The Best Shows and Movies to Watch This Week: Peacemaker Season 1 Finale, The Walking Dead Returns

The Olympics are wrapping up on Sunday, which means it’s time to start training for the hardest sport out there: figuring out what to watch once the Olympics end. All the shows and movies that have been biding their time for the last few weeks are about to swoop into our queues at once, and you’d better be ready to ski past everything you’re not interested in and cut right to the good stuff. HBO Max’s great — and just renewed! — Peacemaker wraps up Season 1 today, clearing the way for Season 4 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Season 11 (and a half) of The Walking Dead, and Season 5 of Snowfall. But if you want to get in on the ground floor of a stellar new show, don’t miss Apple TV+’s workplace psychological thriller Severance. It’s a weird one.

Our list of editors’ picks for the week of Feb. 17-Feb. 23 is below, but if that’s not enough and you’re looking for even more hand-picked recommendations, sign up for our free, spam-free Watch This Now newsletter that delivers the best TV show picks straight to your inbox. You can also look at our massive collection of recommendations, as well as our list of suggestions for what to watch next based on shows you already like.

THE BEST SHOWS AND MOVIES TO WATCH TONIGHT

Peacemaker

Season 1 finale Thursday on HBO Max
He’s battled raccoons and racists, now comes the real showdown: alien cows! Peacemaker (John Cena) and his band of batty black ops head into the Season 1 finale of Peacemaker to face their final challenge, which involves destroying the food source of the alien invaders. That food source just so happens to be a gigantic, gross bug. The HBO Max hit has developed from a raunchy superhero parody to a hilarious and dramatic action-adventure over its seven episodes so far, but you can bet creator James Gunn saved the best — or at least the biggest — for last. And did you hear the good news about the Season 2 renewal? –Tim Surette [Trailer (NSFW language)]

Fistful of Vengeance

Thursday on Netflix
All four of you out there who watched the viscerally entertaining Netflix martial arts series Wu Assassins will be happy to know that it got a sequel film in Fistful of Vengeance. Those of you who didn’t watch Wu Assassins, I’ll go out on a limb here and say you can jump straight into the movie, because the punches and kicks do the storytelling more than the plot. But if you must know what’s going on, a group of brawlers known as the Wu Assassins, including The Raid‘s Iko Uwais, face a new otherworldly threat in Bangkok. My simple rule of thumb: If a martial arts movie comes out of Southeast Asia, I watch it. –Tim Surette [Trailer]

THE BEST SHOWS AND MOVIES TO WATCH THIS WEEK

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Season 4 premieres Friday, Feb. 18 on Amazon Prime Video
If you can believe it, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel hasn’t put out a new season since 2019, which means you might have forgotten all about the mortifying ending to Season 3, where Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) was fired from her gig opening for Shy Baldwin (Leroy McClain) after making some uncool jokes. Now, she wants to say whatever she wants! No more filter! That’s a strategy that has historically worked out flawlessly for every comedian, so I’m sure nothing will go wrong. This season promises the return of my personal favorite character, Luke Kirby’s Lenny Bruce, and Palladino-verse alum Milo Ventimiglia will appear as a new character. The first two episodes will premiere on Feb. 18, followed by a new episode each Friday. –Allison Picurro [Trailer]

Lincoln’s Dilemma

Limited series premieres Friday, Feb. 18 on Apple TV+
Abraham Lincoln’s legacy gets reevaluated from a 2022 point of view in this interesting documentary. The documentary places more emphasis on the perspectives of enslaved people than they are usually afforded in histories of Lincoln, arguing that he was not simply a savior, but rather a complicated man who existed in a specific political, social, and ideological context. And it’s very of-the-moment in the way it looks at Lincoln through the lens of the contemporary ongoing battle over American history in the post-2020 era and the current threats to democracy. Jeffrey Wright narrates, while Bill Camp reads Lincoln’s words and Leslie Odom Jr. portrays abolitionist Frederick Douglass in voiceover. -Liam Mathews [Trailer]

Severance 

Limited series premieres Friday, Feb. 18 on Apple TV+
Ben Stiller directs this visually stylized, Charlie Kaufman-esque psychological thriller limited series. Adam Scott stars as Mark Scout, an employee at a company that separates workers from their their memories. When they’re at work, they have no memory of their personal lives, and when they’re out of the office, they can’t remember what they do at work. Ominous! It’s an experiment in “work-life balance,” and it has unintended side effects and consequences. The cast includes Patricia Arquette (who also starred in Stiller’s previous limited series Escape at Dannemora, a very, very different show), John Turturro, and Christopher Walken. -Liam Mathews [Trailer]

Downfall: The Case Against Boeing

Friday, Feb
. 18 on Netflix
This important documentary is about how pressure from Wall Street and a negligent corporate culture led to airplane manufacturer Boeing putting an unsafe plane, the 737 MAX, on the market, which led to two crashes and 346 deaths in the span of a few months in 2018 and 2019. It’s an American story of greed and corporate malfeasance and the quest for justice, as the family members of the victims take on one of the world’s largest corporations. If you feel like getting enraged, this doc will do it. -Liam Mathews [Trailer]

