What to Watch This Week: March 25-31

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

 

1. Girls – Sunday, March 26, 9 p.m., 12:30 a.m. & 3 a.m., HBO Canada

Elijah plays host to an “unexpected visitor” who leaves him out of sorts right before a big Broadway audition; elsewhere, Hannah reconnects with Paul-Louis (guest star Riz Ahmed), and Marnie’s attempt to pawn a family heirloom leads to a surprising wakeup call.

 

2. Bob’s Burgers – Sunday, March 26, 7:30 p.m., Fox

It’s Bonus Burgers night on Fox, with the network offering a full hour of Bob for your viewing enjoyment. First up, Tina loves to go to the aquarium, so when she finds out that it’s on the verge of closing down, she enlists her siblings to help keep it afloat. (Did you see what we did there? “Afloat” . . . because it’s an aquarium? OK, carry on.) Meanwhile, back at the ol’ burger shop, Bob realizes how much better Linda is at dealing with the customers and tries to learn from her.

In the evening’s second half-hour, Tina is surprised when she’s invited to join the school’s debate team. She’s even more startled when she turns out to be good. And she’s downright stunned when it leads to a bit of romance. While that’s going on, Louise and Gene somehow manage to talk Bob and Linda into funding a very unique stop-motion movie.

 

3. The Voice – Monday, March 27, 8 p.m., CTV & NBC

The teams may be set, but this week Gwen, Adam and Blake can all swoop in and steal themselves a contender. Also, with the Knockouts looming, the coaches bring in John Legend, Celine Dion, DJ Khaled and Luke Bryan to help push their singers to the next level, but Adam still has to dole out some tough love.

 

4. Rock and a Hard Place – Monday, March 17, 7 p.m. & 12:30 a.m., HBO Canada

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is one of the biggest movie stars in the world (in more ways than one), and his earlier career as a WWE wrestler is well-documented. But prior to finding success in the spotlight, Johnson was on the wrong side of the law on a regular basis.

“By the time I was 17, I was arrested probably eight or nine times,” he told NPR host Tony Cox in 2006. “I was getting in trouble; I was doing a lot of things I shouldn’t have been doing. I could’ve easily been one of these kids in lockup and in jail.”

Johnson has never forgotten his mistakes, and these days, he’s dedicated to helping kids turn themselves around. His latest endeavour is producing Rock and a Hard Place. The documentary focuses on the Miami-Dade County Corrections & Rehabilitation Boot Camp Program, which gives incarcerated teens an opportunity to trade prison for a fresh start. It’s not easy—during the 16-week camp, drill instructors push their inmates to the limit—but when you consider that only 15 per cent of the kids who make it through the program end up back in prison (as opposed to the national average of 70 per cent), it’s clearly worth the struggle.

 

5. The Twins: Happily Ever After – Monday, March 27, 6 p.m. & 9 p.m., ABC Spark

For a show as enduringly popular as The Bachelor, we’re surprised there haven’t been more spinoffs over the years. Sure, we’ve had plenty of seasons of The Bachelorette. And Bachelor in Paradise. And OK, even Bachelor Pad. But until recently, there hadn’t been much in the way of content that shone a spotlight on the standout personalities who’ve walked into and out of that famous mansion—with or without a proposal.

That changed last year with Ben and Lauren: Happily Ever After, a follow-up to Ben Higgins’ emotional season. It was the first Bachelor-verse show to break out on specialty cable, and seemingly it was but the first step in a new direction for the franchise. This second Happily Ever After focuses on two other alums: twins Haley and Emily Ferguson, who were also a part of Ben’s season but were shown the door. After gaining lots of notoriety in their debut and then growing their fan base on Bachelor in Paradise, we’ll now get a much more intimate portrait of the sisters Ferguson, as they finally decide to leave their childhood home and carve their own path, figuring out life, launching their careers and trying to find their soulmates along the way (some free advice, ladies: try dating when the cameras aren’t rolling). Of course, don’t be surprised if some old frenemies from their Bachelor days pop by along the way.

 

6. Bates Motel – Monday, March 27, 7:01 p.m. & 11:04 p.m., A&E

We all knew it was coming. For five seasons, fans have followed along as Norman Bates evolved from tragic teen to movie monster. Although the creators have done an admirable job of fostering hope that the character could reform or at least retain some small piece of humanity, his downfall was inevitable—especially in this final season with his dear mother Norma dead and gone. (Well, “gone” is probably the wrong word.)

