The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching
Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway the man was more interesting than the myth. A new six-hour, three-night documentary from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick aims to look past the bullfighting obsession, the big-game hunting, and the broken marriages and romances to find the artist who made a lasting impact on world literature at 27 and kept finding ways to live up to his reputation. Literary heavyweights analyze Hemingway’s craft while the filmmakers create a portrait of man consumed by his self-created, hypervirile persona. Begins Monday, April 5, at 8 p.m., PBS; check local listings Exterminate All the Brutes
Filmmaker Raoul Peck, who channeled James Baldwin’s sweeping critique of anti-Black racism in the acclaimed documentary I Am Not Your Negro, now has an even bigger target. In this fourpart series that crosses documentary with polemic, he uses a 1992 Sven Lindqvist book to mount an argument that Western imperialism has been a genocidal force whose core values were manifested in the Holocaust and still haunt the world today. Begins Wednesday, April 7, at 9 p.m., HBO Home Economics
The latest family sitcom from the only network that’s keeping the genre relevant features Topher Grace as one of three adult siblings who stay close despite the enormous gap in wealth that affects how daily life plays out in their separate Bay Area households. With Caitlin McGee as the trio’s have-not, Jimmy Tatro as the younger brother who made a tech fortune, and Grace doing the voice-over work, because his character is a writerdad who’s chronicling the whole adventure. Wednesday, April 7, at 8:30 p.m., on ABC
This Is a Robbery
Thirteen empty frames hang in Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to commemorate the masterpieces that were stolen by thieves the night after St. Patrick’s Day 1990. This documentary savors the mystery of where the Vermeer, the Rembrandt, and all the rest have vanished to, gathering stories from investigators who have looked into Irish mobster Whitey Bulger, the local Italian mafia, and even the IRA. Available Wednesday, April 7, Netflix
Them
The title recalls Jordan Peele’s Us, and like that horror film, this new series from executive producer Lena Waithe plumbs the terror of racism. In 1953, a middle-class black family moves cross country to a new home in Compton, a mostly white Los Angeles suburb. The neighbors launch a campaign of terror, and the house itself seems to turn against them. Too much like a Peele project? Co-stars Deborah Ayorinde and Ashley Thomas will try to make the story their own. Available Friday, April 9, Amazon Prime
Other highlights
NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship
The lone two survivors of March Madness convene in San Antonio to decide which team will cut down the nets. Monday, April 6 at 9 p.m., ESPN Chad
In a new cringe-comedy series from Saturday Night Live alum Nasim Pedrad, the 39-year-old plays a 14-year-old boy who’s floundering in high school. Tuesday, April 6, at 10:30 p.m., TBS Kung Fu
Very loosely based on the 1970s series of the same name, this reboot showcases Olivia Liang as a college dropout who uses newly won martial-arts skills to fight baddies in today’s San Francisco. Wednesday, April 7, at 8 p.m., the CW