What to Watch This Week: August 9 to 14

From late night laughs to timely documentaries, we round up the top 10 shows to watch this week

1. The D Cut – Crave (Stream)

In a gentrifying neighbourhood, D (Marie Marolle) runs a queer-friendly hair salon in the back of a bike shop, providing not just cool cuts on a pay-what-you-can basis but a safe space for the LGBTQ2S+ community. When the location housing her business becomes the next to shutter, it raises all kinds of questions about what the definition of home is.

The six-episode miniseries, created as a branded partnership with Dove, explores inclusivity and community, but also, as the brand involvement might indicate, the relationship between your exterior and identity. Amrit Kaur, best known for her role in Canadian-Indian comedy series Anarkali, plays Viva, a young woman who desperately wants to be part of the gay community. “She doesn’t know what that means. She hasn’t been raised with a lot of people that are queer or sexually diverse. She’s learning what it means for her to be gay,” says Kaur. “She finds herself in a community, and ultimately, it’s a community that tells her that she doesn’t have to be anything to be gay. She can just be herself.”

2. Shark Week – Sunday, August 9 to Sunday, August 16, Discovery

Talk to Jeff Kurr and you realize this is a man who has an utterly endless fascination with sharks.

Indeed, in the 20 years he’s been doing Air Jaws films for Shark Week, he’s used innovative filmmaking techniques such as robotic seals, remote-control submersibles and helicopters, submarines, thermal imaging and high-speed cameras to capture footage of previously unseen shark behaviour. In the process, he’s gotten countless spectacular moving images of great whites breaching the ocean’s surface in pursuit of prey.

This year, Discovery Canada’s all-sharks-all-the-time event, which runs Sunday to Sunday, August 9th to 16th, contains two of Kurr’s films: Air Jaws: Ultimate Breach Off, airing Sunday, August 9th, and Air Jaws 2020 on Thursday, August 13th. The latter is a retrospective show in which he and shark experts Chris Fallows and Dickie Chivell, among others, discuss their experiences making the landmark Air Jaws films.

3. Surviving Jeffrey Epstein – Sunday, August 9, 5 p.m. & 6:15 p.m. (repeating 7: 30 p.m. & 8:45 p.m.); Monday, August 10, 6 p.m. & 7:15 p.m. (repeating 8:30 p.m. & 9:45 p.m.), Lifetime

On the heels of zeitgeist-grabbing docuseries Surviving R. Kelly, Lifetime continues their efforts to bring attention to women who’ve endured violence and sexual abuse. This four-part program looks into late finance magnate Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex ring, and how the man used his ties to the rich and powerful to cover up his predatory behaviour toward underaged girls.

4. About Face – Monday, August 10, Quibi | Series Premiere

Model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley hosts this six-episode series in which she gets up-close-and-personal with icons and moguls in the beauty world, highlighting their stories in a visually compelling way that magnifies the beauty industry’s unique intersection of art, commerce and a will to succeed. Each episode spotlights a different trailblazer, taking a look at the empires built by people ranging from Kylie Jenner to OUAI’s Jen Atkin.

5. Conan – Monday, August 10 to Thursday, August 13, 11:46 p.m., CTV Comedy

If you haven’t checked out Mr. O’Brien’s show recently, you’re missing out: he’s now filming—still sans audience, of course—from the legendary L.A. concert venue Largo. And trust us when we tell you that late night’s elder statesman is making the most of his new surroundings.

6. Killer Camp – Thursday, August 13, 8 p.m., The CW | Season Finale

It’s been a bloody good season of creative kills and clueless campers, and now, this Friday the 13th-inspired whodunnit competition from the U.K. reaches its grisly endgame, as the survivors (and the audience) finally uncover the murderer hidden among them.

7. Dirty John – Friday, August 14, Netflix | Season Premiere

Connie Britton and Eric Bana blew you away in season one of this true crime anthology series. Now, it’s Amanda Peet and Christian Slater’s turn, as the writers move on to the sordid tale of Betty Broderick—a New York woman who in 1991 was convicted of killing her ex-husband and his second wife. 

8. Magic Camp – Friday, August 14, Disney+

In an all-new original film debuting on Disney’s streaming service, Workaholics alum Adam DeVine plays Andy, a struggling magician who agrees to take a job alongside his former mentor (Jeffrey Tambor), serving as a counsellor at a magic camp.

9. Project Power – Friday, August 14, Netflix

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jamie Foxx star in this New Orleans-set thriller in which a mysterious pill unlocks superpowers unique to each user. The catch: You don’t know what will happen until you take it. While some develop bulletproof skin, invisibility or super strength, others exhibit a deadlier reaction.

10. The Great Heist – Friday, August 14, Netflix

Lots of memorable things happened in 1994. Tonya Harding was stripped of her figure skating crown for literally kneecapping the competition. O.J. Simpson fled from police in that white Bronco. Kurt Cobain took his own life and Lisa Marie Presley married Michael Jackson.

But in Colombia, something even more dramatic was going down: the robbery of the century. In October of that year, a band of thieves stole $33 million from the Bank of the Republic, plunging the whole country into a state of economic turmoil. Police in the northern city of Valledupar had supposedly been involved, and threatened to kill the suspected mastermind, Jaime Bonilla Esquivel, if he turned them in. Meanwhile, the government offered a $124,000 reward for any information leading to Esquivel’s capture. The entire sordid affair is recreated in this Netflix original flick.