What to Watch This Week: June 11 to 16

From a new Walking Dead spin-off to a revival of The Full Monty, we round up our top 10 shows to watch this week

1. Hey Yahoo! – Monday, June 12, GSN | Series Premiere

Canadian Flash alum Tom Cavanagh hosts this new game show in which two teams of three players each compete to guess what millions of people have been searching for on Yahoo. Contestants are given the first half of a search, and then must fill in the blank based on what they think the average person online is browsing for. Internet-savvy viewers are invited to play along to see how close they hew to the average searcher.

2. The Walking Dead: Dead City – Tuesday, June 13, AMC+ | Series Premiere

Can’t wait to watch the latest iteration of walkers stumble onto your screen? That may be your reason to finally subscribe to AMC’s streaming service, which is now available in Canada. That’s where you can catch the early premiere of The Walking Dead‘s newest spinoff when it debuts this week. The anticipated miniseries reunites fan favourite survivor Maggie (Lauren Cohan) with the universe’s most notable bad guy, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). The series picks up roughly two years after the events of the mothership show’s series finale. Viewers quickly learn that Maggie has been ransacked by raiders, who have taken her son, Herschel (Logan Kim). Heading up the wayward group is a man named The Croat (Zeljko Ivanek), a former associate of Negan’s. So, in order to save her son, Maggie enlists Negan’s help and the pair head to Manhattan. There, they discover a whole new level of fear, as the island was cut off entirely very soon after the outbreak. As they go through terrifying tower blocks of undead and encounter new human threats, they’ll also have to try and come to terms with their own partnership. It’s just the first iteration of a series of spinoffs to come: an untitled Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) show is on the way, as is The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, starring Norman Reedus. As Cohan herself notes, these shows are just new ways of revisiting a story many fans have grown to love. “I had that feeling of excitement that you get when you’re going somewhere new and going to be with new people,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “And even though there’s familiarity with the characters, everything else became fresh and totally a new thing. It felt like a whole new job.”

3.Amy Schumer: Emergency Contact – Tuesday, June 13, Netflix

Somewhere in the multiverse, there’s a version of our planet where Amy Schumer is currently on a press tour promoting her lead role in the upcoming Barbie movie, but it ain’t the one we’re living in. Yes, before Margot Robbie took over the gig, Schumer was attached. Alas, as the comedian told The Hollywood Reporter in 2022, “They definitely didn’t want to do it the way I wanted to do it, the only way I was interested in doing it.” (That might sound egotistical, but Schumer further clarified that her vision was so far removed from the studio’s that it would’ve been a non-stop butting of heads.) 

So instead, we’re here today talking about her latest standup special, the first since 2019’s Growing. Get ready for quips about “lasering her face, postpartum sex, her baby-naming disaster and chewable Viagra.”

4. The Surrogacy – Wednesday, June 14, Netflix | Series Premiere

How far would you go to protect your family? In this Mexican series one woman is willing to go so far as to rent out her womb, and it isn’t the warm and fuzzy situation you may be thinking. 

When Yeni (Shani Lozano) agrees to carry a baby for a powerful family in exchange for her father’s life, she also agrees to hide herself from the public for the duration of her pregnancy. Sequestered in a strange new world, she develops conflicted feelings and dangerous allies and enemies. But it isn’t until she gives birth to a baby with a physical disability (and wakes up with that child on the side of the street in her hospital gown) that the real drama begins.

It all adds up to what Netflix is calling “an emotional and thought-provoking exploration of truth and redemption in a world where nothing is as it seems.”

5. The Wonder Years – Wednesday, June 14, CTV2 & ABC | Season Premiere

In May 2022, fans of ABC’s Wonder Years reboot got the good news that the dramedy—and if you’ve watched the show, then you know this is absolutely the best word to describe it—had been picked up for a sophomore season. 

Unfortunately, when the network’s schedule arrived, the acclaimed reboot was nowhere to be seen, at which point assurances were made that it would be part of ABC’s midseason schedule… until it wasn’t. Finally, in November 2022, it was revealed that it was instead going to be returning as part of the network’s summer schedule… and that brings us up to speed, because the summer is here and so, at long last, is season two of The Wonder Years. 

Picking up in the summer of ’69, this week brings viewers two episodes, with Dean and Bill immersing themselves in New York City thanks to Bill’s life-changing songwriting gig, and Lillian dealing with a visit from her sister Jackie (played by guest star Phoebe Robinson), who quickly turns out to be trouble. Meanwhile, Dean’s secret relationship with Keisa spells trouble for his friendship with Broderick.

