After putting on your hazmat suit to go get a haircut or eating lunch at your favorite restaurant from underneath the salad bar’s sneeze guard, you’re going to want to disinfect and decompress with a relaxing TV sesh. Lucky for you, the week of TV is packed with great options to watch while you sit in a kiddie pool full of hand sanitizer.
This week’s picks include something that’s best watched with family members who can’t carry a tune, a showcase for a Marvel actor to prove he can do more than just get angry, a documentary featuring celebrities detailing their brushes with hallucinogens, and a comedy starring a wizard who goes to a nudist colony.
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The Disney Family Singalong Vol. 2
Sunday at 7/6c on ABC
In exchange for us giving them all our money, media companies have a responsibility to keep people sane during our extended lockdown, and no massive conglomerate has more pressure on it to do so than Disney. Last month, Disney tried out The Disney Family Singalong, featuring musical artists singing classic Mouse House tunes from their homes, while a bouncing Mickey head encouraged viewers at home to sing along with the lyrics on the screen. It was a huge hit, drawing over 10 million viewers, so obviously Disney is doing it again. This time around, performances include Idina Menzel and Ben Platt singing Aladdin‘s “A Whole New World,” Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner, Donald Glover, and Walter Russell III singing The Lion King‘s “Hakuna Matata,” and Jennifer Hudson and John Legend bringing the house down with the title song from Beauty and the Beast, and more. It will also stream on Disney+ the following day if you want another chance to hit those high notes.
I Know This Much Is True
Series premiere Sunday at 9/8c on HBO
Ruffalo ruffalo ruffalo Ruffalo ruffalo. By that grammatically correct sentence, I mean this HBO limited series, based on a very popular, very long 1998 novel by Wally Lamb, stars Mark Ruffalo in two roles. He plays Dominick and Thomas Birdsey, twin brothers with a complicated relationship. Thomas has schizophrenia, and Dominick has PTSD from taking care of him, serving in the Gulf War, and numerous other hardships. It’s written and directed by Derek Cianfrance, whose previous films include Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines, in case you weren’t sure if I Know This Much Is True was going to be really heavy. Cianfrance is one of the heaviest filmmakers in the game. –Liam Mathews
Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics
Monday on Netflix
In this documentary film, a bunch of comedians and celebrities — Sting, Nick Kroll, Ben Stiller, and many more — recall their experiences with hallucinogenic psychedelics (LSD, mushrooms, licking toads) and try to describe their trips. Their stories are enhanced with reenactments, costumes, and animation that will make you want to join in, so have a paper bag and some glue handy. For, uhhh, crafting.
How to Get Away With Murder
Series finale Thursday on ABC
The series finale of How to Get Away with Murder has a lot of questions to answer, not the least of which being whether Annalise (Viola Davis) is actually dead in the flash-forwards and how in the world Wes (Alfred Enoch) is alive and at her funeral. There’s also the small matter of whether or not everyone is going to jail for the dozen or so murders they’ve committed over the course of the series. Showrunner Pete Nowalk has promised all will be revealed by the end of the series, which should make for a pretty explosive series finale. –Lindsay MacDonald
The Great
Friday on Hulu
This lavish period piece features powdered wigs, British accents, and flowing wardrobes, but it ain’t a stuffy drama for your mama. Tony McNamara, the screenwriter of The Favourite, penned this satirical look at Catherine the Great (Elle Fanning) as she ascended to power in Russia, and it’s based on facts. Well, some of them, anyway. The rest is made up to make it fun and entertaining.
Magic for Humans Season 3
Friday on Netflix
If you need a little light to cut through all this darkness, Netflix’s Magic for Humans will *presto* make the day a little better. Comedian/host/warlock Justin Willman stars in this series that attempts to tie the wonder of magic with the universality of being human by performing illusions that highlight what it means to be alive. It’s part street magic and part sketch show, with some insane tricks that Willman promises are not the result of camera tricks or post-production cheating, just new updates on classic techniques from the olden days. As you can see in the trailer, Willman performs magic in the buff at a nudist colony, proving he’s got nothing up his sleeve (and hopefully anywhere else). This is one of my go-tos when I need to mentally escape.
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Elle Fanning, The Great
Source : TVGuide
