Sherman’s Showcase returns with its “Black History Month Spectacular”
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Friday, June 19, and Saturday, June 20. All times are Eastern.
Top picks
Sherman’s Showcase: “Black History Month Spectacular” (Friday, 10 p.m. on AMC and 11 p.m. on IFC, one-hour special): Created by and starring South Side’s Bashir Salahuddin and Diallo Riddle, the sharp, surreal, and consistently entertaining Sherman’s Showcase is returning on Juneteenth with this one-hour special. The word “timely” is getting trotted out a lot these days, and yes, it applies here as well, even though it’s not officially Black History Month. But this is an unsurprisingly excellent hour, and if you’ve yet to experience this delirious Soul Train parody—though to call it that is to reduce its wildness and complexity down to its admittedly entertaining premise—there’s no time like the present. And as always, there’s a pack of special guests, including John Legend, Questlove, Michael Ealy, Bresha Webb, Jemele Hill, Lil Rel Howery, Black Thought, and others.
Can you binge it? All eight episodes of the show’s terrific first season await you on Hulu; as each episode clocks in at around 22 minutes, you could binge the whole thing in around three hours and be ready when this special pops up on AMC at 10 (or on IFC at 11, take your pick).
Watchmen (Friday, HBO, marathon begins 1 p.m.; also streaming free all weekend on HBO.com and On Demand): HBO has made this increasingly relevant series available for all throughout the weekend. A marathon begins today at 1 but it will remain available through Sunday, June 21. Here’s some of what our own Erik Adams said in his writeup of the show for our Best Of 2019 list:
Watchmen always deserved to be a miniseries. No one expected it to be this miniseries, a continuation untethered from theatrical run times, cinematic tidiness, or fidelity to the source material, arriving at something searing, surreal, and truly in the spirit of Alan Moore’s costumed-vigilantes-as-fascists philosophy—whether Moore likes it or not. Showrunner Damon Lindelof works from the blueprint (emphasis on “blue”) he set for one of the decade’s best shows: Like The Leftovers, Watchmen is a gutting, occasionally gut-busting contemporary parable set in the wake of a global catastrophe. But the psychic wounds inflicted by a Freudian space squid have nothing on the earthbound racism Watchmen exposes by unmasking American history, in sequences like Nicole Kassell’s harrowing re-staging of the Black Wall Street Massacre and scripts like Cord Jefferson’s splashy mindfuck, “This Extraordinary Being.” It’s a superhero show about so much more for a superhero-obsessed, so-much-more era, every episode an “Avengers assemble” roll call of onscreen excellence: Regina King, Jean Smart, Jeremy Irons, Louis Gossett Jr., Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Hong Chau.
Regular coverage
RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars (VH1, Friday, 8 p.m.)
On stage At home
Small Island (National Theatre Live via YouTube, streaming through June 25): The latest in the treasure trove of performances that the storied National Theatre is sharing for free is this adaptation of Levy’s novel of the same name. It’s a rich, complex novel, but broadly, it centers on the experience of the Jamaican diaspora in London after the second world war, and this stage adaptation was warmly received. There’s also an audio-described version for the visually impaired.