A-list guest stars you can look forward to this year include Patti Labelle, Tituss Burgess, Donald Faison, Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Bradley Whitford.

6. The Full Monty – Wednesday, June 14, Disney+ | Series Premiere

With the endless reboots, remakes, reimaginings and sequel series that have emerged in recent years, it’s never exactly a surprise when you hear that Hollywood has decided to revisit an existing I.P. It is, after all, a safer bet than rolling the dice on a wholly “original” concept. That said, with some stories, sequelization is almost a no-brainer, while others make you pause and say, “What? Really!?” when the announcement hits the headlines.

Which brings us to Disney+’s latest TV series, The Full Monty, which beckons audiences back to the world of the 1997 film about a bunch of unemployed blokes from Sheffield who—in a desperate attempt to make ends meet—decide to become male strippers for a night. That’s the nutshell summary, but it was so much more than that, exploring a variety of subjects beyond its bawdy hook, including body image, depression, fathers’ rights, homosexuality, impotence, suicide, unemployment and the working class. 

“After the success of the film, there was a lot of chatter about a follow-up, but I could never find a story that would better the original—my only criteria to write a sequel,” screenwriter Simon Beaufoy told The Guardian. “For 20 years, nothing. Then, in the last few years, it became increasingly clear that we were in the same place again [culturally]. So, the idea took shape of going back to Sheffield. I thought a Full Monty TV series would be a great vehicle to not only see what’s still going wrong with the country, but also how things are changing in a good way.” 

And, yes, all the main characters are back: Gaz (Robert Carlyle), Dave (Mark Addy), Gerald (Tom Wilkinson), Lomper (Steve Huison), Horse (Paul Barber) and Guy (Hugo Speer).

7. Outchef’d – Thursday, June 15, Food | Series Premiere

Imagine you’re a home cook who just wants a chance to show what you’ve got to one of Food Network’s renowned chefs. Now imagine you show up for your big audition, only to learn that you’re not cooking for a beloved chef, but against them. That’s the entry point when this Eddie Jackson-hosted culinary battle returns for season two. In each episode, the cooks and chefs in question create a dish with a star ingredient, with a panel of six ordinary people stepping in for a blind taste test. If the home cook receives even one vote, they pocket a $5,000 prize. Sounds easy enough, but don’t forget these Food Network stars are the ultimate competitors and don’t throw in the spatula without a fight. Season two’s celeb chefs include Alex Guarnaschelli, Antonia Lofaso, Robert Irvine and more.

8. Chevalier – Friday, June 16, Disney+

This acclaimed film tells the incredible true story of composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner who improbably rose to the heights of Parisian society, becoming a celebrated violinist-composer and competitive fencer. The drama also details his ill-fated love affair with Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton), resulting in a huge falling out that led to some serious consequences.

9. Extraction 2 – Friday, June 16, Netflix

Back in 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, Netflix debuted Extraction, a high-octane action flick starring Thor‘s Chris Hemsworth as Tyler Rake, a black-market mercenary who agrees to rescue the kidnapped child of an imprisoned international crime boss. As it turned out, Extraction would become the most-watched movie in Netflix history, landing an astonishing 99 million viewers. 

Given that viewership, it was a total no-brainer that a sequel would be greenlit, and here it is! In the sure-to-be blockbuster follow-up, Rake emerges nine months after being presumed dead, and is immediately thrown back into the black-ops game. This time out, the commando must rescue the family of a ruthless Georgian gangster being held in a maximum-security prison. 

“It’s an escape mission,” teased director Sam Hargrave in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. “But it’s bigger, badder, more deadly and more dangerous than anything we’ve seen Rake go through.”

10. Stan Lee – Friday, June 16, Disney+

There’s an argument to be made that no single human being has had a bigger influence over pop culture during the last half-century or so than Stan Lee.

Lee may be gone—he died in 2018 at age 95—but his cultural impact has only grown, thanks to the enduring popularity of the characters he created for Marvel Comics, a head-spinning array of superheroes that have raked in billions at the box office. 

In celebration of what would have been his 100th birthday, Disney+ is unveiling Stan Lee, a new documentary about the guy whose comic-book creations include Spider-Man, Iron Man, Black Panther, Hulk, X-Men, Thor, Nick Fury, the Avengers and hundreds more. 

Director David Gelb traces Lee’s life from his upbringing in New York as Stanley Lieber to the rise of Marvel Comics, allowing Lee to tell the story of his own life, career and legacy using his own words via archival material, a trove of personal footage and recorded recollections that have never been made public until now.

Those voice recordings are accompanied by archived interview clips, newsreels and even claymation models that immerse fans in Lee’s creative yet complicated mind.