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Friday, Feb. 18 on Netflix 
The long-running slasher franchise gets revived once again for the latest incarnation, a direct sequel to the 1974 original in the vein of the 2018 Halloween. In Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the missing “The” differentiates it from previous Texas Chainsaw Massacres), a group of hip young city folk arrive in Harlow, Texas, to gentrify it. Chainsaw-wielding madman Leatherface and his family aren’t interested. But they are interested in killing people. When Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré, who replaces the original Hardesty, Marilyn Burns, who died in 2014), the only survivor of Leatherface’s original spree 50 years earlier, learns of Leatherface’s re-emergence, she sets out for revenge. This is the first time Netflix has put out a horror franchise film as an original, so that alone makes it notable. It won’t be better than the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but it probably won’t be worse than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. -Liam Mathews [Trailer]

The Walking Dead 

Season 11 midseason premiere Sunday, Feb. 20 at 9/8c on AMC
The zombie institution returns for the second installment of its three-part final season (the first part debuted last year, and the series finale is coming later this year). In this run of episodes, Alexandria formally meets the Commonwealth, the advanced colony whose fate will become entwined with the remnants of Rick Grimes’ group as the show nears its end. But before that, tensions between Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), which have been simmering all season, will have to resolve, one way or another. Maggie has grown increasingly ruthless since Negan killed her husband, Glenn (Steven Yeun), all those years ago, so Negan better watch his back. -Liam Mathews [Trailer]

All American: Homecoming 

Series premiere Monday, Feb. 21 at 9/8c on The CW
Where All American chronicles (among other things) the ups and downs of high school football, its brand new spin-off, All America
n: Homecoming, is all about college tennis. The story centers around a protagonist All American fans will be familiar with: Geffri Maya’s Simone, who experiences a culture shock as she adjusts to life in Chicago, pursues her athletic dreams, and explores the new freedoms that come along with early young adulthood. -Allison Picurro [Trailer]

Cat Burglar

Tuesday on Netflix
Netflix is trying to get this whole “interactive TV” thing right, and though it has had some success so far (I still maintain that Black Mirror‘s “Bandersnatch” was an impressive feat, but people expected too much), most of it has been a gimmick that didn’t pay off. But keep ’em coming, I say! This animated and interactive special, drawn in the style of animation legend Tex Avery, follows a cat trying to nick items from a museum and the security dog that must stop him. The interactivity comes in the form of trivia questions at the bottom, and supposedly if you answer them correctly, the cat has a better chance to steal art, and if you don’t, the cat meets a gruesome fate. The trailer promises plenty of different paths, and given that this is from the creators of Black Mirror, I wouldn’t rule out something truly odd happening if you go the right way. -Tim Surette [Trailer]

The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder

Series premiere Wednesday, Feb. 23 on Disney+
Time to dust off your shiny old lime green boombox and turn up the volume on one of the best TV theme songs of the early 2000s (by Solange featuring Destiny’s Child! You just don’t get theme songs like that anymore). The Proud Family is back for a Disney+ revival, The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, that bumps the action up to the present day — so Penny is still a teen in this one, but she has a smartphone now. It’s like a reverse Pen15. –Kelly Connolly [Trailer]

Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches

Wednesday, Feb. 23 at 9/8c on HBO and HBO Max
Sometimes all it takes to bring history into the present is to hear it read aloud. The new HBO documentary Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches goes deep on the life and work of Frederick Douglass, the great 19th century abolitionist and orator, by spotlighting the power of his voice. The doc features an impressive lineup of stars — Nicole Beharie, Colman Domingo, Jonathan Majors, Denzel Whitaker, and Jeffrey Wright — performing excerpts from some of Douglass’ most pivotal speeches, while André Holland reads from Douglass’ autobiographies. David Blight and Henry Louis Gates Jr. also appear as experts. Considering how many Americans could clearly use an education on Frederick Douglass, this film should be a good place to start. –Kelly Connolly [< /strong>Trailer]

Snowfall

Season 5 premiere Wednesday, Feb. 23 at 10/9c on FX
One of the best crime dramas on TV right now is back, and it’s turning up the heat. Like, think of your typical summer in L.A., then magnify it. The fifth season of Snowfall picks up in the summer of 1986, when Franklin (Damson Idris) is riding high. But right as he’s finally got all the riches he could dream of (and then some), the death of basketball star Len Bias shakes up his empire, with cops and politicians taking brutal measures to stamp out the cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles. And since it looks like the Saint family is also fracturing from within, it’s safe to say they’ll be under pressure from all sides this season. –Kelly Connolly [Trailer]

RECENTLY RELEASED

jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy

Act 1 premiered Wednesday, Feb. 16 on Netflix
This is the Kanye West documentary you’ve been waiting for, and you don’t have to wait all night in line with the sneakerheads to get it. The three-part film jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, directed by Clarence “Coodie” Simmons and Chike Ozah and filmed over two decades, charts Ye’s career, life, and astronomical ascent since the turn of the millennium. Everything is on the table, presidential campaign included. Reviews for Act 1 (Vision), which premiered at Sundance, make this one sound as watchable as you’d expect. –Kelly Connolly [Trailer]