What's on TV this week—Conversations With Friends, The Time Traveler's Wife, Angelyne
Plus, a bunch of big-network finales, new anime from Netflix, an emotional reality series, and more
Welcome to What’s On, our weekly picks of must-watch shows. Here’s what you need to watch from Sunday, May 15 to Thursday, May 19. All times are Eastern. [Note: The weekend edition of What’s On drops on Fridays.]
The biggies
Conversations With Friends (Hulu, Sunday, 12:01 a.m.)
Author Sally Rooney’s specialty is love stories that wreck you, as seen in Hulu’s adaptation of Normal People. Next in line: Conversations With Friends, based on her 2017 book of the same name. The show centers on the quiet Frances (Alison Oliver) and her outgoing BFF Bobbi (Sasha Lane). They befriend novelist Melissa (Jemima Kirke), with Bobbi instantly developing a crush on her, while Frances falls for Melissa’s husband, Nick (Joe Alwyn). What follows are messy triangles that threaten to ruin multiple lives. All 12 episodes will drop on the same day. In his review, Manuel Betancourt writes:
As Nick and Frances’ relationship blooms (and ebbs and flows), Conversations With Friends offers glimmers of a fascinating proposition. Namely, Rooney’s book. “The novel is better” feels like such a tired line but there is something to be said about the expansive interiority prose allows and the way a TV adaptation can reduce rather than distill such a sensibility.
The Time Traveler’s Wife (HBO, Sunday, 9 pm.)
Steven Moffat does time travel yet again. The Doctor Who writer and showrunner brings Audrey Niffenegger’s novel to life in six new episodes. The Time Traveler’s Wife follows Henry DeTamble (Theo James), whose ability to fall through time (while always naked!) impacts his relationship with his wife Clare (Rose Leslie). But the show is less a complex sci-fi romance and more unwittingly corny and creepy. As Will Hughes writes: “It’s just a shame that The Time Traveler’s Wife sometimes feels, like its hero, as if it’s being pulled in a hundred different directions at once.”
Angelyne (Peacock, Thursday, 3:01 a.m.)