culture
Televisualist: The Summer Baking Extravaganza
Anthony Bourdain explains to us that his bowl of noodles actually contains the secret to world peace. Or something like that.
Each week, Torontoist examines the upcoming TV listings and makes note of programs that are entertaining, informative, and of quality. Or, alternately, none of those. The result: Televisualist.
Monday
Brad Meltzer’s Lost History features the bestselling author who, once per episode, recovers a valuable historical artifact (the flag which flew over Ground Zero, the original copy of Franklin Roosevelt’s second inaugural address, et cetera) so it can be stored in the Smithsonian archives. In short, this is “It Belongs In A Museum”: The Series. (History, 10 p.m.)
Million Dollar Listing New York is slowly showing less and less impressive homes for sale as property values in New York City continue to skyrocket—no, we’re just kidding, it’s still pie-in-the-sky rich people houses! I mean, this is the sort of show where one of the featured stars drives a Maserati; they’re not gonna waste their time on a two-bedroom in Bed-Stuy no matter how much it costs. If a celebrity wouldn’t live there, who cares? (Slice, 10 p.m.)
Tuesday
Inside Amy Schumer returns for a third season of Schumer doing Sarah Silverman’s schtick, but better. You know it’s true if you think about it! (Comedy Network, 10:30 p.m.)
Wednesday
Hey, can we ruin your enjoyment of this week? Dark Side of the Chew explores “chewing gum,” which it turns out is horrible for us in so many ways: health reasons, environmental reasons, economic reasons… geez. (TVO, 9 p.m.)
Thursday
AMC airs the original X-Men, and although it pales in comparison to many of the later Marvel-produced superhero flicks, it’s also easy to see why this movie more or less vaulted the superhero movie as a genre back into box-office dominance: it’s visually compelling and Hugh Jackman was always going to become a star, we just hadn’t realized it yet. Oh, and superpowers and Ian McKellen. (8 p.m.)
Friday
Home Factory promises to take viewers on tours of the factories that produce regular household goods, like crayons, toques, and bicycles. Every half-hour episode promises four individual mini-features, so basically this is the TV series version of that famously creepy “Milk” segment from mid-’70s Sesame Street. Probably without the crying baby, though. (HGTV, 10 p.m.)
Turner Classic has Forbidden Planet, the famous 1950s sci-fi adaptation of The Tempest. The one with the awesome robot. If you haven’t seen it, it’s been so completely absorbed into pop culture that you’ll still recognize it, and films like that are always worth a watch. (8 p.m.)
The Weekend
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown remains the only real reason to watch CNN any more. Tonight, in the season premiere, he goes to Korea. Probably eats some food while he’s there—call it a hunch—but the show has long since stopped being just about food. (9 p.m. Sunday)
Spring Baking Championship demands that we ask if there will also be followup baking championships for the other seasons. After all, can you ever have too many shows about baking? Well, yes, but have we hit saturation point yet? Well, yes, but… (Food Network, 9 p.m. Sunday)
Online
H+ is one of those online series that managed to slip past a lot of people’s radars when it originally aired in 2012: a sci-fi series with extremely high production values, telling the story of a computer virus killing one-third of the world’s population because they all have computers implanted in their brains. Someone has collected all 48 of the original episodes into a single full-length movie; it’s three hours long and really entertaining. Assuming you can stand a (currently) open-ended series, anyway. (YouTube)