What to Watch This Week: October 17 to 22

From vampire adventures to baking challenges, we round up our top 10 shows to watch this week

1. Blush – Apple TV+

This animated short, the first project from a recent joint venture with Apple Original Films and Skydance Animation, follows the journey of a stranded astronaut-horticulturist who finds himself lost and alone after his spaceship crashes on a desolate dwarf planet. When an ethereal visitor arrives, the once-lonely traveller discovers the joy of building a new life and realizes that the universe has delivered an astonishing salvation he never could have envisioned.

2. The Great Canadian Baking Show – Sunday, October 17, 8 p.m., CBC | Season Premiere

Canada’s most talented undiscovered bakers will once again showcase their skills as The Great Canadian Baking Show returns for a fifth season. This time out, viewers will meet 10 contestants from all over the country who will compete in three challenges—the Signature Bake, the Technical Bake and the Show Stopper—as they use every baking weapon in their arsenal to ensure their delectable dishes stand out from the pack. Once again, the results will be judged by esteemed pastry chefs Bruno Feldeisen and Kyla Kennaley, while comedians, actors and Second City alums Ann Pornel and Alan Shane Lewis return as the show’s hosts.

As CBC put it in the new season’s press release—and we deeply and sincerely apologize in advance—the new season is one that “you doughnut wanna miss.”

3. Bob’s Burgers – Sunday, October 17, 9 p.m., Fox

At the diner, Linda and the kids battle amongst themselves to be named Employee of the Day. But the real action in this week’s episode is reserved for Bob, who very reluctantly accompanies Teddy on a road trip. All we can say is, buckle up!

4. Fear the Walking Dead – Sunday, October 17, 6 p.m., 9:11 p.m., 12:22 a.m., AMC | Season Premiere

The undead just keep on walkin’, causing no shortage of head-aches for the living as this companion series returns with season seven. And now, our heroes also have a nuclear winter to deal with!

5. Hoarders – Monday, October 18, 5 p.m. & 9:03 p.m., A&E | Season Premiere

Sadly, Hoarders never seems to run out of subjects whose particular degree of mental illness causes them to pile their homes to the rafters with all manner of junk. The new season features special two-hour episodes, each focusing on a single person with a hoarding crisis of truly epic proportions.

6. Only Murders in the Building – Tuesday, October 19, Disney+ | Season Finale

The first-season finale (yes, a second has already been ordered) finds our amateur sleuths (Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez) finally uncovering the identity of the killer, unlocking a series of shocking twists that place the trio in a position they never possibly could have imagined.

7. American Horror Story – Wednesday, October 20, 7 p.m., 8 p.m. & 10 p.m., FX Canada | Season Finale

Fans of the TV fright-fest can expect an even more bonkers finale as this “double feature” season concludes, with the dual storylines of New England bloodsuckers and Area 51 aliens presumably collide.

8. Night Teeth – Wednesday, October 20, Netflix

In need of some quick cash, quirky college student Benny (Jorge Lendeborg, Jr.) takes a one-night-only job as a chauffeur, tasked with driving two mysterious young women (Debby Ryan and Lucy Fry) around Los Angeles for a frenzied night of party hopping. As Benny finds himself enthralled by his clients’ beauty and charm, he soon comes to realize the shocking truth: the women are vampires with an insatiable thirst for blood—and have their own plans for him. As his night spins increasingly out of control, Benny is thrust into the middle of a clandestine war that pits rival tribes of vampires against the predators of the human world, led by his brother (Raúl Castillo), who will stop at nothing to send them back into the shadows. With sunrise fast approaching, Benny is forced to choose between fear and temptation if he wants to stay alive and save the City of Angels. Also starring Megan Fox (Transformers), Alexander Ludwig (Heels), Alfie Allen (Game of Thrones), Sydney Sweeney (The White Lotus) and Bryan Batt (Mad Men).

9. Sex, Love and Goop – Thursday, October 21, Netflix | Series Premiere

Fans of Gwyneth Paltrow may have noticed her acting roles have become fewer and further between in recent years, and there’s a big reason for that: Goop, the wildly successful (and equally controversial) health, wellness and lifestyle brand that’s become something of a juggernaut of late.

In 2020, Paltrow and Goop made the jump from headline-generating online site to television with Netflix series The Goop Lab, in which she explored the fringes of alternative wellness treatments, ranging from psychedelics to so-called “energy work.”

While The Goop Lab has been greenlit for a second season, Paltrow is back with a new spinoff series that expands the focus to the bedroom, the aptly titled Sex, Love & Goop.

Paltrow summed up her latest venture in a brief 12-second teaser trailer. “We’re having sex,” she declared. “It’s a show about sex, we’re gonna talk about sex.”

Spoiler alert: there’s more than just talking going on in the show, as several “courageous couples” receive advice from a team of Goop experts as they embark on “a journey toward more pleasurable sex and deeper intimacy,” according to Netflix.

In six 30-minute episodes, Paltrow and her sexperts delve into the intricacies of “erotic wellness” in a curious, nonjudgmental manner, offering lessons and techniques to promote both intimacy and pleasure.

“Sex, Love and Goop explores what it means to be truly intimate in a relationship: to express your deepest fears and desires and to accept those of your partners,” Paltrow explained in a statement.

“A continuation of Goop’s mission to help our audience pursue the ineffable power of their own potential, the show is a toolkit for finding more pleasure and connection in our romantic lives,” she added. “And it’s full of lessons I wish I’d learned years ago.”

10. Invasion – Friday, October 22, Apple TV+ | Series Premiere

Humanity putting aside our differences and rallying together in the face of an extraterrestrial invasion isn’t exactly a new idea, and you can probably list a dozen or so movies and TV shows based on that precise premise.

Invasion uses a hostile alien force as its driving story element, yet the focus isn’t so much on the invaders as it is on how that invasion affects a disparate group of people spread across various parts of the planet: Sheriff John Bell Tyson (Sam Neill), a rural American lawman on the verge of retirement; Trevante Ward (Shamier Anderson), a homesick soldier stationed in Afghanistan; Aneesha Malik (Golshifteh Farahani), a Syrian immigrant to the U.S. who sacrificed her career to raise a family; a British schoolboy (Billy Barratt) with a crush on his classmate; and Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsuna), a Japanese aerospace technician in the midst of an affair with a fellow astronaut.

The show depicts the carnage through the eyes of all these people as they struggle to survive, learn about and even fight back against this strange, powerful alien species.