‘Love in Time of Corona’ a pandemic-inspired take on romance
Agorilla searches for meaning, “Lucifer’s” charming devil returns, couples seek connection during the pandemic, and a Colombian drug lord’s hippos try to avoid a veterinarian.
Dispatches: Weekly TV news
• Apple TV+ ordered “My Kind of Country,” a music competition series that will feature a global search for the next country music star. Reese Witherspoon will be among the executive producers. The show is the third project Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, has set up at the streamer.
Contenders: Shows to keep on your radar
• Originally scheduled for a theatrical release, “The One and Only Ivan” (Aug. 21, Disney+) is about a 400-pound gorilla who shares a habitat in a suburban shopping mall with various other animals. Ivan begins to question his life and purpose after he meets a baby elephant named Ruby. The film is a mixture of live-action and CGI and is based on Katherine Applegate’s award-winning 2013 book. It stars Bryan Cranston, and features the voices of Sam Rockwell, Angelina Jolie, Danny DeVito and Helen Mirren.
• “Lucifer” returns for season five (Aug. 21, Netflix). In this installment, which is being split into two parts of eight episodes each, Lucifer’s twin brother, Michael, secretly replaces him on Earth.
• With his answer to how to work through a pandemic, Tony winner Leslie Odom Jr. (“Hamilton”), along with Nicolette Robinson (“The Affair”), executive produces and stars in fourpart limited series “Love in the Time of Corona” (Aug. 22, Freeform, 8 p.m. ET). The romantic dramedy about people searching for love and connection during these challenging times follows four interwoven stories. Filming was done using remote technologies in the cast’s real homes.
• Nine-episode series “The Vow” (Aug. 23, HBO, 10 p.m. ET) looks at the controversial selfhelp group NXIVM with commentary from insiders and former members.
• You may know that notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s brutal reign left his country with a legacy of corruption, but I bet you didn’t know it also left it with a hippo problem. In the 1980s, Escobar smuggled four hippos onto his $63 million estate outside Medellin to join his collection of exotic animals. After his death, they were left to their own devices, and now, the animals responsible for more deaths in Africa than lions or crocodiles number over 60 and are terrorizing villages and threatening vital ecosystems. Despite this, Colombians love their hippos and it’s illegal to cull them, which leaves the task of capture and sterilization to a dedicated veterinarian. “The Hunt for Escobar’s Hippos” (Aug. 26, Smithsonian Channel, 8 p.m. ET) tells the bizarre and fascinating story.
Melissa Crawley has a Ph.D. in media studies and is a member of the Television Critics Association. To comment on Stay Tuned, email her at staytuned@outlook.com or follow her on Twitter at @mcstaytuned.