Seven Days of Television: August 4 to August 10
A select viewing guide to the next seven days of television
MONDAY AUGUST 4 Hotel Hell (Fox, Global, 9 p.m.) Short-tempered chef Gordon Ramsay channels his trademark rage into a different direction with this makeover series now in its third season. Adhering closely to the makeover format of Kitchen Nightmares (which folded last month), the premise takes him all over the U.S. to perform rescue missions for hotels on the verge of bankruptcy. Tonight, Ramsay hits the Applegate River Lodge in Applegate, Oregon, which boasts a quaint design and a beautiful location amid rolling vineyards. The bad news: Divorced owner-operators Richard and Joanna appear to hate each other and their bad vibrations are trickling down to the guests. Ramsay checks in.
TUESDAY AUGUST 5 The Amazing Race Canada (CTV, 9 p.m.) Welcome back to our home and native land. Following a peculiar two-episode side trek to Hong Kong and Macau (with ceaseless airline commercials in between), the homegrown version of the Emmy-winning reality series returns home tonight with a new episode. And so far the duo of Canadian Olympic hockey players Meaghan and Natalie look to be the team to beat: They’ve finished first for four straight weeks! Tonight’s show drops the eight remaining teams into the Yukon to compete in dog sledding and other challenges – and then the game takes a completely different direction with an Express Pass giveaway.
WEDNESDAY AUGUST 6 Who Do You Think You Are? (TLC, 9 p.m.) Positively genteel by modern reality-TV standards, this U.S. version of a popular British TV concept began on NBC but somehow seems a better fit on TLC. As the title suggests, the format tracks celebrities as they research their own bloodline with the assistance of historians and lineage experts. In tonight’s new outing, Canadian actress Rachel McAdams delves into her family’s past, which apparently involves a trip to Ottawa and the revealing of “harrowing circumstances” somewhere in her family tree. It can’t be any more harrowing than The Notebook.
THURSDAY AUGUST 7 Partners (Global, 8 p.m.) Nearly 50 years after Neil Simon wrote the original play, The Odd Couple formula just keeps receiving fresh iterations. Coming from the sassy FX network, this new sitcom casts TV veterans Kelsey Grammer (Frasier, Cheers) and Martin Lawrence (Martin) as two diametrically-opposed lawyers thrown together though some improbable twist of fate. Lawrence plays Marcus Jackson, a community activist whose good works in Chicago can’t help him save his own marriage; Grammer is stuffy Allen Braddock, a top-drawer but loosely-principled barrister who somehow managed to get fired from his own father’s law firm. Can two men share a law practice without driving each other crazy? Hey, it worked for Oscar and Felix.
FRIDAY AUGUST 8 Dick Cavett’s Watergate (PBS, 10 p.m.) If you’re old enough to remember the Watergate era, settle in tonight for a remarkable documentary. The film recalls the heady period between 1972 and 1974 when puckish TV host Dick Cavett interviewed many of the key Watergate figures – including Richard Nixon aides John Ehrlichman, Alexander Haig and G. Gordon Liddy – on his nightly syndicated talk show. The film includes dozens of clips culled from those episodes and refreshes the subject with new interviews with former Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the story wide open. The eerie part: The film is airing 40 years to the very hour that President Nixon announced to the nation that he was leaving the White House.
SATURDAY AUGUST 9 Curse of the Axe (Global, 8 p.m.) Narrated by Robbie Robertson, this sharp documentary reveals a stunning discovery made just north of Toronto a few years ago. An archaeological team unexpectedly unearthed the largest Huron First Nations village ever discovered. The sprawling village, a vast fortress dubbed Mantle, is many times larger than any previous Huron community ever discovered, and historians estimate the 90 longhouses required the occupants to cut down more than 60,000 trees – with crude stone axes. Curiouser still was the discovery of a mysterious metal object buried with great reverence. Experts determined the object is made of iron, and not the cast iron later used by European settlers. So how did it get there?
SUNDAY AUGUST 10 Teen Choice Awards 2014 (Fox, Global, 8 p.m.) Prepare to surrender the remote to the teens and tweens tonight. Hosted by Teen Wolf star Tyler Posey, the annual awards fete honours young talent in the fields of film, TV, music and sports and boasts a remarkable talent lineup for its 16th edition. Set to perform: Jason Derulo, Magic! and something or someone called Rixton. Winners are determined by fan voting and categories include such categories as Choice Web Star (hello, Grumpy Cat!) and Choice Movie Liplock. And yes, the Teen Choice Award itself is still shaped like a tiny surfboard.