer School – Thursday, May 9, Crave | Series Premiere
Season two arrives with a new subtitle but the same soapy intrigue, as our Li’l Liars brave both summer school and a new killer who may or may not have a connection to the notorious “A.” Per TVLine, it’s an instalment that channels Midsommar and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
9. The Goat – Thursday, May 9, Prime Video | Series Premiere
From pro sports to reality TV, who doesn’t love an all-star game?
Amazon, at least, clearly does. That’s why they’ve gathered no less than 14 of the reality genre’s most memorable, backstab-happy personalities for the ultimate competition to prove, at last, which of them is the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) in a loopy battle featuring 20 challenges and $200,000 for the victor.
Those reality luminaries include: Tayshia Adams (The Bachelor), Joe Amabile (The Bachelor, Dancing With the Stars), Kristen Doute (Vanderpump Rules), Reza Farahan (Shahs of Sunset), CJ Franco (FBoy Island), Wendell Holland (Survivor), Teck Holmes (The Real World, The Challenge), Justin Johnson/Alyssa Edwards (RuPaul’s Drag Race), Paola Mayfield (90 Day Fiancé), Da’Vonne Rogers (Big Brother, The Challenge), Joey Sasso (The Circle, Perfect Match), Jason Smith (Holiday Baking Championship), Lauren Speed-Hamilton (Love Is Blind) and Jill Zarin (The Real Housewives of New York City).
As the press release teases, they’ll all be “earning and breaking one another’s trust along the way.” What’s more, “new sides of longtime favourites will be on display.”
Meanwhile, your appropriately snarky master of ceremonies will be comedian Daniel Tosh, erstwhile host of raunchy clip show Tosh.0.
10. Bodkin – Thursday, May 9, Netflix | Series Premiere
True-crime podcasts (and even television adaptations of true-crime podcasts) are rampant across the pop-cultural landscape. This new series looks to unpack, lampoon and pay homage to that trend.
The story centres on three unlikely sleuths who are teamed up and sent to the small Irish town of Bodkin, where an unsolved disappearance during the annual Samhain fall festival years prior still looms over the community. Grizzled newspaper reporter Dove (Siobhán Cullen) grew up in Bodkin — which is why she really doesn’t want to go back. Alas, her editor demands she babysit an annoyingly chipper U.S. podcaster Gilbert (Saturday Night Live great Will Forte) and his eager young assistant Emmy (Trying’s Robyn Cara).
The last thing Dove expects to find here is a real story, but soon enough her journalistic instincts are tweaked by run-ins with some shady townsfolk who clearly have something to hide.
With no one to rely upon except her misfit companions, Dove, Gilbert and Emmy soon find their clashing approaches to storytelling actually mesh quite well — forming a triumvirate of tenacity, empathy and intellect that may just get to the bottom of this mystery. Along the way, we also find that each of our protagonists — whether stone-faced or smiley — is carrying a painful secret of their own.
The show is described by Netflix’s Tudum as “funny, though not a comedy; and a true crime story, though entirely fictional” which ultimately “celebrates Irish culture, journalism and self-discovery.” Creator Jez Scharf further teased that Bodkin is “about the stories that we tell in general, and the stories that we tell ourselves and what violence can we do to ourselves and others . . . My personal interest as a writer is always in absurdity, really — in the idea that life is broadly absurd. Things that are sad are often funny, and vice versa.”