What to Watch This Week: November 17 to 22

From the tales of a country queen to a regal return, we round up the top 10 shows to watch this week

From the tales of a country queen to a regal return, we round up the top 10 shows to watch this week

1. Dollface – CraveTV (Stream)

Kat Dennings (2 Broke Girls) stars in this single-camera comedy, playing a young woman named Jules who gets dumped by her longtime boyfriend and realizes she’s let all her close female fritendships lapse while being part of a couple. To remedy that, she begins to rekindle relationships with her two besties (Brenda Song and Shay Mitchell).

2. The Crown – Sunday, November 17, Netflix | Season Premiere

All around the gilded gates, Britain is embracing the swingin’ ’60s but inside Buckingham Palace, where the Royal Family struggles to retain its relevance, progress comes with its usual tinge of distaste. Aging, economics and personal relationships—no event ensues without complications and caveats when all eyes of a nation are on you. As we join a new cast of familiar faces, drama abounds.

Change may always feel a bit uncomfortable in the narrative of The Crown, but what’s in store on the Emmy-magnet series is cause for nothing but excitement. After two seasons as Queen Elizabeth II, Emmy winner Claire Foy is succeeded by Oscar winner Olivia Colman. Colman may have experience playing royalty, but the actress recently said there’s no comparing mad Queen Anne from The Favourite to the reigning queen of England. “Queen Elizabeth’s much harder to play,” she told ABC. “There are no rules for Queen Anne: no one can say, ‘She doesn’t sound like that.’”

Her husband, Prince Philip, will be played by Outlander‘s Tobias Menzies, who replaces Doctor Who star Matt Smith. Menzies, who sacrificed both eyebrows and hairline to play the Duke of Edinburgh, says his preparation for the role has been near-obsessive. “I just listened to him loads,” Menzies told RadioTimes.com. “It’s partly a technical thing: you want to sound and look like him, but move like him too. I’ve gone slightly crazy just listening to him and listening to him.”

If the throttle is off the queen’s relationship troubles with Philip, her sister’s marriage woes more than make up for it. Replacing Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret is Helena Bonham Carter and her husband Antony Armstrong-Jones is played by Exorcist and House of Cards actor Ben Daniels. This season, the two of them finally get into some of the well-documented, nastier twists of their relationship.

3. Kids Say the Darnedest Things – Sunday, November 17, 8 p.m., Global & ABC

With America’s turkey day on the horizon, this Thanksgiving-themed episode sees host Tiffany Haddish film an infomercial for “Gobble Gobble Wrapping Paper,” with hapless children frantically attempting to gift-wrap everything from Thanksgiving leftovers to a real live turkey. Then, she and a young girl pitch their movie ideas to a hotshot Hollywood director (former 30 Rock star Jack McBrayer).

4. Poldark on Masterpiece – Sunday, November 17, 6 p.m., 10:30 p.m. & Midnight, WTVS; 9 p.m., KCTS | Series Finale

The fifth and final season of this swashbuckling British costume drama comes to a conclusion, offering all the romance, action, betrayal, twists and turns that fans have come to expect as Ross (Aidan Turner) makes a bold move.

5. Bob’s Burgers – Sunday, November 17, 9 p.m., City & Fox

Bob and Linda step outside their comfort zone by attending a loft party on a dark and stormy night, while back at the house, Tina, Gene and Louise defy their babysitter and take it upon themselves to ride out the wind and rain in an ice cream truck.

6. Iliza Shlesinger: Unveiled – Tuesday, November 19, Netflix

Iliza Shlesinger has become such a staple on Netflix that news of her releasing a new standup special is less a surprise than a given, but come fall 2020, her comedy won’t just be coming in standup form: Netflix just signed the Last Comic Standing alum for a new six-episode sketch series. That’s still quite a ways off, however, so better we should focus on Unveiled for the time being.

The special—Shlesinger’s fifth for the streaming giant, hence our aforementioned feeling that it’s just standard operating procedure for her at this point—finds the comedian talking about her recent wedding, including the planning, the whole garter thing, her honeymoon and the dangers of a zombie bachelorette army. Before you ask, we have absolutely no idea what that last bit is all about, but we’ll be honest: we can’t wait to find out.

7. Blind Date – Tuesday, November 19, 5 p.m. & 8 p.m., Slice | Series Premiere

Deep down we’re all just looking for love, so nothing is more relatable to TV viewers than the exhilarating, embarrassing, altogether messy pursuit of it. Plenty of reality trash-fests have exploited that essential human truth, but none (not even The Bachelor) can quite measure up to patient zero in the dating-show outbreak: Blind Date. The Roger Lodge-hosted series ran for seven seasons starting in the early 2000s, giving us a whole new perspective on what it was like to mingle in the era of Match.com. Now, with the landscape completely reshaped again thanks to Tinder, Grindr and other such apps, the time is ripe for a reboot.

Subbing in for Roger Lodge as emcee is comedian Nikki Glaser, which means our Blind Daters best bring their A-game, or be prepared for some hardcore evisceration—from both Glaser, and the illustrious return of the show’s trademark snarky “thought bubbles.”

8. The Masked Singer – Wednesday, November 20, 8 p.m., CTV & Fox

The field cut in half, it’s time for four more outrageously incognito celebs to step up and show off their surprising pipes. Will Robin accurately guess yet another star’s identity? Is tonight the night Jenny’s jaw literally reaches the floor? Can Ken keep his fellow judges out of pun-jail? Tune in to see.

9. Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings – Friday, November 22, Netflix | Series Premiere

Country fans well know that every Dolly Parton song is based on something in her past, but as vivid a picture as she paints with her awe-inspiring voice, we’ve seldom seen those stories brought to life. Now, over the course of eight episodes, Netflix is recruiting some notable stars to manifest the memories and inspirations behind Parton’s most beloved songs.

The standalone instalments will vary widely in tone and genre, spanning love stories, family dramas, westerns and revenge thrillers. They include “Jolene” starring Julianne Hough and Kimberly Williams-Paisley; “These Old Bones” with Kathleen Turner and Ginnifer Goodwin; “If I Could Fly” with Gerald McRaney; “JJ Sneed” with Once Upon a Time‘s Colin O’Donoghue; “Two Doors Down” with Oscar winner Melissa Leo; “Down From Dover” with The Americans’ Holly Taylor; “Sugar Hill” starring thirtysomething duo Patricia Wettig and Timothy Busfield; and “Crackerjack” with Person of Interest‘s Sarah Shahi.

10. Great Performances – Friday, November 22, 7 p.m., WTVS; 9 p.,m., KCTS

Shakespeare’s comedy about romantic retribution and miscommunication gets a 21st-century update with an all-black cast in the latest theatrical broadcast from PBS’s Great Performances.

In Much Ado About Nothing, airing as part of Great Performances’ third annual “Broadway’s Best” lineup, Danielle Brooks (Orange Is the New Black) and Grantham Coleman (The Americans) star as sparring lovers Beatrice and Benedick in a performance from the New York Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park.

Set in contemporary Georgia during an election campaign, the story picks up with the community of Messina celebrating a break in an ongoing war. But that truce doesn’t extend to some of the townspeople as former rivals lock horns, revenge is sought and trickery runs rampant.