What’s on TV This Week: ‘Everything’s Trash’ and ‘The Rehearsal’
New shows from the idiosyncratic comedy creators Phoebe Robinson and Nathan Fielder debut on Freeform and HBO.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, July 11-17. Details and times are subject to change.MondayPOV: WUHAN WUHAN (2022) 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). As with “Berlin, 1945,” or “Fukushima, 2011,” the title card “February, 2020, Wuhan, China,” will forever convey more than just a time and place. This feature-length documentary from Yung Chang gives a fly-on-the-wall look at the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, and at the lives of health care workers and other Chinese citizens who lived through that period.TuesdayNatasia Demetriou and Matt Berry in “What We Do in the Shadows.”Russ Martin/FXWHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS 10 p.m. on FX. The Spirit Halloween store of comedy shows — and its cast of eccentric vampires who live together on Staten Island — returns with a pair of Season 4 premiere episodes on Tuesday. Highlights of the new season include the opening of a vampire nightclub and the rearing of a supernatural child who emerged at the end of last season. (That’s “emerged” in the literal sense — the child came out of the chest cavity of another character.)WednesdayEVERYTHING’S TRASH 10 p.m. on Freeform. The comedy auteur Phoebe Robinson (“2 Dope Queens”) plays a fictionalized version of herself in this new series, which was inspired by Robinson’s 2018 essay collection, “Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay.” The Phoebe of “Everything’s Trash” is a 30-something podcast host living a proudly chaotic life in Brooklyn. But she faces pressure to rein in her lifestyle when her older brother (Jordan Carlos) runs for public office.ThursdayJOCKEY (2021) 9 p.m. on Starz. Clifton Collins Jr., long a supporting player on screens big (as in “Capote”) and small (“Westworld”), got a juicy leading role in this dramatic film. He plays Jackson Silva, an aging jockey. Jackson practices out of a track in Arizona under the eye of his longtime trainer, Ruth (Molly Parker) — despite the fact that his body strains to keep up with the pace and rigor of the sport. That potent setup is agitated by the arrival of a young jockey, Gabriel (Moises Arias), whom Jackson mentors — but whose youthful presence further highlights Jackson’s age. It’s “an enjoyable old-warrior movie with a surprising sting,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The New York Times, “even if the bones and story are creaky.”FridayNathan Fielder in “The Rehearsal.”David M. Russell/HBOTHE REHEARSAL 10 p.m. on HBO. With “Nathan For You,” a docu-comedy series that ran on Comedy Central from 2013 to 2017, Nathan Fielder became a key figure in the development of what the critic Jason Zinoman, in a 2021 column in The Times, called “a quiet revolution” in comedy: A renaissance in documentary comedy whose artists also include Sacha Baron Cohen, John Wilson and Eric André. Fielder’s new show, “The Rehearsal,” is built around a novel way of blurring reality and fiction: It follows Fielder as he meets ordinary people and offers them an opportunity to rehearse for upcoming significant moments in their lives, on sets meticulously built to mirror their own realities.SaturdayThomasin McKenzie in “Last Night in Soho.”Parisa Taghizadeh/Focus Features LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. “I would say I’m ghost-curious,” the filmmaker Edgar Wright said in an interview with The Times last year. “I haven’t seen one but I’d really like to.” Wright, known for stylized, fast-moving films with quick cuts (see “Baby Driver” and “Shaun of the Dead”), uses his filmmaking trickery to conjure a ghostly spirit in “Last Night in Soho,” a creepy thriller that mixes the lives of two young women living in different eras. The story follows Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), a fashion student who moves into a creaky old apartment in modern-day London. There, she begins having visions of a young singer named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), who occupied some of the same spaces in the 1960s — and who increasingly comes to occupy Eloise’s consciousness.EL DORADO (1966) 8:45 on Sundance TV. The actor James Caan died last week at 82. One of his earliest meaty film roles came in this Western, in which Caan plays a young man nicknamed Mississippi, who is the associate of an older gun for hire played by John Wayne. Wayne’s character, Cole Thornton, is called to help an old friend — a drunken sheriff played by Robert Mitchum — defend a family of ranchers against a group of bad guys trying to take their land. He brings Mississippi along for the ride. The critic Howard Thompson called the film “a tough, laconic and amusing Western” in his 1967 review for The Times. “This Paramount color release is worth seeing,” Thompson added, “if only for the casual, saddle-sore expertise and ribaldry” of Wayne and Mitchum, whom he referred to as “these two leathery dudes.”SundaySPACE TITANS: MUSK, BEZOS, BRANSON 9 p.m. on Science Channel. This feature-length special looks at the ongoing ambitions of the billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson to commercialize space travel through their respective companies. It is built around the reporting of the journalist Christian Davenport, who covers NASA and the space industry for The Washington Post. More
