Amaryllis April Maltha August in Families Like Ours.PER ARNESEN/CBC GEM
Do you feel like you’re drowning … but you haven’t even left your couch? Welcome to the Great Content Overload Era. To help you navigate the choppy digital waves, here are The Globe’s best bets for weekend streaming.
A Man on the Inside, Netflix
Left to right, Lilah Richcreek Estrada as Julie, Kerry O’Malley as Megan, Ted Danson as Charles, in episode 104 of A Man on the Inside.Netflix
Ted Danson, whose non-stop TV career – from Cheers to Curb Your Enthusiasm – makes it impossible to imagine him ever retiring, reunites with The Good Place creator Michael Schur for this extremely gentle spy comedy set in a retirement home. Inspired by the Chilean documentary The Mole Agent, Danson plays as a widowed professor named Charles who is encouraged by his daughter, Emily (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), to find a new hobby beyond clipping out newspaper articles and mailing them to her. Responding to a print classified ad (imagine!), he ends up enlisted by private investigator Julie (Lilah Richcreek Estrada) to be her eyes inside San Francisco’s Pacific View Retirement Community to help solve a case of a missing necklace. While the writing sometimes hits the heartwarming button more often than any individual episode can take, Danson is charming as always and the supporting cast of seniors citizens is a treat – including Sally Struthers and the great stage actor Stephen McKinley Henderson.
Canada’s Drag Race, Season 5, Crave
Brad Goreski, Brooke Lynn Hytes, Traci Melchor on Canada’s Drag Race, Season 5.Crave
The Canadian spinoff of the international RuPaul’s Drag Race reality competition franchise is more comfort-food viewing. This season’s 11 new queens aiming to not to be told to sash-eh away and competing for a grand prize of $100,000 include Vancouver drag veteran Jaylene Tyme, Toronto up-and-comer Makayla Couture and Montreal’s Uma Gahd (not to be confused with Season 3’s Irma Gerd). To my mind the best name in the new batch is the contender from Newfoundland: Tara Nova. PS: If you, like so many others, have been wondering for the past quarter-century what else is in the teaches of Peaches – we’ll finally get to find out when the Canadian electroclash musician schools this season’s contestants as a guest judge. New episodes Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET.Families Like Ours, CBC Gem
Families Like Ours, CBC Gem
A scene from Families Like Ours.CBC GEM
Take your mind off the slowly unfolding disasters of the present with this Danish drama about a future one. Oscar-nominated director Thomas Vinterberg (Festen, Another Round) imagines Denmark deciding to pro-actively evacuate all its citizens because of rising sea levels. This haunting series tracks the ripple effects of a country attempting to wind itself down in orderly Scandinavian fashion through the branches of one modern family full of divorces and other divides. Families Like Ours is only intermittently interested in riots and bank runs, preferring to explore such questions as how language might be preserved in the new Danish diaspora. Through the eyes of Laura (Amaryllis August), about to graduate from high school and engulfed in the rush of first love, we’re reminded how a historic crisis can upend a young life but also give it a sense of purpose. All seven episodes land on CBC Gem Nov 22.
Our Oceans, Netflix
A scene from Our Oceans.Courtesy of Netflix/Netflix
On the subject of rising sea waters, this new docuseries gives a current snapshot of our planet’s five oceans over five episodes – but it’s far from all doom and gloom. Shot in 33 countries in all seven continents by the same team behind Our Great National Parks, it’s full of constant delights and surprises from its colourful cast of more than 1,000 different species captured on camera. Fittingly, narrator Barack Obama kicks things off by describing the movements of a mama humpback whale and her calf off the coast of his home state of Hawaii, getting ready for a long trip to Alaska. The former U.S. president’s familiar cadence is occasionally comical when applied to water mammal migratory patterns, but overall very reassuring and relaxing. “We’ll witness incredible ways to survive as we face this fast-changing world together,” he says, in this gorgeously and inventively shot series. It’s easy to sink into.
The Sex Lives of College Girls, Season 3, Crave
Pauline Chalamet, Gracie Lawrence and Amrit Kaur in a scene from The Sex Lives of College Girls, Season 3.Tina Thorpe/Crave
The comedy-drama from Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble returns for its third season on Nov. 21 after a two-year hiatus – and somehow the girls of New England’s fictional Essex College are still nowhere near graduating. “This is sophomore year, we’ve gotta step up our game,” says Bela, the Indian American aspiring comedy writer played by the show’s Canadian breakout star, Amrit Kaur, in a trailer backed by a Chappell Roan track. (Time has moved forward more quickly on the musical front.) Expect more from Bela, Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) and Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott) this season, and less from Leighton (the in-demand actress Renée Rapp) as she’s only back as a recurring character. As The Globe and Mail’s John Doyle wrote when the show premiered, it is “more about emotional feelings, fun and friendship, than it is about sex. The characters are fully drawn, and their antics offer rewarding entertainment.”