Televisualist: In Case You Didn’t Know About Beach Flip

By Christopher Bird

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.

“Right, and then they go BACK to the place with the fresh water. ‘Cause it’s an allegory or something.”

Monday

The 2015 Wimbledon Championships commence, and…the tricky thing about Wimbledon, and tennis generally, is that single-player dynasties are more or less the story of the game. Right now, Novak Djokovic is King Of Tennis in the men’s game, having taken that title from Rafael Nadal, who held it briefly after Roger Federer held it for a decade. In the women’s game, there are literally kids old enough to drive who cannot remember a time before the Williams sisters—especially Serena—were dominating the game. (Interestingly: Venus Williams, although probably not as good as her sister overall, is actually better at playing on grass courts and, as such, has won as many Wimbledon championships as Serena has.) But, of course, there are always shockers, and we can root for Canadian Eugenie Bouchard again, or watch English people pretend that Andy Murray counts because although he’s from Scotland he’s still technically “British” because Scotland voted no in their referendum. In any case, Wimbledon is really the only tennis tournament that matters, because even though the French Open is the hardest to win and the U.S. Open has the most prize money, Wimbledon is the one that still reminds everybody that tennis is burdened with a horrible, brutal sense of British class, now and forever. (TSN, starting at 6:30 a.m.; primetime highlights start at 7:30 p.m.)

Today in World Cup: Semifinal one pits Germany against the United States, tournament favourite versus tournament favourite in a World War 2 grudge rematch. (CTV, 7 p.m.)

Zoo: A new show asks, “What if all the animals just said, ‘Fuck it, let’s kill all the humans’?” From the mind of James Patterson, who brought us numerous book series that are stupid, comes a premise that is amazingly stupid. Like, it’s stupider than Under The Dome. That is how stupid this show is. (CTV, 9 p.m.)

Judge Geordie: A British reality show featuring one of the former cast members of Geordie Shore, the British version of Jersey Shore, going around giving advice to young people. It’s like they decided to make the least plausible show possible and then exported it here. (MTV Canada, 10 p.m.)

Today in World Cup: Japan plays TREACHEROUS ENGLAND, who no doubt cheated in some manner or maybe had the Queen order Team Canada to lose on purpose because she’s the Queen and can do that. REPUBLIC FOREVER! DOWN WITH THE MONARCHY! (CTV, 7 p.m.)

In case you don’t have Canada Day plans, you can watch Canada Day in the Capital, because nobody does Canada Day like Ottawa does, it is fair to say. Unfortunately everybody does all the other days better. Sorry, Ottawa, but it’s true! (CBC, 8 p.m.)

Extant, the TV show where Halle Berry plays an astronaut who gets pregnant by space aliens and has to return home to live with her robot son, comes back for a second season because why not. (Global, 10 p.m.)

Food Fighters, the NBC reality show where professional cooks compete against home chefs so the home chefs can win money (or not), returns because…well, it only did okay in the ratings, so probably because NBC wanted to get some more use out of the sets. (Global, 8 p.m.)

AMC kindly runs Jaws back-to-back with Jaws 2, which is the only Jaws sequel that is even remotely passable. Watch the first because it’s a great movie; watch the second one because, well, it’s got sharks in it. (8 p.m. and 10:45 p.m., respectively)

This weekend in World Cup: Well, there’s the third-place game (TSN, 4 p.m. Saturday), but really, you care about the championship match, right? Let’s be honest here. (CTV, 7 p.m. Sunday)

Beach Flip is yet another show about flipping houses on HGTV—in this case, beach houses! The title of the pilot episode is “Welcome to Beach Flip,” presumably because they want this show to be understood by the alien races landing on Earth who have never seen a house-flipping show before. That’s advanced-level segment marketing, that is. (9 p.m. Sunday)

If you’re really into seeing some more George Miller films now that you’ve seen Mad Max: Fury Road, how about Happy Feet? Yes, the man who directed all four Mad Max films also directed this hit animated film about a penguin who expresses himself through dance. That is because George Miller just does his own thing. He also directed Lorenzo’s Oil, a brutal and upsetting film about child illness, which is not available online anywhere because the cloud is mostly bullshit and only gives you what is already popular, but that is a rant for another day. (Netflix)