What to Watch This Week: August 22 to 27

From brooding mysteries to cartoon farewells, we round up our top 10 shows to watch this week

1. Chapelwaite – Sunday, August 22, 7 p.m. & Midnight, CTV Sci-Fi | Series Premiere

It seems we can’t go more than a month or two without seeing another Stephen King potboiler brought to the screen. The latest, Chapelwaite, is inspired by his short story Jerusalem’s Lot, first published in the 1978 anthology Night Shift. It’s one of the author’s lesser-known works, to be sure, but ironically enough it’s actually a prequel to one of his best-known novels: Salem’s Lot. Yet don’t go into this one expecting vampires; the only thing the two stories have in common is that they take place in the same fictional Maine town.

Set in the 1850s, Oscar-winner Adrien Brody stars as a sea captain named Charles Boone, who relocates his three children to his ancestral home in Preacher’s Corners after his wife passes. Not exactly welcomed by the townsfolk, the grieving family meets an aspiring novelist named Rebecca, played by Emily Hampshire (Schitt’s Creek). She herself has also just returned to Preacher’s Corners, and applies to be the Boone clan’s new governess, secretly planning to write about them and their infamous Chapelwaite manor, which Charles has inherited from a deceased cousin. It’s just the thing to clear up Rebecca’s writer’s block—but beyond providing inspiration for her gothic novel, this job will lead the young scribe to confront a mystery that’s plagued her own family for generations. In the end, both Charles and Rebecca will be forced to face their demons—in some cases, literally—as witchcraft, murder and the darkness within threaten to destroy the Boones and their new governess.

“We intentionally keep our audience guessing,” co-creator Peter Filardi told Vanity Fair. “Is it a haunted house movie? You learn in the pilot that Charles was also suffering from what appears to be some psychological issues, a madness that all of his other relatives suffer from. What is the danger? Well, it keeps sort of evolving.”

2. Untold – Tuesday, August 24, Netflix

The latest episode of Netflix’s sports-themed documentary series examines the athletic
career of transgender activist and California gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner, who became an instant celebrity when she won the gold medal for the decathlon in 1976. Here, Jenner reflects on winning Olympic gold and her subsequent choice to transition to female.

3. American Horror Story – Wednesday, August 25, 7 p.m., 8 p.m. & 10 p.m., FX Canada | Season Premiere

Fans have been waiting awhile for the 10th season of American Horror Story to arrive. Subtitled “Double Feature,” a cryptic promo indicates this season will feature two separate-but-interconnected stories involving bloodthirsty sea sirens and Roswell-style extraterrestrials. Look for returning stars including Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Frances Conroy and Lily Rabe, while newbies include Macaulay Culkin.

4. American Horror Stories – Wednesday, August 25, Disney+ | Series Premiere

With the new season of American Horror Story arriving this week, the producers of that series have served up a new spinoff that takes what fans love about the often-bonkers TV fright-fest and distills it down into bite-sized chunks.

Like its forebear, American Horror Stories (note the “s” on the end of the title) is an anthology. The difference between the two shows, however, is that the original tells a single, self-contained story within the confines of a single season, while Stories goes one better by recounting a single story in each episode.

The new series features a mix of familiar faces from previous seasons of AHS and some unexpected newcomers, including Paris Jackson, daughter of the late Michael Jackson. The returnees include Matt Bomer and John Carroll Lynch (the latter is not reprising Twisty the psychotic clown but plays a new character who’s no less creepy).

Another newcomer to the AHS family is Sierra McCormick, playing a character who will be frighteningly familiar to those who watched the first “Murder House” season of the original show.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly about her storyline (which unfolds in the first two episodes), McCormick explained why this format could be more appealing for some people than the original AHS.

“I think the very limited anthology, like the episode-by-episode formula, is really cool for people like me who currently don’t feel like they can commit to watching an entire season, but they still love the universe and the atmosphere and the vibe that American Horror Story creates,” she told the magazine. “It’s the added binge-worthiness. I think [it’s] a really fun way to want to explore a really wide variety of different worlds and characters and actors within one season.”

5. Archer – Wednesday, August 25, 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. (repeating at 9 p.m. & 9:30 p.m.), Adult Swim | Season Premiere

The return of TV’s best—and possibly only?—adult-oriented cartoon spy comedy was always going to be bittersweet, knowing that this season features the final voice work of the late Jessica Walter as Sterling Archer’s mother/boss, Malory. That said, more Archer is never a bad thing, and it’s also a bit like having a chance to say goodbye to Malory, even if we don’t yet know how the writers plan to handle Walter’s death. (They have, of course, been through this before with another cast member, when George Coe passed away, forcing the retirement of Archer’s ever put-upon butler, Woodhouse.)

