What to Watch This Week: April 9-14

From documentaries to reality TV to Netflix exclusives, we round up our top 10 shows to watch this week

 

1. Little Big Shots – Sunday, April 9, 8 p.m., City & NBC

We’re always impressed with the amazing kids on this series, but this week’s collection of tiny performers goes above and beyond. They include a seven-year-old dancer, a young gospel singer, twin boxers, and an 11-year-old pro knife-thrower that would have any judge thinking twice before putting him on the chopping block.

 

2. Homeland – Sunday, April 9, 6 p.m., Super Channel 1, & 9 p.m., Super Channel 2 | Season Finale

When Carrie, Saul et al. first hit screens, who imagined they’d last this long? Now, as the search for Dar Adal intensifies, the series wraps its sixth season with not one, but two more seasons already ordered.

 

3. Kevin Can Wait – Monday, April 10, 8 p.m., Global & CBS

Somehow or other, Kevin becomes friends with Harry Connick, Jr. (guest-starring as himself). But in trying to impress his famous new pal, Kevin makes up some stuff that could cause a rift in their newly forged friendship.

 

4. Ebola – Tuesday, April 11, 7:05 p.m., HBO Canada

The story of the Ebola virus is so tremendous—and not in a good way—that HBO has delivered three short films offering a look at the disease from different perspectives: those of the doctors, the response teams and the children who were left orphaned after their parents perished from the virus. The Doctors’ Story focuses on Dr. Javid Abdelmoneim and how he and his team battle an outbreak; Body Team 12 follows a Red Cross worker as she collects the dead; and Orphans of Ebola follows Abu, a boy from a village in Sierra Leone, as he starts life anew.

 

5. AI Weiwei: Never Sorry – Tuesday, April 11, 9 p.m. & Midnight, Knowledge

Ai Weiwei is arguably China’s most famous artist, but he’s also one of his country’s most outspoken critics, which—as you might expect—isn’t exactly a combo that goes down great with the Chinese government. That he’s also extremely successful at organizing his fans and admirers through social media only makes the authorities hate him more. They’ve shut down his blog, bulldozed his studio, detained him and even beaten him up. First-time director Alison Klayman had unprecedented access to Ai which resulted in this remarkable documentary, but what’s funny is that Klayman barely even knew who he was when she started filming. She was just helping out her roommate, who was curating one of Ai’s photography exhibits in Beijing.?“I got so much material in those first few weeks that did not fit into the framework of this video for the gallery,” Klayman told Big Think. When she attended his show in Munich, Germany, she finally got a frame of reference to his popularity. “I remember it as? an ‘a-ha’ moment because it was this feeling that [was], like, ‘Whoa, this guy that I’ve been filming and kind of trying to be around, he is really famous.’”

 

6. The Ten Commandments – Tuesday, April 9, 6 p.m., Vision

Like dip-dyed eggs and chocolate bunnies, Easter is just not complete without a viewing of this 1956 classic starring Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as his jealous half-brother Ramses, in a 220-minute retelling of the story of Exodus.

 

7. Five Easy Pieces – Wednesday, April 12, 2:10 p.m. & 9 p.m., ENC2

A former concert pianist (Jack Nicholson) who works in an oil field takes his waitress girlfriend (Karen Black) to visit his wealthy, cultured family, in this 1970 drama that earned Oscar nominations for its lead actors—and compelled legendary film critic Roger Ebert to award it four out of four stars.

 

8. The Trotsky – Friday, April 14, 7 p.m., ENC2

In this 2009 Canadian-made comedy, a Montreal teen (Jay Baruchel) believes that he is the reincarnation of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Not only does the Communist kid stage a hunger strike at his family’s clothing business, but he also causes chaos for his equally strong-willed principal (Colm Feore).

 

9. Chelsea – Friday, April 14, Netflix | Season Premiere

Chelsea Handler’s comedy has always been somewhat of an acquired taste.?

Still, Netflix was willing to gamble that it was worth a shot hiring Handler to host a talk show for them. And indeed, season one was successful enough for them to renew the series for a second instalment.

But things will be slightly different this time around: instead of three half-hour episodes airing every week, Handler will drop a single hour-long episode every Friday.

Also, Netflix has promised this go-round will offer “more in-depth interviews, more robust field pieces [and] more dinner parties,” which certainly sounds intriguing. Given how many headlines the filter-free femme has made with her opinions about Donald Trump, his family and his presidency since the show was last on the air—the season-one finale aired on December 16—there’s reason to suspect that Handler will, like a lot of politically outspoken comedy hosts, find herself getting a bump in viewership, if only to see what she’ll say next.

Whatever it is, though, she won’t be saying it?to Trump himself: in an interview with Variety in January, she vowed she wouldn’t ever feature him as a guest even if?he begged her down on bended knee.

 

10. Carnival Eats – Friday, April 14, 6 p.m., Food | Season Premiere

Noah Cappe’s journey through the world of carnival food resumes as we’re introduced ?to the Rajin’ Cajun hoagie, birthday cake popcorn?balls, the World Series burger and something called the Conevore, a cone stuffed with three kinds of meat.