Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we offer viewing recommendations in our Watching newsletter. Read the latest picks below, and sign up for the Watching newsletter here.
This weekend I have … a therapeutic hour, and I want to see other people squirm
‘Couples Therapy: The Covid Special’
When to watch: Sunday at 8 p.m., on Showtime.
In 2019, this nine-episode Showtime series followed four real-life couples in treatment with Dr. Orna Guralnik, an elegant psychoanalyst. Back then, they met in her book-lined office. In this tidy hourlong special, which includes two familiar couples and two new ones, Guralnik works remotely as the couples work through the enforced closeness of lockdown. “As much as we still love each other, we’re sick of looking at each other,” one husband says. Two of the couples also work to process the killing of George Floyd and its aftermath. (The two white couples? Mostly they don’t.) The special has all the fidgety intimacy of the original. Will these couples make it? It may depend on the vaccine timeline.
… an hour, and I love an origin story
‘Pennyworth’
When to watch: Sunday at 9 p.m., on Epix.
Before Batman was even a Batfetus, there was Alfred Pennyworth. How did that capable cockney-accented butler come to work for the Wayne family? The executive producers Bruno Heller and Danny Cannon (“Gotham”) crafted Season 1 as a stylish 10-episode dive into the young adulthood of Alfred (Jack Bannon, with a knife-sharp widow’s peak). Before Covid intervened, they had filmed four episodes of Season 2, which air weekly beginning Sunday. Oddly enough, the superhero apparatus isn’t especially essential or gripping. But if you love swinging London and swinging fists, this counterfactual vision of ’60s England has a lot going for it, particularly the fevered production design and the fashions. Not all capes are worn by heroes.
… all day, and I need a cure for vacation envy
‘The Wilds’
When to watch: Season 1 drops Friday, on Amazon.
Remember a few years ago when Warner Bros. announced an all-girl “Lord of the Flies” remake? “The Wilds” isn’t that. But also it maybe is? The first of its 10 episodes finds a gaggle of teenage girls en route to a “long weekend of female-centric learning and growth.” Then their plane ditches in the ocean and they struggle to shore with a few clothes and a case or so of Diet Coke. There are “Lost” overtones, of course, and the time jumps offer hints of a sinister conspiracy. (Led from afar by the superb Rachel Griffiths! Who has a very good face for conspiracy.)
But don’t expect too many pig’s heads or conch shells. At least not on the island. As one of the girls says in the pilot, “If we’re talking about what happened out there, then yeah, there was trauma.” But being a teenage girl in everyday America? “That was the real living hell.”
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