What’s on TV This Week: ‘Phoenix Rising’ and ‘Welcome to Flatch’

Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, March 14-20. Details and times are subject to change.

Monday

THE JULIA CHILD CHALLENGE 9 p.m. on Food Network. A group of talented amateur chefs compete to recreate Julia Child dishes — and to cook up their own Child-inspired recipes — in this new reality competition series. The winner receives comprehensive courses at the French-cooking institution Le Cordon Bleu, where Child once trained.

Tuesday

PHOENIX RISING 9 p.m. on HBO. This new two-part documentary looks at the performer Evan Rachel Wood’s advocacy on behalf of survivors of domestic violence. The program covers Wood’s work on the Phoenix Act — a California bill passed in 2019 that lengthened the statute of limitations for domestic abuse felonies and expanded training for police officers working on domestic violence cases — and Wood’s experience of publicly stating, in early 2021, that the musician Marilyn Manson had abused her. Amy Berg (“An Open Secret”) directs.

Wednesday

US (2019) 4:15 p.m. on FXM. “Nope,” the latest movie from the horror auteur Jordan Peele, had its first trailer released last month, offering a look at the setting for its supernatural story: a ranch in a dry, isolated slice of California. Peele’s previous movie, “Us,” was set in a wetter, saltier part of the state: Monterey Bay, at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. In “Us,” Peele focuses on a four-person family that encounters their doppelgängers while on vacation. (The cast includes Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Evan Alex and Shahadi Wright Joseph.) The results, Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The New York Times, are “messy, brilliant, sobering, even bleak.”

OLD HENRY (2021) 6:15 p.m. on Showtime 2. Tim Blake Nelson stars as a farmer whose grizzled looks conceal a very particular set of skills in this throwback western. The plot kicks into a gallop after Nelson’s character, Henry, stumbles on a wounded man (Scott Haze) lying near a satchel of money. Henry and his son (Gavin Lewis) take the man in, inadvertently putting themselves between him and a trio of brutes. The film “makes a solid, honorable go of proving once again that the foursquare western isn’t dead,” Ben Kenigsberg wrote in his review for The Times, “though in paying homage to its forebears, it inevitably stands in their very long shadows.”

Thursday

WELCOME TO FLATCH 9:30 p.m. on Fox. A minister who used to be part of a Christian boy band, a lovesick newspaper editor, and a pair of cousins whose claim to fame involves bear spray and tears are among the weird characters in this new comedy series, set in a fictional Midwestern town called Flatch. Thursday night’s debut episode, which revolves around a town fair, was directed by Paul Feig (“Bridesmaids”), an executive producer of the series.

Friday

VIOLET (2021) 8 p.m. on Showtime. In “Violet,” her directorial debut, Justine Bateman brandishes a potpourri of cinematic tricks — voice-overs, overlaid text — to delve into the anxious psyche of a film production executive played by Olivia Munn. Munn’s character, Violet, lives in Los Angeles, but she’s often living in her head: As she goes through her routines, a trio of internal voices that Violet calls “the committee” (one of which is voiced by Justin Theroux) bears down on her. In other words, her self-consciousness comes to life. The highlight here, Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in her review for The Times, is Munn, who gives a “terrific performance,” even as the film at large “experiments with so many cinematic frills and fancies that Munn’s touching work is too often obscured.”

Saturday

THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK (2021) 7 p.m. on HBO. Michael Gandolfini, the son of the actor James Gandolfini, plays a younger version of his father’s most famous character in this “Sopranos” prequel. That character is, of course, Tony Soprano, the overwhelmed mob boss, father and husband whose middle-age troubles were the focus of the original show’s six seasons. This movie is an origin story that imagines a teenage Tony, and his descent into organized crime. It’s also an interesting opportunity to see a young actor grapple with his father’s legacy. “I remember asking my dad, maybe at 13, what the hell is this? Why do I hear about this all the time? What is this about?” Michael Gandolfini said in an interview with The Times last year. “He’s like, ‘It’s about this mobster who goes to therapy and I don’t know, that’s about it.’”

Sunday

BEFORE WE DIE 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This British remake of a Swedish series centers on a police detective (Lesley Sharp) whose partner — professional and romantic — goes missing under mysterious circumstances. The hunt for answers leads her to a Croatian organized-crime family, but is complicated by her son’s (Patrick Gibson) own work as an undercover informant.

WHEN WE WERE KINGS (1996) 10:15 p.m. on TCM. Spike Lee and Norman Mailer are among the interviewees in this Oscar-winning documentary about the 1974 boxing match known as the Rumble in the Jungle, in which Muhammad Ali pulled an upset against George Foreman. The director Leon Gast spent about two decades making the film — though the way Gast once told it, Ali — a famous virtuoso of braggadocio whose self-confidence is on full, over-the-top display here — might deserve a co-directing credit. “One day,” Gast said in an interview with The Times in 1997, “Muhammad told us: ‘In the morning when I run, I come around that corner with the sun and the river behind me. Put your camera over there. It’ll be a great shot.’ He was right. It was a great shot.”