What to Watch This Week: May 30 to June 4

From frontline heroics to family favourites, we round up the top 10 shows to watch this week

1. Dog Gone Trouble – Netflix

This shaggy-dog story centres on Trouble (voice of rapper Big Sean), a canine of privilege who, after the death of his owner, is cast out of the mansion he’s always called home and forced to hack out a living on the mean streets. Also lending their voices: Joel McHale, Pamela Adlon and Damon Wayans, Jr.

2. Mare of Easttown – Sunday, May 30, 9 p.m. & 12:30 a.m., HBO Canada | Series Finale

The last time Kate Winslet came to HBO (for 2011’s Mildred Pierce), she nabbed an Emmy. Given the critical response to this crime drama, she seems poised for more accolades. Tonight, detective Mare Sheehan’s investigation into the disappearance of a girl and the death of a young mother wraps up in truly incendiary fashion.

3. CNN Films: Dreamland: The Burning of Black Wall Street – Monday, May 31, 6 p.m., CNN

In 1921, Tulsa’s Greenwood district was a wealthy Black community in the midst of a cultural and financial renaissance until a white lynch mob embarked on an unprecendented massacre, hunting down hundreds of men, women and children, burning down Black-owned businesses and razing 35 city blocks. This doc looks back at that shameful chapter in America’s history.

4. Hell’s Kitchen – Monday, May 31, 8 p.m., City & Fox | Season Premiere

When you’re a cook-off show that’s been on the air for 15 years and even more seasons, keeping things fresh only becomes harder and harder. Hence, we get themed seasons; and as the original show in Gordon Ramsay’s U.S. empire kicks off its 20th course this week, it’s all about the “Young Guns.”

To be clear, we’re not talking about a MasterChef Junior situation; Hell’s Kitchen is fuelled by pure aggression, betrayal and profanity, and you can’t have a bunch of kids getting embroiled in a culinary Lord of the Flies. Rather, this year’s cooks are 24 and under; and though that certainly makes them inexperienced, they also haven’t spent years picking up all those bad habits that set Ramsay off on his epic cussing fits. That said, you can still expect plenty of F-bombs, because… well, it’s the HK way.

5. The Good Doctor – Monday, May 31, 10 p.m., CTV & ABC

In part one of the two-part season-ender (which concludes next week), Shaun and the rest of the surgical unit fly off to Guatemala, where a rural hospital is in dire need of their expertise. Unfortunately, there’s a limit to what they can do, forcing the team to make some hard choices about which patients can be helped.

6. America’s Got Talent – Tuesday, May 31, 8 p.m., City & NBC | Season Premiere

When you’re living through a pandemic, all cooped up at home, TV really, truly does become a lifeline. And few series have reaped the benefits of that fact more so than this endearingly goofy variety show, which in season 15 emerged as “the most-watched entertainment program nearly every week it aired.”

AGT returns for a 16th season this week—but not without its share of controversy. Don’t forget, this is the series that fired Julianne Hough and Gabrielle Union after season 14, only to see Union fire back with allegations of a toxic workplace. (Her claims were first published in a bombshell Variety exposé.) Meanwhile, last year was rocky for another reason: judge Simon Cowell actually broke his back while riding his electric bike, and Kelly Clarkson had to keep his seat warm while he recovered. But he’s back in full force for this week’s premiere, alongside returning fellow judges Heidi Klum, Sofía Vergara and Howie Mandell, and host Terry Crews.

Like last year, all auditions went down virtually, but there’s still plenty of in-person action (and special celeb guests) to look forward to.

7. Hacks – Thursday, June 3, 8 p.m. & 8:30 p.m., Crave1

From Designing Women to her extraordinary work in Watchmen, Jean Smart is an underrated powerhouse of an actress. In Hacks, Smart delivers a career-defining performance as trailblazing female comedian Deborah Vance, once at the cutting edge of standup comedy but now making a comfortable living slinging stale punchlines to tourists in Vegas. When she learns her cushy gig is in jeopardy because she’s not the draw she once was, the jaded veteran decides it’s time to freshen up her act and mount a comeback. Enter Ava (Hannah Einbinder), an ultra-edgy young comedy writer who lost her lucrative TV deal due to an over-the-line Twitter joke. Deborah needs some edge, Ava needs a job, so they reluctantly forge a working relationship that comes to fundamentallly change both women as they gradually discover they share far more in common than they realized. Deborah may have grown soft and pampered in Vegas, yet Ava reignites the fire that once propelled her to the top—and may bring her there again.

8. Station 19 – Thursday, June 3, 8 p.m., CTV & ABC | Season Finale

The fire-fighting spinoff of Grey’s Anatomy wraps season four, hot on the heels of news that the show will be back next year. Given that the writers have never been shy about killing off main characters… well, prepare to be devastated.

9. Sweet Tooth – Friday, June 4, Netflix | Series Premiere

A decade after “the Great Crumble” caused the mysterious emergence of animal-human hybrids, a deer-boy named Gus meets a wandering human loner named Jepperd. Together, they embark on a journey across what’s left of America in search of answers—Gus’s origins, Jepperd’s past and the true meaning of home.

10. Lisey’s Story – Friday, June 4, Apple TV+ | Series Premiere

Stephen King, master of horror that he is, has had a truly astounding number of his novels and short stories remade for the screen—Carrie, The Stand, The Running Man, The Shawshank Redemption, It… the list goes on.

This week, another King-inspired series makes its way to TV, but here, the author himself has written the scripts. (Which should prevent any Kubrickian creative differences à la The Shining.)

Lisey’s Story stars Oscar-winner Julianne Moore as Lisey Landon, the wife of a deceased novelist (Clive Owen). The story picks up with Lisey two years after her husband’s death, when the arrival of a stalker (Dane DeHaan) who’s obsessed with her husband’s books forces her to not only fight for her life, but reexamine her seemingly happy marriage. It’s a deeply personal project for King, one that he didn’t take lightly when adapting.

“I try to satisfy both sides of it, the reality side and the fictional side,” he says. “And it worked out pretty well. Certainly, Julianne and Clive are ‘Scott’ and ‘Lisey,’ they’re not Steve and [my wife] Tabby, so it worked out.”