In this new season, the agency faces perhaps its greatest threat yet: the growing inability to keep up with other spy organizations—in no small part because they’re so old-school they’re getting outclassed technologically… plus, you know, the all-round incompetence of a large portion of their staff. Nonetheless, Archer spontaneously decides to sign up for the most lucrative mission on Global Spywire, a job with a description that no sane person would ever pursue: “Rival bounty situation, cash on delivery of the package, multiple bidders, no money up front.” Archer, of course, rationalizes that there’ll be big money on back, but given their budget, everyone’s stuck staying in a rat-infested hotel for the duration. Good times… and that’s just the premiere!

Guest stars in season 12 include Pamela Adlon, Eric André, Bruce Campbell, Stephen Tobolowsky and What We Do in the Shadows duo Harvey Guillén and Kayvan Novak.

How much longer will Archer continue? Rumours of the end have been swirling for the last couple years, but as cast member Chris Parnell (Cyril Figgis) told Looper, now that creator Adam Reed isn’t writing the whole thing by himself, “I think it has got the potential to go on for awhile.”

6. Clickbait – Wednesday, August 25, Netflix | Series Premiere

Nick Brewer (Adrian Grenier of Entourage fame) is a loving father, husband and brother who one day just up and vanishes. As his family is left blindsided by his mysterious disappearance, a video appears on the Internet featuring the badly beaten Nick holding a card that reads, “I abuse women. At 5 million views, I die.”

Is this a threat? A confession? Or possibly both? Meanwhile, as Nick’s sister (The Big Sick‘s Zoe Kazan) and wife (Get Out‘s Betty Gabriel) rush to find him and bring him home to safety, they uncover an unthinkable side of Nick, forcing them to re-evaluate everything they thought they knew about this man.

An eight-episode limited series told from revolving points of view, notes the Netflix synopsis, “Clickbait is a compelling, high-stakes thriller that explores the ways in which our most dangerous and uncontrolled impulses are fuelled in the age of social media, revealing the ever-widening fractures we find between our virtual and real-life personas.”

7. The Mandalorian: Making of the Season 2 Finale – Wednesday, August 25, Disney+

When Star Wars spinoff The Mandalorian unleashed that shocking second-season finale last December, it practically broke the Internet. That’s about the only way to describe the sudden appearance of a much younger Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, who came to collect Grogu (a.k.a. Baby Yoda) from Mando to teach him the ways of the Jedi.

As fans await season three, Disney has been kind enough to put together a new special detailing exactly how they pulled off such a visually stunning, crowd-pleasing moment. It promises to explore the collaborative process—including working closely with Hamill—that went into crafting an authentic and seamless recreation of young Master Skywalker.

You can also expect firsthand accounts from the crew about the pressure they all felt to get this episode just right, and to not disappoint the legion of fans in bringing back one of the most important characters in the history of the Star Wars universe.

“I’m a fan myself, so I knew true fans would love it,” Hamill said on social media when the finale aired, “but to see them thrilled beyond belief with the exuberance of children, whooping it up, screaming in ecstasy, the tears of sheer joy… it’s a rollercoaster of emotions I’ll never forget.”

8. He’s All That – Friday, August 27, Netflix

In this gender-swapped remake of the 1999 teen rom-com, TikTok sensation Addison Rae stars as Padgett, one of the most popular girls in her high school, who makes a bet with a friend that she can transform the school’s most unpopular guy (played by Tanner Buchanan) into the prom king.

9. I Heart Arlo – Friday, August 27, Netflix | Series Premiere

A boy (American Idol‘s Michael J. Woodard) who’s half-human and half-alligator learns that he originally hailed from NYC and decides to leave his swamp for the Big Apple. Other voices include Veep‘s Tony Hale and Queer Eye‘s Jonathan Van Ness.

10. See – Friday, August 27, Apple TV+ | Season Premiere

Aquaman himself Jason Momoa is back for a second season of post-apocalyptic thrills. A refresher: this one’s set hundreds of years in the future, in a world where the human race has lost its eyesight and returned to a more primitive way of life. But for Alkenny chieftain Baba Voss (Momoa), life got a whole lot more complicated when he became stepfather to a “sighted” child—putting him and his people on the bad side of a vicious despot (Sylvia Hoeks) who considers sight to be blasphemy.

This year, Momoa welcomes a fellow big-screen superhero to his cast in Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Dave Bautista, who will play Baba’s estranged brother Edo—a cunning general with big plans for the future. “Sight will return,” Edo says in the trailer. “And the first nation to harness its powers will dominate the world.”