This week, he takes another big step to becoming the man we met in Hitchcock’s classic big-screen shocker, when, following her rash decision in last week’s episode, Marion Crane makes her grand entrance to the spooky motel. Originally played by Janet Leigh, the role has, as we mentioned in the season-premiere writeup, been handed over to pop superstar Rihanna.

Like Leigh before her, she’ll most likely wind up in some variation of that iconic shower scene. But as Bates Motel producer Kerry Ehrin told Enterainment Weekly, the writers’ take on this thief who gave up everything for doomed love will vary at least a little bit from the film version.

“We’re taking threads of that story and definitely using them so it’s recognizable,” Ehrin explains, “it’s just where we go with it is very different. It’s tough to be in a situation where you’re in love with a guy, and for whatever reason, he keeps stalling. You still have all this hot sex with him, and he’s saying he loves you, but he’s stalling. The internal story of that, for a woman, is a really interesting one. We never really got to see that. In Psycho, you just see the outside of that more. [We are] trying to do a story about a contemporary woman with some edge, with some expectations, who isn’t perfect, who isn’t always perfectly sweet, who is in that situation, but we’re rooting for her to get what she wants.”

 

7. The Others – Wednesday, March 29, 3:30 p.m., ENC2

At the end of the Second World War, a widow (Nicole Kidman) and her two sunlight-allergic children are holed up in a remote English country house, when some otherworldly guests move in. A gorgeously gothic haunted house flick with one of the great third-act twists in cinema history.

 

8. The Mindy Project – Thursday, March 30, 8 p.m., City

When Fox dropped The Mindy Project after three seasons, there was considerable reason to believe that the series had no future, but after a bit of wheeling and dealing, the urban adventures of lovelorn OBGYN Mindy Lahiri (Mindy Kaling) and her office of oddball doctors and nurses was revived by American streaming service Hulu, not only for a fourth season but for a fifth as well, both of which Canadians have been able to enjoy on City.

As season five winds its way to a close this week, viewers have definitely seen Kaling and her Project heading in a number of truly unexpected directions, including an episode-length tribute to Groundhog Day and, perhaps most eyebrow-raising of all, a particularly incisive instalment wherein we saw what life would be like for Mindy were she born a white man (apparently, she’d look a lot like Veronica Mars alum Ryan Hansen).

“Evolution . . . is a good way to think about it, because Mindy [has] treated the show like an experiment,” co-showrunner Matt Warburton told The Hollywood Reporter in November. “The only fixed point is the character of Mindy herself and her journey, and she gave herself the freedom to see where that took us. It has led to the show really changing in several fundamental ways over the course of its run.”

As of this writing, there’s still no official word on whether or not The Mindy Project is destined to continue beyond this week’s season finale, but in a separate interview with The Hollywood Reporter, supervising producer and writer Lang Fisher said, “We are all very optimistic about a season six.” Let’s hope that their optimism is on the money, shall we?

 

9. Trailer Park Boys – Friday, March 31, Netflix

We couldn’t get any specifics about season eleven of this cult Canadian hit that’d be considered suitable for a family audience, but we’re assured that there’ll be dope, guns, liquor and free-range kitties, so… you’re welcome.

 

10. Felipe Neto: My Life Makes No Sense – Now on Netflix

Many of us can probably relate to the title of this recently debuted Netflix comedy special. That said, Felipe Neto’s life apparently makes so little sense that, as of when we went to press, the streaming service still had the words “Coming soon!” emblazoned on the spot where the plot-summarizing blurb about the program would normally be. But whether his life is nonsensical or not is rather beside the point if you don’t actually know who Felipe Neto is. And the funny thing is, you might be out of luck if you don’t speak Portugese, because although Neto is well known in his native Brazil, where he won the MTV Video Music Brazil Award for Best Web Star, he has virtually no online presence in English.

 This is actually rather impressive in a sense, but it doesn’t do much to help English-speaking viewers work out whether or not they want to investigate his new standup special (which will, we believe, also be Portugese-language . . . but even that has yet to be confirmed). We can tell you this much, though: Neto has 5.81 million followers on Twitter, and his YouTube channel is so successful that it’s a rare video that doesn’t find its way to a million views in rapid fashion. Surely popularity like that is worth checking out.