What’s y’all’s temperature on the apes? I see the movies trending on Max and Hulu, so I know you know what I’m talking about here. Will you rush to see apes rule over us humans more so than seeing Ryan Gosling falling in love and down buildings? We’ll see. But if not, there’s still plenty to watch at home, from hot vampires to doctors to wrestlers — and over at Max, summer school is already in session. Here, this week’s picks. —Savannah Salazar
Featured Presentations
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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Is this one of cinema’s more underrated franchises? Fox’s Planet of the Apes remakes have sneakily done quite well in the past. But with Matt Reeves and Andy Serkis’s Caesar gone and it being nearly seven years since the last sequel, it’ll be interesting to see how Kingdom does. Directed by Wes Ball (of the Maze Runner films), Kingdom is set 300 years after the death of Caesar, when apes effectively rule the Earth. That is, until a young ape crosses paths with a Rue21 model with ripped skinny jeans and a glossy lip (Freya Allan) and tries to push back on the new big bad’s Proximus Caesar’s reign. —S.S.
➽ No, seriously — how does she have jeans 300 years later?
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Doctor Who
There’s a new Doctor in town. Ncuti Gatwa (of Sex Education and Barbie) becomes the Fifteenth Doctor of the long-running science-fiction series as he time-travels in the TARDIS with his companion Ruby (Millie Gibson). I may not be a big Doctor Who watcher, but I will be tuning in to see Gatwa’s fantastic outfits. —S.S.
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Interview With the Vampire season two
It took time for word of mouth to spread about Rolin Jones’s flamboyant spin on Rice’s gothic novel. The show’s return explores the repentant Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) and his vampire daughter Claudia’s (Delainey Hayles) relationship after they seemingly kill Louis’s maker and former lover (Sam Reid). —Roxana Hadadi
➽ Warning: Do not watch if you hate hot people.
The One-Sentence Review
Aggro Dr1ft
“I don’t get the sense that anyone involved in Aggro Dr1ft has ever had a normal interaction with anyone, which probably makes it hard to find things for these characters to do.” (Read more here.)
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Pretty Little Liars: Summer School
Honestly, this Pretty Little Liars reboot is a Trojan horse for what’s essentially a slasher-flick homage, and that’s probably why it works. It has few hallmarks of the original series, about a group of teenage girls being stalked by A ever since their friend Alison went missing freshman year; Summer School uses the A conceit, and that’s about it. Instead, this series goes all in on a riff of Friday the 13th. It’s unserious and fun. —S.S.
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Black Twitter: A People’s History
Directed and produced by Insecure showrunner Prentice Penny, Black Twitter is a three-part documentary series based on Jason Parham’s Wired article exploring Black Twitter’s permeation in modern culture. From movements like Black Lives Matter and #OscarsSoWhite to so many memes and threads, Black Twitter covers it all with the help of talking heads like Roxane Gay and Kid Fury. —S.S.
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Bodkin
Another for the post-comedy files, this show stars Will Forte and Siobhán Cullen as a true-crime podcaster and investigative journalist, respectively, who poke into mysterious disappearances in Ireland and discover that someone is trying to keep the real story a secret. —Kathryn VanArendonk
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Dark Matter
It’s amusing to imagine Tim Cook personally signing off on every one of Apple TV+’s streaming offerings, and lately they’ve been heavily genre. Here’s another sci-fi series starring Joel Edgerton as a physicist who ends up in an alternate version of his reality. Dark Matter chronicles his struggle to get back home, and it’s seemingly nearly the exact same story line as another (no spoilers) sci-fi series from the streamer. Maybe each of these shows is an alternate-universe version of the other? —R.H.
Finally Streaming
The Iron Claw
Zac Efron deserved that Oscar nomination! (Read more here.)
Couch Concert
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Let It Be
Disney+ has quickly become the home for the Beatles: First there was the ultralong documentary Get Back, and now Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 film is getting a restoration for the streamer after being largely unavailable basically since its original release. The part-doc, part-concert film is way shorter than Get Back, clocking in at 89 minutes, but still does a great job chronicling the good and bad of the band’s final days. —S.S.
➽ If you double-feature this with Get Back, I salute you.
Want more? Read our recommendations from the weekend of May 3.