What to Watch This Week: September 18 to 24

From the latest Disney+ Star Wars adventure to an Oprah-produced documentary on the late Sidney Poitier, we round up our top 10 shows to watch this week

 

1. SEAL Team – Sunday, September 18, Paramount+ | Season PremiereParamount+After four seasons on CBS, SEAL Team shifted to the Paramount+ streaming service for its fifth, which proved to be successful enough to warrant a sixth. The 10-episode season kicks off this week, with a new episode dropping each Sunday as viewers continue to follow the professional and personal lives of an elite unit of Navy SEALs who are deployed on missions throughout the world, usually at a moment’s notice. The new season picks up immediately after the events of the previous finale, with the members of Bravo Team making a daring escape only to find themselves on shaky ground when they return to Virginia.

 

2. Vampire Academy – Sunday, September 18, W Network | Series Premiere

W NetworkFrom the producer of The Vampire Diaries and Legacies comes this series set in a special boarding school where dhamir (the term for human-vampire hybrids) teen Rose trains to be the guardian of her moroi (mortal vampires) best friend, Lissa, with both learning the skills to defeat strigoi, evil undead vampires.

 

3. The Voice – Monday, September 19, CTV & NBC | Season Premiere

CTVAfter more than a decade of watching wannabe singers pour their hearts out onstage to a panel of celebrity singers who can’t see but can only hear, we’ve come to know one thing: there will always be a new singer to add to the coaching mix. 

When the 22nd season kicks off with a two-night event this week, that newbie is none other than Havana singer (and Cinderella star) Camila Cabello. She replaces outgoing coach Kelly Clarkson, who took time off to spend with her kids/daytime talk show after eight seasons.

Cabello joins country superstar Blake Shelton, his pop superstar wife Gwen Stefani and R&B phenom John Legend in those swivelling chairs when the cameras click on. 

Of course, Cabello is no stranger to reality singing competitions, having appeared on The X Factor as a member of Fifth Harmony in 2012 when she was a teen.

“It gives me a unique perspective,” she said in an interview with Extra. “Because I was kind of put through the wringer so early. Like, imagine at 15 being like, ‘And now, sing for America!’” 

 

4. Patton Oswalt: We All Scream – Tuesday, September 20, Netflix

NetflixReturning for his third Netflix special (and ninth overall), standup superstar Patton Oswalt takes the stage of the Paramount Theater in Denver, Colorado, but this time our man Patton is also making his directorial debut. As such, you may find yourself watching We All Scream and wondering, “Would this bit have made it in if someone else was directing?” And while the answer may be “No,” the mere fact that he’s helming it all himself, in addition to waxing comedic, is worthy of a tip of the hat for stepping outside his comfort zone.

Getting specific, Oswalt quips about the baby boomers’ last temper tantrum, the person he could’ve been if only he’d just followed the list he created during COVID-19 and the so-horrifying-you-just-have-to-laugh things that happen to our bodies as we age.

 

5. Andor – Wednesday, September 21, Disney+ | Series Premiere

Disney+The latest entry in Disney+’s Star Wars library revolves around the dashing Rebel insurgent Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), first introduced on the big screen in Rogue One. To be sure, he was a fan favourite, but as anyone who watched the film knows, he and his Dirty Dozen-esque team had a definitive end. That’s why this show is a prequel.

The two-season event series begins five years before Rogue One, and according to Luna, there will be many new characters to meet and new corners of the galaxy far, far away to explore. What’s more, don’t expect this series to be all about its title character.

“It’s quite unfair to call it Andor, because it’s pretty much an ensemble piece where people matter and storylines are important,” Luna told Collider. “The people you’ll meet here are just regular people surviving in very dark times of the galaxy, on both sides. In the Empire, in that bureaucratic system that doesn’t allow people to be themselves, they’re just numbers.”

 

6. Survivor – Wednesday, September 21, Global & CBS | Season Premiere

GlobalWe’re returning to Fiji in the two-hour debut of this reality staple, where 18 new castaways are divided into three tribes of six. According to CBS, this will be one of the most dangerous seasons in the history of the show, with fresh game elements and intense battles and tests to boot.

 

7. Big Sky – Wednesday, September 21, CTV2 & ABC | Season Premiere

CTV2In season three of this gritty thriller, Canadians Katheryn Winnick and Kylie Bunbury are back as wily private investigators Jessie Hoyt and Cassie Dewell.

Once again, the mismatched sleuths team up to solve shady mysteries in the land of the unending sky. Set to help and/or hinder them this year are a couple familiar faces: Jamie-Lynn Sigler’s Tonya Walsh character has been promoted to a full-time player. So too has Jensen Ackles (Supernatural) as the studly new sheriff in town, Beau Arlen, who was first introduced in the season-two finale.

In terms of fresh faces, there’s country music icon Reba McEntire, who joins in a recurring capacity. She’s the mercurial matriarch of the Brick Family—a backcountry “glamping” company whose customers don’t always make it home.

 

8. A Jazzman’s Blues – Friday, September 23, Netflix

NetflixMarking a major departure from his usual work, Tyler Perry directs what’s been described as his passion project, a sweeping epic spanning from the 1940s to the 1980s, telling a multi-generational tale of forbidden love hidden within a tantalizing murder mystery, punctuated with a series of dazzling musical numbers. 

 

9. Sidney – Friday, September 23, Apple TV+

Apple TV+The world lost a true icon when Oscar-winning actor and civil rights activist Sidney Poitier died earlier this year at age 94. This new documentary, produced by Oprah Winfrey and directed by Reginald Hudlin, pays tribute to Poitier, examining his groundbreaking roles in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? and To Sir, With Love, while also focusing on his friendship and alliance with Martin Luther King, Jr., using his platform as a movie star to help Dr. King advance the civil rights movement. Among the many luminaries interviewed are Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Robert Redford, Lenny Kravitz, Barbra Streisand, Spike Lee and many more. 

Of course, the doc also features plenty of Poitier himself, offering his own remembrances from his eventful, inspiring life. At one point in the film, the native of the Bahamas recalled his experience as an immigrant to America. “I left the Bahamas with this sense of myself. And from the time I got off the boat, America began to say to me, ‘You’re not who you think you are.’ There was a habit in Hollywood of utilizing Blacks in the most disrespectful ways. I said, ‘I cannot play that.’”

Winfrey also shared her thoughts: “When you grow up in a community where everything you know is powerful and good, and it’s Black, there’s no concept of race… that defines Sidney Poitier.”

 

10. On the Come Up – Friday, September 23, Paramount+

Paramount+Sanaa Lathan is best known for her work as an actor, with roles in such movies as Love & Basketball and Alien vs. Predator. Now, Lathan steps behind the camera to make her directorial debut with this adaptation of the novel by Angie Thomas about 16-year-old Bri (Jamila C. Gray), who aspires to be the world’s greatest rapper. Her ambition burning inside her, she dreams of living up to the legend of her late father, who was an up-and-coming underground rapper on the cusp of mainstream success when he was killed in a gang shooting.

One of the few Black students at an arts magnet school, she’s seen as dangerous by her white peers, leading to a violent altercation with a racist security guard. The experience propels her to write a rap song that goes viral for all the wrong reasons, leading her to be torn between the authenticity that’s been her hallmark and the false persona the industry wants to impose upon her. Also starring Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Lil Yachty, Mike Epps, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Justin Martin, Titus Makin, Cliff “Method Man” Smith and Lathan.