What to Watch This Week: October 20 to 25

From Canada’s national vote to the latest Netflix competition, we round up the top 10 shows to watch this week

1. Giada Entertains – Sunday, October 20, 10 a.m., Food | Season Premiere

When it comes to chefs who also know how to entertain, you can’t do much better than OG Food Network personality Giada De Laurentiis. Between her cookbooks, food series, impressive culinary background and her big personality, we’d certainly take her up on any party invitations. And while we are very much holding out hope for an in-person invite one day, for now, the fourth-season return of this series will have to do.

As ever, the show’s focus is on taking average get-togethers and jazzing them up with special treats. From sleepovers and family dinners to birthdays and book clubs, Giada has a dish (or two… or three!) for everything. In the premiere, she tackles a pasta party buffet, proving that feeding a big crowd can be both fancy and thrifty.

2. The Simpsons – Sunday, October 20, 8 p.m., City & Fox

It’s time for the 30th annual Treehouse of Horror, and how ’bout this for timing: it just so happens to fall on the show’s 666th episode! Vignettes include Selma romancing the alien in the basement, a ghostly Homer searching for a new body, Maggie the demon baby and a Stranger Things parody with Lisa as Eleven.

3. Canada Votes 2019: Results – Monday, October 21, 4 p.m. & 6 p.m., CBC & News Network

It’s election day in Canada, and after we’ve cast our votes, this CBC special offers up-to-the minute coverage and analysis of the latest results—including coverage of contested local races right here in B.C. along with who will be our next prime minister.

4. Jenny Slate: Stage Fright – Tuesday, October 22, Netflix

Jenny Slate has already proven her comedic mettle on Saturday Night Live, her recurring role on Parks and Recreation as Mona-Lisa Saperstein and in various films, including her breakout star turn in Obvious Child, but she’s never given us a comedy special before. (The fact that it’s entitled Stage Fright may provide insight as to why.)

Here, Slate intersperses her standup routine with home-movie clips from her childhood and interviews with family members, so, fright-filled though she may be, she’s clearly committed to laying her life bare for audiences to laugh about.

5. Rhythm & Flow – Wednesday, October 23, Netflix | Season Finale

After spending recent weeks on the hunt for the world’s next great hip-hop sensation, judges Chance the Rapper, T.I. and Cardi B (plus, a super-famous guest judge or two) will name the very first winner of Netflix’s very first music competition.

6. S. W. A. T. – Wednesday, October 23, 10 p.m., Global & CBS

Things hit close to home for the whole team this week when Deacon’s family is caught in a drug cartel’s crosshairs, Hondo receives troubling news about his father and Tan is forced to defend himself in front of an internal review board thanks to his girlfriend’s indiscretion.

7. Daybreak – Thursday, October 24, Netflix | Series Premiere

If you thought high school was bad back in your day, wait until you see what it’s like after the apocalypse. In a nod to his roles in either Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or Election or both, Matthew Broderick plays the principal of a high school in Glendale, California, but after a nuclear blast on homecoming night, school is way, way out. The cliques, however, remain, and the surviving high schoolers split into gangs—gamers, jocks, even the 4-H club—and do whatever they have to do to survive in this new (yet strangely familiar) world they find themselves struggling through.

8. Bojack Horseman – Friday, October 25, Friday, Netflix | Season Premiere

If there’s anything that dampens the typically enthusiastic announcement that a series is returning for a new season, it’s finding out simultaneously that the new season will also be bringing that series to a close. In this case, there’s some mild consolation in the fact that Netflix is splitting it into two parts, so we technically won’t be losing BoJack Horseman until January 31, 2020, and we’ll be getting 16 episodes instead of the usual 12. But we’re still losing it, and that’s just depressing.

Based on the trailer, it looks like washed-up sitcom star BoJack is still clean and sober, while his agent Princess Carolyn is struggling with new motherhood and his best frenemy Mr. Peanutbutter is finally realizing that just because he’s an incredibly happy person doesn’t mean he’s not actually incredibly sad. For our part, we’re still rooting for BoJack and his former ghost writer Diane to realize they’re destined to be together, thereby providing the series with a happily-ever-after moment for the ages. But this is BoJack we’re talking about, so as much as we’d like to see that happen, there’s a longstanding history of him self-sabotaging or otherwise screwing up just about every good thing that’s ever entered his life.

9. Carter – Friday, October 25, 6 p.m. & 7 p.m, CTV Drama | Season Premiere

Jerry O’Connell is back on the case with a second season of this North Bay, Ontario-shot P.I. dramedy. The actor reprises his semi-meta role of Harley Carter, a former TV cop who embarks on a second act solving real-life mysteries in his old Canadian hometown, following a meltdown in Tinseltown. Back again to play the requisite sidekicks are Sydney Poitier Heartsong as Harley’s childhood friend and actual detective Sam, and Murdoch Mysteries‘ Kristian Bruun as coffee-truck owner Dave. Rookie Blue‘s Lyriq Bent joins the show as the town’s new police chief. The season kicks off with a two-parter wherein Carter accepts his first “official” case. Guest stars to watch out for throughout the year include David Arquette, Colin Mochrie, and Kids in the Hall grads Kevin McDonald and Dave Foley.

10. The Kominsky Method – Friday, October 25, Netflix | Season Premiere

The winsome duo of Alan Arkin and Michael Douglas returns for a second season of poking fun at getting older.

When Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin set out to play old friends—actor Sandy and his longtime agent Norman—they had, in fact, only known each other for half an hour. “I felt strangely comfortable with Michael the minute we started working. I didn’t know what to expect because we had just had lunch about a month before,” says Arkin. “That’s all I knew of him outside of having seen him in 150,000 movies.”