Broken Brain, broken hearts and a Heartbeat
This week’s TV lineup will win you over with laughter and tears
There’s a lot of heart in this week’s offering of seven TV selections for the next seven days. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll wonder how Shonda Rhimes does it. Onward!
MONDAY, MARCH 21
Everything Is Copy: Nora Ephron Scripted and Unscripted (HBO, 9 to 10:35 p.m.)
The novelist (Heartburn), screenwriter (Silkwood, Julie and Julia, When Harry Met Sally) and memoirist (I Feel Bad About My Neck) is profiled in a documentary directed by her son, Jacob Bernstein, and featuring famous friends like Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Mike Leigh and Carl Bernstein, whom she divorced and later fictionalized to great acclaim. “Everything is copy,” Ephron recounts her mother saying, to soothe her after harsh treatment in her childhood. Telling the story, and telling it well and especially with humour, is the best revenge. But one of her most poignant stories, her terminal cancer, went virtually untold. “Why,” the documentary asks, “after being so open about everything else did she choose not to address the most significant crisis of her life?” Do not miss this.
TUESDAY, MARCH 22
Heartbeat (NBC, 9 p.m.)
Beginning Tuesday and then moving to its regular time slot on Wednesday at 8 p.m., this is the story of a female heart transplant surgeon who, according to the trailer and presumably in addition to actual heart surgery, propositions a fellow doctor, gets arrested and goes viral. Just another day at the office/operating room for Dr. Alex Panttiere (Melissa George, Good Wife, Grey’s Anatomy). Interesting costars are Dave Annable (Brothers & Sisters) and comedian/actor D.L. Hughley.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23
My Beautiful Broken Brain (Netflix)
Available on the streaming app/ site as of March 18, this documentary tells the story of Lotje Sodderland, who survives a hemorrhagic stroke to discover that while it has left her to start over in a lot of basics, like language, it also appears to have moved her to some new higher artistic ground. She sees things so strange and beautiful that the only possible person for her to reach out to is visionary filmmaker and artist David Lynch.
THURSDAY, MARCH 24
The Catch (ABC, 10 p.m.)
“The sexiest cat and mouse game on television.” Well then! Shonda Rhimes must have discovered a 25th hour in the day because in addition to Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy and How to Get Away with Murder, her company Shondaland has a new show that is, apparently, sexy. Mireille Enos (The Killing) is P.I. Alice Vaughan. Peter Krause (Dirty Sexy Money, Six Feet Under) is Benjamin Jones, her fiancé.
FRIDAY, MARCH 25
You have no date and there’s no shame in that. Or you have a date and the boyfriend/husband/gigolo owes you a movie favour. Either way, Netflix your way to the chickest of chick flicks, Terms of Endearment. Debra Winger, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson and Jeff Daniels star in what is the classic love-hate mother-daughter movie. Stock up on tissues, ripple potato chips, cheap riesling and maybe Gatorade because you will dehydrate pretty quickly. It arrives on Netflix March 24.
SATURDAY, MARCH 26
Google Jimmy Carr and oneliners and you can read a lot of the British comedian’s best jokes. But please don’t. One of biggest draws and most dependable performers at Just for Laughs is the definition of “it’s all in the delivery.” The new comedy special Funny Business (on Netflix as of March 18) looks to be him at his deadpan, slow-burning best.
SUNDAY, MARCH 27
Missing your Downton Abbey?
Mr. Selfridge (PBS, 10 p.m.)
returns for a fourth season and, by all accounts, might do the trick for some of us. It stars Jeremy Piven as Harry Gordon Selfridge, American king of London retail and embodiment of some dramatic vices.
Broadcast times are subject to change. Check my daily Watchers picks on the Montreal Gazette’s smartphone app in the iTunes and PLAY stores.