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Many states are loosening up their stay-home orders this week, but that doesn’t mean you should head to the nail salon and kiss your tech on the lips because you missed her so much. “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should,” is what I would tell my kids if I had any. You should stay vigilant and mostly stay home, because the coronavirus ain’t going away anytime soon. Fortunately, we haven’t run out of new TV shows and movies yet, and there’s a ton of stuff for you to watch while your quar continues.
This week’s picks include a TV adaptation of an Academy Award-winning director’s breakthrough movie, a crime drama set in a beach town where the water is pretty cold even in the summertime, the finale of the biggest sporting event of quarantine, the lower-wattage return of a streaming paranoid thriller, and much more.
If this isn’t enough and you’re looking for even more hand-picked recommendations, sign up for our free, daily, spam-free Watch This Now newsletter that delivers the best TV show picks straight to your inbox, or check out the best shows and movies this month on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.
Hightown
Series premiere available on Starz apps
Former Chicago Fire star Monica Raymund goes premium cable in this crime drama that’s chockfull of sex, drugs, and violence. Raymund plays a substance-addicted harbor patrol officer on Massachusetts’ Cape Cod who gets involved in an investigation high above her pay grade when she discovers the body of a woman washed up on the beach. She dives deep into the opiate-ravaged underbelly of the Cape as she searches for answers while trying to hold onto her own newfound and tenuous sobriety. Hightown co-stars The Departed‘s James Badge Dale as a narcotics detective who gets obsessed with a gangster’s moll (Riley Voelkel). The show is more cliched than it should be, but it’s still a fairly engrossing location-specific crime show.
Snowpiercer
Series premiered Sunday on TNT
There’s no piercer like Snowpiercer! Bong Joon-Ho’s dystopian thriller from 2013 gets a TV series adaptation. In a post-apocalyptic, not-too-distant future, the remnants of humanity all live on a very long train that never stops, with the rich people living in luxury at the front of the train and the poor in squalor at the back. Daveed Diggs plays a guy from the back of the train who also happens to be the world’s last homicide detective (lol) who the train’s de facto captain (Jennifer Connelly) enlists to help her solve a murder among the rich class. Does this show need to exist? No. Will we keep watching it anyway? You betcha.
The Last Dance finale
Complete limited series now streaming on ESPN+
Spoiler alert: The Bulls won in the end. ESPN’s quarantine-conquering basketball docuseries The Last Dance came to a close with the final two episodes, which finally reached the 1998 NBA Finals, where Michael Jordan and Chicago Bulls triumphed against Karl Malone and the Utah Jazz. Watch it again to relive Jordan’s last shot as a Bull, where he famously pushed Bryon Russell and nailed the game-winning bucket. Once you’ve finished the series, check out these other great sports docs.
Listen to Your Heart finale
Season 1 finale now on Hulu
The Bachelor‘s musical spin-off The Bachelor Presents: Listen to Your Heart came to a close Sunday night with the final three couples facing off in Nashville to see who’s the most in love and also good at singing. They were judged on musical and love connection by Bachelor Nation royalty Kaitlyn Bristowe and Jason Tartick, Taye Diggs, Jewel, and pre-coronavirus Rita Wilson. But before that, they went to the Fantasy Suites to take their relationships to the next level — or at least one of them did; one couple declined it entirely. The finale will has drama, tears, love, and country music, and we talked to the winners on our Bachelor show A Beautiful Podcast to Fall in Love.
Patton Oswalt: I Love Everything
Tuesday on Netflix
One of Patton Oswalt‘s most famous stand-up bits is about the bleakness and misery that are the ingredients in the KFC Famous Bowl. In his new special I Love Everything, he finds the same bleakness and misery in the Denny’s menu. His closing joke might earn him a cease-and-desist letter from the diner chain. Before he gets to that, he tells a story from his youth about working as a wedding DJ, proposes a theory about the true identity of Jesus, and compares the Trump administration to “diarrhea-covered monkeys on PCP.” And then after that, there’s a bonus hourlong special from Oswalt’s friend Bob Rubin. It’s like a bonus track that’s as long as the album it’s on.
The 100
Season 7 premiere Wednesday at 8/7c on The CW
As The 100 enters its seventh and final season, it’s moved very far from its original premise of juvenile delinquents from space trying to survive on post-apocalyptic Earth, but it’s never abandoned its central theme of “actions have consequences.” Season 7 will start with Clarke (Eliza Taylor) dealing with the Children of Gabriel, who are very angry with her for killing the Primes, the ruling families they followed, and hopefully reveal what happened to Octavia (Marie Avgeropoulos) when she got stabbed and turned into green mist.
Homecoming
Season 2 premieres Friday on Amazon Prime Video
The psychological thriller series Homecoming is back for Season 2 with a new story and new characters. Janelle Monáe stars as a woman who wakes up in a rowboat and has no memory of how she got there, or even who she is. The search for her identity eventually leads her to the Geist Group, the unconventional wellness company behind the Homecoming Initiative. Although Season 1 star Julia Roberts and director Sam Esmail are now gone, Stephan James and Hong Chau reprise their roles from the first installment, and the new cast includes elite character actors Joan Cusack and Chris Cooper, who’s returning to his amnesiac conspiracy comfort zone from the Bourne franchise. –Kaitlin Thomas
The Lovebirds
Friday on Netflix
Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani star in this movie that qualifies as a “rough night” comedy, where a mild-mannered individual or couple gets caught up in an increasingly complicated and dangerous situation over a short period of time. The finest example is After Hours, and there was even a movie in this subgenre called Rough Night. Anyway, Rae and Nanjiani play a couple whose car gets hijacked by Paul Sparks and used to commit a murder. They fear that the police will think they did it, so they run, and dark romantic comedy hijinks ensue. This was supposed to be a theatrical release, but the coronavirus scuttled those plans. Check out our review.
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