Here’s what’s up in the world of television for Friday, July 14, and Saturday, July 15. All times are Eastern.
Top pick
Friends From College (Netflix, Friday): Gotta be honest, the reviews of this new Netflix show have not been great, even though the cast is appealing, with Fred Savage, Keegan-Michael Key, Cobie Smulders, Annie Parisse, Nat Faxon, and Jae Suh Park as Harvard alums who reunite as they face down their 40s. It’s also directed by Neighbors and Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s Nicholas Stoller, so it’s a head-scratcher as to why the show seems to have such a tough time gelling—but just like with actual old friends from college, sometimes the chemistry just doesn’t land. Still, Jesse Hassenger is set to hang out, to the tune of daily reviews starting today.
Regular coverage
Orphan Black (BBC America, Saturday, 10 p.m.)
TV Club Classic: Farscape: The intrepid Alasdair Wilkins returns to bring the coverage of this long-lost sc-fi series to a close, capping off its final season.
TV Club Classic: Gilmore Girls: The completist Gwen Ihnat begins her exploration of the show’s last four seasons, two episodes at a stretch.
Wild card
Chasing Coral (Netflix, Friday): There was a lot of disturbing global news this week, so this new Netflix documentary comes along at an opportune time, as Chasing Coral tracks a team of scientists who are trying to save dying coral reefs. It’s an inspirational effort that shows how people in the oceanic trenches are fighting the damaging effects of climate change. Mike D’Angelo found the documentary “wrenchingly illustrative”: “It’s one thing to be told that 22 percent of the Great Barrier Reef died in 2016; it’s quite another to actually see the corals before and after… Chasing Coral has a cogent, timely argument to make—and, crucially, it’s an argument that demands visual presentation.”