http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/arts/television/narcos-high-maintenance-labor-day.html 2016-09-05 11:38:34 What You Should Watch This Labor Day Weekend From the Watching team, expert TV and movie recommendations for the next few days. === Welcome to Watching, The New York Times’s what-to-watch guide. We comb through releases big and small to email readers twice a week with our timely recommendations. You can browse previous guides Dear Watchers, I started worrying we’d never make it to the end of this godforsaken summer, but here we are: Labor Day weekend. Hallelujah. Come next week, we’ll be reveling in the flood of new fall shows, but for now, we’ve got a three-day weekend to enjoy. Have a beautiful weekend. “High Maintenance,” now on all HBO streaming platforms Watch if you like short-story anthologies and perceptive but not cruel satire. “High Maintenance” started out as a fantastic web series, first made independently then with the backing of Vimeo. Then last year The series stars the co-creator Ben Sinclair as “the guy,” a bike-riding weed dealer who in each episode visits a different client or clients. The stories are very loosely interwoven, with some characters popping up in a few episodes, though if you miss the connections, you’re not really poorer for it — it’s more of a bonus. Though “High” has pot smoking as a central plot point, the show isn’t at all stoner humor. It’s a sometimes-wry, sometimes-poignant look at urban loneliness, and the character-building accomplished in these webisodes in just a few minutes puts plenty of feature films to shame. I have cried at episodes of “High Maintenance.” The pieces all work as stand-alones, so there’s no bad place to start, although the emotional resonance works best when you watch several in a row. “Trophy Wife,” now streaming — free! — on Watch if you like single-camera family comedies with a brain. Some people blame the cancellation of “Trophy Wife” on its misleading title. I prefer to blame it on the widespread global issue of people not behaving as I know they should. The 2013 ABC comedy stars Malin Akerman as the fun-loving new wife to a guy (Bradley Whitford) with three kids and two ex-wives (Marcia Gay Harden and Michaela Watkins). But the show isn’t about wicked stepmothers or evil teens — everyone mostly gets along. “Trophy” takes a little while to find its footing, but even the sorta-lesser early episodes have plenty of appeal. If you have ever enjoyed an episode of “Modern Family,” try “Trophy Wife.” If nothing else, the show gave us the wonderful Bert (Albert Tsai, now on “Dr. Ken”), and his description of his greatest dance move, Bert-wheels: “They’re like cartwheels, but with screaming.” The France-focused new season of “Chef’s Table,” Watch if you liked previous seasons, or love France. “Chef’s Table” continues to be canonization in documentary’s clothing, and the new batch of four episodes are about chefs in France — liberté, égalité, hagiography. This isn’t a complaint, though: I love that “Chef’s Table” goes as hard as possible on its mission to depict food and cooking as the apex of personal artistry and sensory pleasure. Sure, sometimes it’s hard not to roll one’s eyes a bit — we’re sautéing mushrooms here, not working in the coal mines — but every time there’s a shot of someone methodically cutting through a big, pink hunk of fish, I swear my fingers genuinely, physically tingle with jealousy as I imagine how satisfying it must feel to be that good at slicing something that expensive. My wife and I are looking for a show to watch after we finish “The Night Of,” or some similarly bleak drama. Something so I don’t have nightmares, but hopefully, something I haven’t seen before and I can get invested in. My wife and I tend to lose motivation with shows with primarily stand-alone episodes (like “Bob’s Burgers”) and need a through narrative thread to keep us going. Ideally this show is not longer than 45 minutes (although 30 would be better). We just finished “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” which filled this slot well. We’re looking for something a little out of left field … — Kevin If you generally skip over teen shows, you’ve been missing out. Expand your horizons! If you avoided “The O.C.” or “Gossip Girl” when they were on, this is the ideal circumstance in which to watch them. Neither needs to be watched all the way through, but the first seasons of each are magical. Both shows are chitter-chatter delights, and there’s enough plot and story to keep you hooked but no lingering psychological baggage. “My Mad Fat Diary,” a British teen import about a recently suicidal teen girl, is thoughtful and hilarious, and a more earnest follow-up to “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.” Lots of CW shows will fit the bill here. (I’m going to assume you already watch “Jane the Virgin,” too. This goes for all Watchers: Even if you think “Jane” is not typically your kind of show, give it a try.) “The L.A. Complex,” as But if you want a more traditional show for and about adults, try “Sensitive Skin.” It’s a Canadian remake of a British series of the same name, but this version stars Don McKellar (“Slings and Arrows”) and Kim Cattrall as a couple trying to figure out what the post-parenting pre-retirement phase of their life is supposed to look like. It’s billed as a dark comedy, but it feels more like a half-hour drama to me. So far only “Sensitive Skin,” above, has only six episodes per season, which is unbearably scanty. Same goes for the low-impact but endearing “ Finally, there are Ewan McGregor’s motorcycle-trip documentary series “Long Way Round” (2004) and “Long Way Down” (2007). In each, McGregor and his BFF take a motorcycle trip around the world, first the “long way [a]round” from England to New York City, then from Scotland to South Africa. The paperwork alone is enough to keep me couch-bound, but these two seasons are equal parts charm, adventure and the worldview that most people are mostly good most of the time. Plus, unlike “The Night Of,” no extended foot-lotioning sequences. That is the true palate cleanser. If you’ve finished watching Netflix’s “Stranger Things” and want something else with Spielbergian vibes, shady government agencies and children with special powers, try Roy (Michael Shannon) and his friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton) kidnap Roy’s son Alton (Jaeden Lieberher) from a religious cult and go on the run. Alton is able to do things that no other human can, and both the government and the cult want to use him for their own ends. While “Midnight Special” and “Stranger Things” are each about a parent rescuing their child from danger, “Midnight” is more insulated, focused on a few key characters. The film’s fantastical elements do nothing to undercut the emotional resonance of the relationship between Roy and Alton. “Narcos” is back, Season 2 of Netflix’s engrossing, imaginative Pablo Escobar drama does require having seen Season 1 — but you don’t need to rewatch to prepare; you’ll remember everything just fine. The show feels a little more efficient in its new season, with more story density, but it still has that same jostling sense of both action and intimacy. (