Blood, sweat and cheers

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/02/2025 (286 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Breaking laws, breaking bread, breaking into a sweat, breaking into the big leagues, this edition of viewing suggestions is shatterproof.

Suits LA

Series premières a weekly rollout Sunday on NBC/CTV

More of the same is what fans of the 2011-19 series Suits are hoping for with this new West Coast spinoff.

The original legal drama caught fire when it moved to streaming (one of the most recommended series in my circles), with all nine seasons still on Netflix.

Creator/writer/producer Aaron Korsh is back for another sensation-hungry law firm, this one headed by lone wolf Ted Black (Stephen Amell of Arrow).

He’s a former federal prosecutor with a past he’s trying to … forget? Secretly atone for? Time will tell.

The supporting cast at the law firm is just as intriguing: the underutilized Bryan Greenberg (The Mindy Project and the underrated 2010 How to Make It in America on Crave) and Josh McDermitt, better known as the awkward Eugene in The Walking Dead, who cleans up pretty nice.

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No Taste Like Home with Antoni Porowski

Documentary travel and food series premières the first two of six episodes Sunday on National Geographic/Disney+

Take the culinary travel adventures of Stanley Tucci or even the late great Anthony Bourdain and cross them with PBS’s Finding Your Roots and wrap it in the powerful emotion of Netflix’s Queer Eye and you have arrived at this lovely-sounding new show.

Queer Eye’s Montreal-born Porowski is the host and guide accompanying six celebrities in search of their food and family DNA:

• to England with Florence Pugh (We Live in Time),
• Italy with Justin Theroux (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice),
• Korea with Awkwafina (Crazy Rich Asians),
• Malaysia with Henry Golding (The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare),
• Germany with James Marsden (X-Men)
• and Senegal with Issa Rae (Insecure).

More, please.

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Dope Girls

Series premières Monday on CTV Drama, next day on Crave)

Move over, A Thousand Blows (Disney+), here’s another new series that leans heavily on women flirting with the underworld in Old London Town.

While Erin Doherty’s Mary Carr prowls the illegal boxing world in A Thousand Blows, Julianne Nicholson (Mare of Easttown) stars as single mom Kate Galloway, who establishes an unlicensed nightclub in the hedonism of post-First World War London.

While Carr is the fictional head of the real-life gang Forty Elephants in the 1880s, Galloway’s story echoes that of Kate Meyrick, dubbed the Nightclub Queen.

The BBC firmly denies this, which has media reporters in a frenzy, claiming the Beeb is running scared in the wake of the lawsuit that followed Netflix’s claim of the hit Baby Reindeer being a “true story.”

Pfft. True or not, Dope Girls sounds good, pitting Nicholson’s nervy authority against the baby face of Little Women’s Eliza Scanlen playing one of the first female officers of London’s Metropolitan Police.

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Small Achievable Goals

Sitcom premières the first of eight weekly episodes Tuesday on CBC/CBC Gem)

Baroness von Sketch Show rock stars Jennifer Whalen and Meredith MacNeill (Pretty Hard Cases) reunite to play gloriously mismatched “content creators” thrown together to make a new podcast.

They are also both struggling with the sudden onset of menopause.

Misery never loved company so much as they navigate work, dating/relationships and the inglorious health adventure that is the end of menstruation and the beginning of what the heck is happening here anyway? (See Jen Zoratti’s interview with Whalen and MacNeill in Tuesday’s Free Press.)

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Running Point

Comedy series premières all 10 episodes Thursday on Netflix)

Mindy Kaling and Ike Barinholtz of Mindy Project fame go behind the scenes alongside David Stassen as writer/producers of this comedy about a family-owned professional basketball franchise in Los Angeles.

Kate Hudson (Glass Onion) stars as Isla, the overlooked sister, who is shoved into the executive suite when her brother resigns on the heels of a scandal.

Supporting actors include Max Greenfield (New Girl), Chet Hanks (Your Honor), Justin Theroux (The Leftovers) and Brenda Song (The Last Showgirl).

 

Broadcast dates subject to change. Questions, comments to denise.duguay@winnipegfreepress.com.