Televisualist: Sadly, There Is No Great British Blade-Off

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.

These baking show hosts are British and are therefore 20 per cent wackier than average baking show hosts.

Monday

The Abyss is, at this point, perhaps the least-famous of James Cameron’s films that isn’t Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, but it remains one of his most fascinating. An action/sci-fi/thriller set at more or less the bottom of the ocean, it was reportedly terrifying to film because the actors were frequently free-diving underwater in a giant tank at night to film their scenes with divers carrying oxygen tanks just off-camera. While the “regular edition” of the film (airing tonight) sometimes feels disjointed compared to the nearly-three-hour director’s cut, it’s still a wildly entertaining film with some very good performances and a bit where a rat breathes liquid and survives. (MovieTime, 9 p.m.)

Tonight’s season finale of Crash is entitled “The Pain Won’t Stop” because sometimes TV critics have their jobs made easy for them. (M3, 9 p.m.)

Forged In Fire is essentially Top Chef but with swords instead of food. Maybe they can cut some food with the swords as a test! Then they can have a crossover! (A&E, 10 p.m.)

Our Little Family returns for a second season as TLC’s burgeoning “reality shows about people with dwarfism” genre hits either maturity or the saturation point, depending on your point of view. (10 p.m.)

The Carmichael Show features comedian Jerrod Carmichael in a family sitcom that has a deceptive pilot; the second episode (and, apparently, most of the following episodes as well) is decidedly more issue-oriented (for instance, police shootings of unarmed black people), which might make one think it is a bog-standard Wacky Family show, with David Alan Grier and Loretta Divine as the Wacky Parents. But it may end up being more Norman Lear-ish comedy than one might expect, based on the pilot. (Global, 10 p.m.)

Warning: Curse of the Frozen Gold is not an awesome pseudo-Indiana Jones sort of movie, but a reality series about prospectors trying to recover a supposedly-cursed cache of gold in British Columbia. As we do. (History, 10 p.m.)

Be forewarned: if you remember Robin Hood: Men In Tights fondly, you should be aware that a) it has not aged well and b) it wasn’t really that good to begin with, the enthusiasm of Cary Elwes aside. (IFC, 9 p.m.)

Hannibal‘s third and quite possibly final season concludes tonight. Maybe he’ll eat an extra person to celebrate an eventual move to Hulu. (City, 10 p.m.)

The Core is breathtakingly stupid, as it is a movie about the core of the Earth “stopping,” and somehow this makes Bad Things Happen, so the Awesome Science Team has to drill down to the center of the planet with their Magic Science Drill which doesn’t melt down in superhot lava to restart it by exploding nuclear bombs, while a super-hacker hacks the entire internet to make sure the world doesn’t find out about this top-secret plan. And it gets even stupider than that! But it’s the fun kind of stupid, at least. (AMC, 9 p.m.)

It’s the MTV Music Video Awards! Featuring performances by Nick Jonas, Walk the Moon, and The Weeknd, among others, as well as the world premiere of a new video by Taylor Swift! Celebrate this slowly dying art form by dancing around the enormous bonfire of art it has created! (Much, 9 p.m. Sunday; pre-show 8 p.m.)

Careful searching has determined that just about every episode of The Great British Bake Off can be found online, albeit most of them on a somewhat dodgy level. Why should you watch a show about baking? Because the contestants are typically nice to and supportive of one another, because the hosts (Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc) are delightful, because the judges are so very British, because the things they are made to bake are both dazzling and appetizing, and because the show presents the act of baking in a way that somehow makes it breathlessly exciting. Endlessly fun. (YouTube)