What to watch this weekend: Empathy premieres on Crave, new seasons of Late Bloomer and Hacks | Canada Voices

Empathy, Crave

After two years out of the work force, former cop Suzanne (series creator Florence Longpré) starts a new job as a psychiatrist at a Montreal institute connected with the prison system. Mortimer (France’s Thomas Ngijol), a soft-spoken security guard, sits with her at every patient consult in case of physical attack. What sounds like the basis for an unusually intense procedural is instead a comedy-forward, character-driven drama that marches to the beat of its own drummer – starting with an opening scene of a hungover Suzanne stepping barefoot into last night’s poutine. The series’s themes about perception – of the world, time, others and oneself – infuses how Guillaume Lonergan directs it: Suzanne’s mood swings affect the pace, the style, the score; a visual leitmotif sees ballet dancers in black tutus flock into scenes when her depression seeps in. This odd, and oddly affecting Quebec series just won the audience award at the Series Mania festival in France; based on the fascinating, funny first two episodes now out, it deserved it. New ones follow Thursdays, in French with English subtitles.

Late Bloomer, Crave

It’s a big week for Canadian comedy as this year’s best new homegrown series, North of North, lands on Netflix globally – and last year’s, Late Bloomer, returns to Crave for a second go-round on April 10. Creator Jasmeet Raina plays Jasmeet Dutta, a Sikh social-media star who, as this sophomore season begins, has finally moved out of his parents’ basement – and into a GTA rooming house packed with South Asian international students and delivery drivers and overseen by a nosy, religious landlady. Whenever Jas tries to have sex with his girlfriend Rebecca (Seher Khot), the interruptions that ensue are solid slapstick – but also show a slice of contemporary Canadian life that’s discussed a lot but dramatized little. (When Jas mentions the concept of “tenant’s rights,” his flatmates – supposedly some of the culprits in the housing crisis – roll their eyes at his naiveté.) Binge the first season first: There are storylines about the generation gap, religion and the creator economy that continue to unfold here with sophistication – but never without forgetting to tickle funnybones.

Hacks, Crave

The funniest comedy on American television – which finally beat the least funny, The Bear, to the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series last spring – is back with a fourth season April 10. Septuagenarian stand-up Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) has at last landed the gig hosting a late-night show she’s sought all of her career – and, true to her nature, starts turning viciously on all those who helped her get there. Meanwhile, the young writer Ava (Hannah Einbinder) struggles with her own success – because the Deborah-like tactics she used to achieve her own dream turn into a bit of a nightmare. Yes, these two women are at each other’s throats again, but have to pretend otherwise to sell a feminist narrative to the media about lifting each other up. The biggest laughs, per usual, come from the sidekicks: Bickering managers Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter), whose double-act expands with their hiring of a new receptionist played by American-Canadian comedian Robby Hoffman; the comic chemistry between the three is off the charts.

Justified, CBC Gem

If you’re gagging for more Walton Goggins after the (sadly, disappointing) finale of The White Lotus last weekend, the sixth and final season of this neo-western he plays a key role in joins the five previous ones on the national public broadcaster’s streamer as of April 11. Developed by the Canadian writer and producer Graham Yost in his pre-Silo days and initially airing on FX starting in 2010, Justified was spun out of Elmore Leonard’s stories set in and around the Appalachian mountains in Kentucky. Timothy Oliphant plays a U.S. Marshall named Raylan, and Goggins is his old nemesis, Boyd. The Globe and Mail’s John Doyle wrote highly of the series: “The core characters are magnificently rich in complexity while essentially engaging in the same battles over and over again. The laconic pace of the series, the dry, wry tone and the spiky dialogue add up to something that I never grow weary of – a deep well of pleasure that never goes dry.“

Black Mirror, Netflix

What near-future dystopias has the English satirist Charlie Brooker conjured up for the seventh season of his British sci-fi anthology show? No advance screeners were available for critics, but supplied descriptions of the batch of six episodes dropping on April 10 include mention of a “groundbreaking system that allows its users to literally step inside old photographs”; “a high-tech, unusually immersive remake of a vintage British film” that sends its star to another dimension; and “a high-tech system that will keep a schoolteacher alive – but at a cost”. There’s also an hour-and-a-half sequel to season four’s meta-parody of Star Trek, USS Callister – which won an Emmy for outstanding TV movie; Jesse Plemons is not back for that, but Cristin Milioti is.