A few suggestions to get your through the TV viewing week.
Monday, June 22
UnREAL (Lifetime, 10 p.m.)
In the episode called Wife, a secret is revealed about the past of Everlasting’s star bachelor Adam (Freddie Stroma) and our antiheroine producer Rachel (Shiri Appleby, Girls) is challenged to come up with the ultimate romantic date on this behind-the-scenes look at a Bachelor-esque reality show. The cruelty!
Tuesday, June 23
Still Standing (CBC, 9:30 p.m.)
This new half-hour series follows Murdoch Mysteries star Jonny Harris to a string of small Canadian towns facing hard times. Harris immerses himself in town life to come up with a comedy performance based on what he finds. A comic love letter to small-town Canada. I believe a tissue might be of use. First stop, tonight, is Bamfield, B.C.
Wednesday, June 24
First Peoples (PBS, 9-11 p.m.)
How humans spread from Africa to the other continents, especially the Americas, is the subject of this documentary, which tracks how an underwater discovery in Mexico has shaken some theories of the arrival of the Clovis people. The first of five parts.
Thursday, June 25
Boom! (Fox, 8-9 p.m.)
Tom Papa is a fave at the Just for Laughs comedy festival, where he will host three shows this year, July 21, 23 and 25 at Théâtre la Chapelle. Thursdays on Fox, he will host, yes I read that right … he will host as contestants answer skill-testing questions and try to diffuse a bomb filled with something different every week. The goal: to keep the bomb from exploding in a shower of the goop de la semaine; success sends you home with clean hair and up to $500,000. In a tip of the hat to his favourite province, this first episode of Papa’s show is called It’s the Maple Syrup Bomb! Pray for failure.
Friday, June 26
Rosewater (The Movie Network, 9 p.m.)
Gael Garcia Bernal stars in this 2014 biopic, from Daily Show host Jon Stewart, about the Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, who was accused of being a spy and imprisoned for 118 days in Tehran. This is the directorial debut for Stewart, who’d had Bahari on his show before his arrest. A segment of that Daily Show visit was used as evidence in Bahari’s trial.
Saturday, June 27
What Happened Miss Simone? (Netflix, streaming from midnight Thursday)
In this new documentary from Liz Garbus (The Farm: Angola, USA and Bobby Fischer Against the World), 100 hours of newly unearthed audio tapes from three decades of interviews are used with archival photos and music recording to allow the great jazz singer Nina Simone to tell her own story. Sounds magnificent.
Sunday, June 28
Humans (AMC, 9 p.m.)
Admit it. The Internet of things freaks you out a little, what with your fridge telling your waterbed when to jiggle you awake, while virtually high-fiving the espresso machine into preparing a macchiato juuuuust the way you like it. Until they all turn on you. Kidding! But loop into that soon-to-be-real scenario a synth, aka a valet or companion or protector, depending on what you need. Me, I could use a butler who’s good with the cocktail shaker, remembers to buy toilet paper and doesn’t give me grief for buying the 3.5 per cent fat yogurt. Where was I? Right, then. Synths have arrived in the new deceptively titled AMC series Humans. But are these humanoid maids, body guards and elder companions to be trusted? We meet a scientist (William Hurt) who might have grown too close to his synth, a family hoping a new synth will save their marriage and two of the detectives charged with policing the synths. I’m sure they’ll all get along just fine.
Broadcast times are subject to change.
That’s it for me. Got a question? Spot an error? Find me, tell me. And as always, you would do well to check my daily Watchers picks on the Montreal Gazette’s smartphone app in the iTunes and PLAY stores. (It’s the blue one — the app, not the store.)
