March 29 – April 4
All about a “wild and crazy guy,” Ewan McGregor holes up in a hotel & how Julius Caesar became a legendary tyrant
Find out about the wide-ranging career of Steve Martin in the documentary two-parter ‘Steve!’
All times Eastern.
FRIDAY, March 29
Spermworld
Go into the unregulated realm of baby making with this investigative documentary about sperm donors and hopeful parents (10 p.m., FX).
The Beautiful Game
Inspiring tale of a homeless football team advances to compete at the global street soccer championship games in Rome (below). With Bill Nighy and Michael Ward (Netflix).
Steve!
Two-part documentary about comedian actor Steve Martin, chronicling his upbringing, his years of “wild and crazy guy” standup and the esteemed acting icon he’s become today (Apple TV+).
SATURDAY, March 30
Beyond the Aggressives
New documentary series catches up with the subjects of the original late-90s, early 2000 series about “Aggressives” or “AGs,” a term for Black queer, sexually dominant women (Paramount+)
SUNDAY, March 31
A Gentleman in Moscow
Ewan McGregor and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (above) star in this eight-episode drama about a Russian count in the aftermath of his country’s revolution who finds himself exiled to a room in an opulent hotel and threatened with death if he ever steps foot outside again (9 p.m., Paramount+).
Parish
Crime thriller stars The Mandalorian’s Giancarlo Esposito as a New Orleans businessman drawn back into his former life in organized crime after the murder of his son. With Skeet Ulrich and Bradley Whitford (below left), who digs into his role as a covert crime lord (10 p.m., AMC).
MONDAY, April 1
Vanderpump Villa
Docudrama series follows Lisa Vanderpump and her staff as they live, work and play on an exclusive French estate (Hulu).
IHeart Radio Awards
Justin Timberlake, Green Day, TLC, Jelly Roll, Laney Wilson and many more will perform at this live event honoring the year’s top music-makers—plus a special tribute performance to this year’s Icon Award recipient, Cher (8 p.m., Fox).
TUESDAY, April 2
The Weakest Link
New season of the competition series hosted by Jane Lynch starts tonight, in which contestants must work together to build a “chain” by answering trivia questions (9 p.m., NBC).
Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator
Hail, Caesar! That’s the title of one of my favorite Coen Brothers films, but this new documentary series explores how the nearly-five-centuries old Roman democracy was destroyed and dismantled in less than two decades and turned into a dictatorship—and how Caesar became one of history’s most notorious tyrants (9 p.m., PBS).
Underdog
Documentary about Doug Butler, an aging Vermont dairy farmer with an offbeat passion: dog mushing (Amazon, Apple TV and other streaming platforms).
WEDNESDAY, April 3
A Brief History of the Future
What will tomorrow and beyond look like? This optimistic documentary hosted by “futurist” Ari Wallach offers a fresh, hopeful projection of what we might expect in the decades to come if we can overcome the existential threats we see today (9 p.m., PBS).
Loot
SNL veteran Maya Rudolph (below) stars in (and produces) this snappy workplace comedy about a recent divorcee recovering from her former marriage to a tech billionaire (Apple TV+).
Star Trek: Discovery
Blast off for the final season of the hit series iconic sci-fi spinoff starring Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp and Mary Wiseman, as the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery once again heads across the universe for one more intergalactic adventure (Paramount+).
THURSDAY, April 4
Ripley
Andrew Scott plays Tom Ripley, based on the bestselling novel series by Patricia Highsmith, about a grifter who finds himself in an international swirl of deceit, fraud and murder (Netflix).
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Tired of staying in the same ol’ hotels? Secret Stays (Aussouline) by former Conde Nast Traveler editor Melinda Stevens, transports armchair adventurers to some of the most unique, mostly unknown hotels around the world, from secluded abbeys to ancient manors and larger-than-life mansions. Lavishly illustrated.
What did people do before written history? Stefanos Geroulanos’ The Invention of Prehistory (WW Norton) shows how the endless quest to know our humanity was shaped—and often misshaped—by all sorts of theories and notions of barbarians, Neanderthals, Amazon women and utopian paradises…and often became the ideological foundations for repressive regimes that considered people as less than human.
The Media Tourist 