Prime Video’s Upload, one of the shows included in this edition of What to Watch, features a fictional character named Nathan Brown. Coincidentally, the CableTV.com team features a very real character named Nathan Brown (he’s our Content Strategist). But maybe Upload is the real world, and this is a digital fabrication? Makes you think . . .
This week’s What to Watch picks include a furry new Pixar star, an AI Andy Warhol, a country music stadium party, deep-fried fair snacks, and more. Get watching!
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What’s premiering this week
Turning Red | Disney+ | Animation, comedy
Movie premiere, Friday, March 11: Being 13 is hard enough—imagine transforming into an oversized furball whenever you get excited or stressed. Pixar’s Turning Red (the studio’s first feature to be directed by a woman, Domee Shi) centers on young Mei (voiced by Rosalie Chiang), a confident Chinese-Canadian girl who turns into a big red panda during emotional periods—kind of like the Hulk, but less green and angry. Turning Red takes place in the early 2000s, so of course, there’s a boy band (4*Town!).
NHL Heritage Classic | TNT | Sports, hockey
Coverage begins Sunday, March 13, 4 p.m. EST: This year’s NHL Heritage Classic is only its sixth game since the outdoor hockey series launched in 2003, and the first to feature a non-Canadian team, the Sabres of Buffalo (which is almost Canada). The Sabres will be taking on the Toronto Maple Leafs at Tim Horton Field in Hamilton, Ontario; neither team has played in the Heritage Classic before. The Leafs (35–15) are having a better 2021–22 season than the Sabres (17–30), but anything can happen on the ice in the great outdoors.
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What to watch on Netflix this week
The Andy Warhol Diaries | Netflix | Documentary
Series Premiere, Wednesday, March 9: Six-part docuseries The Andy Warhol Diaries features a uniquely Warhol-ian twist: Warhol himself, who died in 1987, will narrate the biography. Huh? The pop-art impresario’s voice has been recreated through deep-fake AI tech, which kind of fulfills Warhol’s oft-stated dream to become a machine. The series covers Warhol’s 1960s Factory peak with that famous soup can painting through his final days in the ’80s, with anecdotes from the likes of John Waters and Rob Lowe.
Guardians of Justice | Netflix | Action, animation
New series, now streaming: Peacemaker and The Boys: Diabolical have recently set new bars for dark, over-the-top superhero series, but neither has the dizzying visual buzz of Netflix’s Guardians of Justice. Its manic mash-up of live-action and animation styles satirize the basic DC Justice League archetypes we’re all familiar with, as well as historical pop culture and propaganda. The voices behind the Guardians include Diamond Dallas Page, Will Yun Lee, Kellan Lutz, Preeti Desai, and Jane Seymour.
What to watch on Prime Video this week
2022 ACM Awards | Prime Video | Awards, music
Special, Monday, March 7: Since its premiere in 1972, the Academy of Country Music Awards ceremony has been broadcast on rabbit-ears networks ABC, CBS, or NBC. In 2022, it’s the first major US awards show to make the jump to streaming (with Prime Video). Country icon Dolly Parton will cohost the ad-free live show from Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas; Carrie Underwood, Jason Aldean, Kane Brown, Maren Morris, Eric Church, and more will perform. Take advantage of that 30-day free Prime Video trial, country fans.
Upload | Prime Video | Comedy, sci-fi
Season 2 premiere, Friday, March 11: In the year 2033, humans are able to “upload” their consciousnesses into a digital afterlife—whether they want it or not. In the 2020 debut season of Upload, young programmer Nathan Brown (Robbie Amell) dies unexpectedly and is unknowingly uploaded to the virtual heaven of Lakeview by his possessive girlfriend (Andy Allo). The funny-creepy world of Upload is lighter-hearted than Black Mirror but still grapples with the complexities of class divisions and post-death ethics—catch up now.
What to watch on A&E this week
Storage Wars | A&E | Reality
Season 14 premiere, Tuesday, March 8: Longtime A&E hit Storage Wars has produced over 300 episodes and several spinoff series since it debuted in 2010—take that, Marie Kondo. For the uninitiated, Storage Wars is about a colorful cast of self-styled treasure hunters blindly bidding on the contents of abandoned storage lockers: do they contain valuable, re-sellable goods, or worthless junk? They may have to gamble tens of thousands of dollars to find out. Between Storage Wars, Hoarders, and Pawn Stars, A&E should stand for “Anything & Everything.”
Deep Fried Dynasty | A&E | Reality, food
Series premiere, Tuesday, March 8: Speaking of anything and everything, A&E’s decades of reality programming has featured a surprisingly small number of food-related shows—there’s Wahlburgers, and then . . . what? The new Deep Fried Nation fills that foodie gap with the greasy goodies and BBQ D-R-A-M-A of the State Fair of Texas, a 24-day Dallas event synonymous with deep-fried everything. How serious are these chefs? One of them calls himself “Fried Jesus,” and he somehow invented Fried Coke.
W2W wildcards of the week
Movie re-premiere, Thursday, March 10: Did you miss Dune’s theatrical run and streaming HBO Max window last year? It’s now back on HBO Max (and HBO) so you can see what the hype’s all about. Director Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049, Arrival) knows his sci-fi, and the cast (including Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Zendaya, Dave Bautista, Javier Bardem, Jason Momoa, and Stellan Skarsgård) is impressive, as is the expansive cinematography. Too bad Dune: Part Two is at least a year away.
Bust Down | Peacock | Comedy
Series premiere, Thursday, March 10: Four buds (Sam Jay, Chris Redd, Langston Kerman, and Jak Knight) working dead-end Indiana casino jobs attempt to better their lives, but end up only making things worse—absurdly and very profanely. Bust Down, according to Peacock and the show’s producers, is “raunchy, irreverent, and complicated,” as well as a “show about nonsense the same way white people have been doing [it] forever.” All six half-hour episodes of Bust Down drop Thursday, March 10.
