TV that brings you home, whether you like it or not

Escape is the theme of this edition of new-TV recommendations? Can you escape home? Or once decamped, can you ever return home? The first selection is the wisest of all, admitting that when pain and loss make their inevitable appearance, the only true path forward is through.

● Marty, Life Is Short (documentary premieres Tuesday, May 12, on Netflix)

Netflix is going ahead with director Lawrence Kasdan’s documentary celebrating the life of Martin Short, despite the recent death by suicide of the comic’s daughter. (The film was completed before her death.) Could definitely be seen as insensitive, or worse exploitive. Or, drawing from Short’s own playbook, that it’s not only OK but necessary for this show to go on. Before, during and after the time the Canadian-born comic actor was honing his skills on SCTV, Saturday Night Live, Only Murders in the Building and comedy tours with and without pal Steve Martin, Short has been impressively frank about the early deaths of his parents, his brother, his wife and recently friends and colleagues Catherine O’Hara and Rob Reiner. “Those kinds of situations are horrible,” he told The Guardian a few years ago, “but I think that you are either empowered by them or you become a victim of them.” This life and film lesson is yet another reason to be grateful for Martin Short.

● Dutton Ranch (series premières with two of nine episodes Friday, May 15, on Paramount+)

The Yellowstone Cinematic Universe is expanding again, not just in the number of series spinning off Taylor Sheridan’s foundational Montana-set series, but also in setting. After Yellowstone and prequels 1883 and 1923, and Marshals (but not The Madison, which was retooled to be a standalone series about a widow relocating to Montana), now comes Dutton Ranch. In that latest, Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler (Yellowstone’s Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser) move to Rio Paloma, Texas, to take over the Edwards Ranch and get a little space from Montana ghosts. The action, however, looks very familiar: local hostility, feuds with neighbouring ranches, possibly a corpse, and the familiar faces of veterinarian Everett McKinney (Ed Harris) and 10 Petal Ranch matriarch Beulah Jackson (Annette Bening).

● Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed (series premières with two of 10 episodes Wednesday, May 20, on Apple TV)

Divorce is hard. Divorce with children is monstrous. For Paula (Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black), newly divorced from Karl (Jake Johnson, New Girl), those challenges pale after she witnesses what she thinks is a crime and falls down a rabbit hole of violence, blackmail, possibly murder and … youth soccer? This press release might have (also?) been hacked. Then again, this is billed as a trashy comic thriller. Amping up the jump scare/laugh score is Murray Bartlett (the twitchy resort manager in Season 1 of The White Lotus) as somebody’s shady ex lover.

● The Boroughs (series premières with all eight episodes Thursday, May 21, on Netflix)

Retirement can be daunting. A retirement community, then, could be the cure, where advertisements promised camaraderie and “the time of your life.”

Or the residents could all be sitting ducks for some monstrous dark force trolling the beautifully manicured grounds. Welcome to The Boroughs, where an impressive group of residents — Thelma and Louise’s Geena Davis, The Sinner’s Bill Pullman, American Horror Story’s Denis O’Hare, 12 Years a Slave’s Alfre Woodard, Frida’s Alfred Molina and The Wire’s Clarke Peters — find purpose in investigating weird occurrences. Think Stranger Things (which, like The Boroughs, is produced by the Duffer Brothers) crossed with the 1985 elder romp Cocoon.

● Ladies First (movie premieres Friday, May 22, on Netflix)

Damien Sachs (Borat’s Sacha Baron Cohen) is that awful guy at the top, the apex predator of the corporate world and the women unlucky enough to be in his orbit — until a conk to the head transports him to a parallel world of inverted sexism. In this female-dominated space, all of Damien’s privilege, and CEO’s office, are now occupied by his favourite previous victim, Alex Fox (I Care a Lot’s Rosamund Pike). Deliciously, Richard E. Grant (Saltburn) plays a spiritual adviser who offers Damien a solution he does not want. If this sounds familiar to bilinguals and closed-captioners, it’s an English-language remake of Netflix’s I Am Not an Easy Man, a.k.a. Je Ne Suis Pas un Homme Facile.

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