What To Watch: 05/20/2020

Between an actual game show based on the playground game TAG, another game show where we watch people sleep, a Lifetime special set in quarantine (in which they coin “quarantime” but we’re still all-in on “q-binge,” and a news channel broadcasting from Jay Leno’s garage, today’s television seems more of a parody show, or perhaps a real-life Jack Donaghy is trying to tank not just NBC, but all of television. That being said, we found some gems, from the return of our favorite comedian/homemaker to our beloved fifth borough bloodsuckers to Disney showcasing one of its modern classics, and perhaps the only movie starring The Rock to pass the Bechdal Test.

JASON’S PICK:
At Home with Amy Sedaris [TruTV, 10p]
A new batch of celebrities flock to the comedian’s home to make food and crafts for the third season of the show based on her popular book. This season’s guests include Richard Kind, Jason Sudeikis, and Arturo Castro.

BRAD’S PICK:
What We Do In The Shadows [FX, 10p]
An old nemesis returns to bother our favorite Staten Island vampires. He’s down on his luck, so well that mean they will treat him well? I’m guessing not.

KATHERINE’S PICK:
Moana [ABC, 8p]
What can I say, but you’re welcome.

ALSO ON TAP TONIGHT:

200520ultimatetag

  • Fox has the championships in TAG. Yes, that tag. As in “you’re it, no, you’re it” tag. This is what it’s come to. So, yeah, we’re definitely gonna watch Ultimate Tag.
  • Ok, sorry The 100, because we know this is kinda like “Puppet Show… also Spinal Tap,” but here we are. In any case, the seventh season of the dystopian talk show begins tonight on The CW.
  • It’s a big day for Netflix foreign content, so let’s dig through there. We’ve got Blood & Water from South Africa, which concerns young students at a boarding school and uses the title of a Guns ‘N’ Roses classic for its tagline. Mexico’s Mutiny of the Worker Bees is a fast-paced comedy that deals with layabout Omar being forced to get an office job. Colombian historical drama The Queen & the Conqueror was supposed to come out about a week ago, but apparently not. It is now.

200520platt

  • Ben Platt is a versatile performer who many might have first seen as the lead actor in the polarizing Ryan Murphy show (is there any other kind?) The Politician. He’s excellent in it, btw. However, he made his name by starring in pretty much every important musical of the ’10s (well, Dear Evan Hansen at least). The 26-year-old shows off his vocal chops today on the Netflix special Ben Platt: Live From Radio City Music Hall.
  • It’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee minus the coffee (and with non-comedians) on Jay Leno’s Garage as the tenacious former Tonight Show host shows off his famous classic car collection on CNBC (for some reason).
  • The misleadingly titled Sleeping with Friends is actually part reality competition, part science study as this YouTube original seeks to discover the secrets of a good night’s sleep — we’ve seen those last three words, but not sure what they mean in that order.
  • We’ll finish up, as we like to do, over at Lifetime, where it’s not about movies tonight, but about weird specials, starting with Married at First Sight: Couple’s Cam which is a reunion special of a show we try to push out of our mind in case we wind up in any tall buildings. Also, there’s the portmanteauingly named Once Upon a Quarantime — it’s pretty much watching what others are doing while we’re all trapped at home. And we stand by our word: if they can invent “quarantime,” we can give portmanteau seats at both the gerund and adverb tables. Try and stop us. Oh no, we’re going quarancrazy — bye for now, signed, Screen Scholars!

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