Televisualist: Of Horaces And Petes

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.

Who wouldn’t pay five dollars for this exciting sitting-in-chairs action?

Monday

The Real O’Neals has already drawn complaints from the American Family Association, the Family Research Council and, amazingly, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, because it is a show about an Irish-Catholic family where the parents are getting a divorce, one son is gay, the other anorexic and the daughter a budding atheist. It’s also reasonably funny with a solid cast led by Martha Plimpton, who is always good in everything, so maybe give it a shot. (City, 8 p.m.)

Bates Motel returns for season four, having been renewed through to a fifth and final season, so there’s probably at least another 18 to 20 episodes left before (spoiler) Norman Bates finally murders his mother and assumes her identity, because this is a prequel series and that’s how prequels work. (A&E, 9 p.m.)

Damien is the TV series featuring the grown-up kid Antichrist from The Omen that nobody demanded, and yet, somebody made. (A&E, 10 p.m.)

Cold Water Cowboys, a TV show about fishermen, who are not cowboys, returns for a third season of not describing itself properly. (Discovery, 8 p.m.)

Humble Home Hunters: it’s like Home Hunters, except all of the people looking for Canadian homes are looking with a maximum budget of $150,000 and seeing what they can get for that price. There is, improbably, an episode set in Vancouver, and the episode title is not titled “Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.” (HGTV, 10 p.m.)

Of Kings and Prophets: a TV show based on the Biblical Books of Samuel, which means King Saul, David and a whole lot of really white people playing characters who should probably not be this white, regardless of how much one likes Ray Winstone—and we like Ray Winstone! (ABC, 10 p.m.)

Wahlburgers returns for another season of pretending we care about Mark Wahlberg’s non-acting non-otherwise-famous family. They do have good burgers, though. We will give them that. But that doesn’t mean we’d watch Burger’s Priest: The Series either. (A&E, 9 p.m.)

60 Days In is kind of like Undercover Boss except instead of bosses it’s regular everyday citizens and instead of work it’s prison. The working title of this show was “This Should End Well.” (A&E, 9 p.m.)

Yeah there’s another Republican primary debate but man, do you even want to do that to yourself? I mean, really? (CNN, 9 p.m.)

If you missed the season premiere of I Am Cait last week, you can watch it again. No idea if Caitlyn Jenner endorses Ted Cruz in her show this season, as she has done in real life, but the premiere did feature people actually questioning Jenner about her terrible political stances with respect to LGBTQ issues, so that’s something, we guess? (E!, 9 p.m.)

Little Big Shots: it’s a talent show for skilled kids hosted by Steve Harvey. That’s it. This is either for you or it isn’t. You are either the sort of person who watches Vines of wee tots doing improbably brilliant things or you are not. (NBC, 8 p.m. Sunday)

Horace and Pete is not free—you have to pay Louis CK to download the episodes, albeit not a lot—but for fans of Louis CK or the rest of the cast (which includes Steve Buscemi, Edie Falco, Steven Wright, Alan Alda and Jessica Lange), it’s a relative bargain. The best description of the show is “what if Louis CK wrote a series of stage plays about a bar and its owners and then filmed them.” That may be up your alley. It may not.