There’s so much new television on tonight that literally everyone who writes for this site has an opinion on it. The NFL enters the 86 zone as team’s select next year’s rookie. There’s a remake of a classic chiller. A puppet show reminiscent of the BBC ’80s political mockibuster Spitting Image makes its debut. Also, Lakeith comes to the animated world.

KATHERINE’S PICK:
The Bad Seed [Sundance Now]
This beloved New Zealand limited series (all five episodes are available to stream today on Sundance Now and AMC+) features the pitfalls of ensemble dramas that landmarked the 2010s: affairs with beautiful women who turn up dead, siblings rough around the edge, nosy detectives, perfect wives, pillars of the community preparing to run for office, and carefully-constructed adult lives that unravel.  

BRAD’S PICK:
Let’s Be Real [Fox, 9:30p]
Do you like politics and current events? Do you like puppets? Do you miss the days when Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” video was played on MTV? Well, my friend, your day has arrived as a new puppet show where puppets break down the news of the day has arrived. Really what more do you need to know.

NAVANI’S PICK:
Yasuke [Netflix]
It’s like Netflix had a meeting and thought, “How can we convert Navani into an Anime watcher?” Step one, make it a story with a historical reference– i.e.  based the first Black samurai, check. Step 2: get someone she is obsessed with to take part… cue Lakeith Stanfield as the voice of Yasuke. And lastly, let’s make sure the scoring and sound design are in good hands…enter Flying Lotus. Well played, Netflix, well played! 

FIONA’S PICK:
Top Chef [Bravo, 9p]
This week the chefs are creating movie genre inspired dishes to serve at a drive-in theater. This is a very innovative way to feed a crowd in the middle of a pandemic! It’s a group challenge which inevitably ends in dramatics. How thematically appropriate!

JASON’S PICK:
2021 NFL Draft [ABC, 8p]
As a fan of a longtime awful team that’s suddenly become a powerhouse, it’s a weird thing to be sitting with one of the last picks of the first round, able to watch it as an event instead of worrying about the ramifications of my favorite team screwing it up–more so. Five QBs are likely to go in the first round (first ten even) and there’s a lot of promising players to be picked. Will Trevor Lawrence be the next Peyton Manning or the next JaMarcus Russell? Or perhaps somewhere in the area in between we’ll call BradfordSmithopolis?

BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE:

• Adapted from a 2016 thriller penned by Elizabeth Brundage, Things Heard and Seen features Amanda Seyfried and James Norton as a couple who encounter small-town spookiness after uprooting from NYC to their dream country house. F. Murray Abraham appears in a supporting role, so make sure to give yourself enough time to return from your ghost town trip, so you can stop along the road back if your grandpa desperately needs to pee.
• If you’re going into the HBO Max documentary Lucy the Human Chimp, expecting it to be a feelgood story, gird yourself and maybe throw on an Attenborough instead. There is much heartbreak in the story of Lucy, a chimpanzee adopted by the Temerlin family of Oklahoma and raised as a human in the late 1960s. After proving smart but too dangerous to live among humans, she was shipped to a reserve in Gambia, with one of her human companions living herself as a chimp to help her friend acclimate.
• If you need some lighter fare, you can go from doc to “what’s up doc” on the same service as HBO Max is also bringing about a new batch of Looney Tunes Cartoons.

• The Ace of Cakes himself, chef Duff Goldman of Baltimore, brings us a new show on Discovery+ that’s teeming with magic robots–and of course sweet baked goods. The wonderfully titled Duff’s Happy Fun Bake Time debuts on the Discovery+ streaming service today.
• Bethenny Frankel brings the two reality worlds she inhabited together–for those keeping score at home that’s The Apprentice and The Real Housewives of New York City–in her new reality competition show on HBO Max, The Big Shot with Bethenny. The premise: Frankel needs to find a new VP of Operations for her vague global brand who can handle her spotlight. So, what else would she do, but create a television show where she slowly eliminates the jobseekers one at a time through the familiar weekly challenge format. Woo hoo? Also, why are you keeping score?
• A woman receives a mystery box filled with six items–each with grotesque stories surrounding how they came to be in a box of horrors. That’s the jump off point for the latest Shudder offering, Deadhouse Dark.