Andy DehnartGood morning. Somehow we’ve already burned through one third of 2019, and yet I still keep writing “2018.” Yes, it’ll be May in two days, and spring has sprung: or at least it will on TV, as PBS takes cameras across the country for a live look at the change of seasons—including baby lambs being born.
Read on to learn more about that, and all of the other reality television premieres and specials coming to your TV and/or devices this week.
Genevieve Gorder isn’t part of Trading Spaces season two of the rebooted Trading Spaces, but she’s hosting a new Bravo competition: Best Room Wins (Bravo, Wednesdays at 10), on which two designers redesign rooms and turn them into luxury spaces, but with only $25,000 budgets.
A follow-up to the documentary series Surviving R. Kelly will air this weekend.
A&E says the special, Surviving R. Kelly: The Impact (A&E, Saturday, May 4, at 10), which is hosted by Soledad O’Brien, “highlights the impact the documentary has had on our culture globally, how it has elevated the conversation on sexual violence and what it means to be a survivor.”
Netflix launches a game show that looks dumb by design: Flinch (Netflix, May 3), which has the tagline “you move, you lose.” Watch its trailer:
The Real Housewives of Potomac is back (Bravo, Sundays at 9), as is Murder Chose Me (ID, Thursdays at 9).
A&E will take cameras back into prisons to profile eight people on Kids Behind Bars: Life or Parole (A&E, Tuesdays at 10). The documentary series’ subjects were convicted of crimes as children and are serving mandatory life sentences—and now, they may have new hope thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision.
A special three-night live version of PBS’ Nature premieres tonight, with American Spring Live, which plans to stream the change of seasons live from more than 20 locations, including bear cubs coming out of hibernation, butterfly migrations, and that live birth of a lamb.
The program will be “showing springtime phenomena in ecosystems ranging from the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the Everglades, from inner-city parks to remote wilderness preserves. The series will include a mix of live and pre-taped footage highlighting some of the most pivotal events in nature’s calendar,” PBS said.
It will air on PBS and stream live on PBS.org and on Facebook (Monday to Wednesday, April 29 to May 1, starting at 8 p.m.).
The episodes have themes: “Birth and Rebirth” (Monday), “Migration” (Tuesday), and “Connections” (Wednesday).
Over three nights, HBO will air an entire documentary series: On Tour with Asperger’s Are Us (HBO, April 30 to May 2, at 8). It follows four comedians and friends who tour the country with the comedy, and also happen to have Asperger Syndrome.
American Idol will conclude its season May 19, and it’s now airing new episodes only on Sundays. But in its former Monday timeslot, ABC is airing an American Idol special: The Show Must Go On: The Queen & Adam Lambert Story (ABC, Monday, April 29, at 8), which explores how Adam Lambert went from American Idol runner-up to Queen frontman.
Discovery has a new show that follows survivalists who “who source, restore, and sell vintage objects that may be useful in any calamity,” according to the network. It’s called Masters of Disaster (Discovery, May 3, Fridays at 10).
Three docs: The Korean War, the Holocaust, and the USA Gymnastics scandal
KOREA: The Never-Ending War (PBS, Monday, April 29, at 9) looks back a at the war that lasted from 1950 to 1953. Narrated by John Cho, the documentary, PBS says, uses “extensive archival materials and interviews with those who speak from personal experience, including American and South Korean veterans who fought in the war along with civilians caught in the conflict,” to explain “how the world we live in today was shaped by this conflict.”
Liberation Heroes: The Last Eyewitnesses is an hour-long special during which “veterans vividly share their World War II liberation experiences in their own words, drawing parallels between the past and the present,” according to Discovery.
It will air on Holocaust Remembrance Day (Discovery, Sunday, May 1, at 7), and uses the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive, which contains “55,000 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide.”
By now, you’ve probably heard of Dr. Larry Nassar, the physician who sexually assaulted and abused hundreds of girls and women on the women’s Olympic gymnastics team and at Michigan State. He’s now in prison, having been convicted of assault.
How was he able to assault hundreds of people for more than 20 years? The documentary At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal (HBO, Friday, May 3, at 8) “reveals a dangerous system that prioritized winning over everything else, including protecting young female athletes,” HBO says. It “exposes an environment in which young women spent their youth competing for victory on a world stage, juxtaposed against a culture where abuse was hidden, and lives were forever damaged.”