The series “The Gilded Age” premieres Monday, Jan. 24, on HBO Max, “The Ice Adventures of Buck Wild” debuts Friday, Jan. 28, on Disney+, and “Home Team” starts streaming Friday, Jan. 28, on Netflix.
Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.
Movies
• “Ice Age” hasn’t quite lasted eons, but the animated franchise is now a decade old. And it’s been a very busy prehistoric period. “The Ice Adventures of Buck Wild,” premiering Friday on Disney+, is the sixth feature film in the series, which also encompasses TV specials, a load of video games and an ice show. This installment, the first released by Disney after taking over 20th Century Fox, centers on Simon Pegg’s one-eyed weasel, Buck Wild, who was first introduced in “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.”
• Netflix’s Adam Sandler industrial complex never sleeps. The latest offering is: “Home Team,” a new Sandler-produced sports comedy starring Kevin James as NFL head coach Sean Payton. “Home Team,” which debuts Friday on Netflix, is based on the true story of when Payton was suspended from New Orleans Saints’ 2012 season due to the Bountygate scandal, and used that time to coach his son’s Pop Warner team. Meanwhile, Sandler, whose last Netflix film, “Hubie Halloween,” came out in 2020, will have his own sports comedy later this year, playing a former NBA scout trying to sign an overseas player to the NBA.
• A virtual Sundance Film Festival continues to unspools online in its second week. Despite the Park City, Utah, festival having to cancel its in-person events due to the omicron-propelled surge in COVID-19 cases, a wide range of new independent films can be streamed at home with the purchase of a ticket. Movies premiering beginning Monday include Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne’s friendship comedy “AM I OK?,” with Dakota Johnson and Sonoya Mizuno; “The Janes,” a documentary about the 1970s underground abortion collective; “Emily the Criminal,” with Aubrey Plaza as a debt-saddled Los Angeles woman pulled into a criminal underbelly; and “Piggy,” a Spanish horror film about a picked-on teenager.
— AP Film Writer Jake Coyle
The self-titled album by Anaïs Mitchell. – Courtesy of BMG Music
• Singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, who won a Tony Award for the musical “Hadestown,” returns to her own music with a new self-titled album, out Friday. Made with members of Bon Iver and The National, it’s Mitchell’s first collection of all-new material under her own name since 2012’s “Young Man in America.” At the beginning of the pandemic, she retreated to her native Vermont, gave birth and reconnected to her past. The songs that came are very autobiographical and that’s why she chose to self-title the album. “It felt like after so many years of working on telling other stories, now here are some of mine,” she says.
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• The Temptations are always in style and haven’t stopped making music. Their new album “Temptations 60” features tracks written and produced by Narada Michael Walden, hip-hop producer K. Sparks, longtime group member Ron Tyson, founding member Otis Williams and the legendary Smokey Robinson, whose classic songs launched the group’s original hit streak. “Temptations 60” features the lead single with Robinson’s “Is It Gonna Be Yes Or No.” Get ready to snap your fingers on Friday.
— AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy
Television
• “Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes has a new series. That’s enough for his admirers, but for those in need of more detail: HBO’s “The Gilded Age,” written by Fellowes and Sonja Warfield, opens in 1882 amid wrenching U.S. economic change that sees the building of massive fortunes. Louisa Jacobson stars as a young woman who leaves the country for New York City and life with her old-money aunts — one of whom is warring with a new-money tycoon. Carrie Coon, Morgan Spector, Cynthia Nixon and Christine Baranski are among the stars in the nine-episode drama debuting Monday.
• There are horror stories and stories about the horrors of high school, and then there’s “Astrid & Lilly Save the World,” a Syfy series that combines the two. Close pals Astrid and Lilly (Jana Morrison, Samantha Aucoin) are social outcasts and, to add to their woes, have accidentally opened a portal to a “terrifyingly quirky monster dimension,” as it’s explained. But the duo may be able to turn bad luck into good and realize their hero potential by taking on the creatures. The series debuts Tuesday on Syfy (with a USA simulcast for the premiere).
• A high school reunion plus murder equals “The Afterparty,” an Apple TV+ mystery-comedy series from filmmakers Chris Miller and Phil Lord (“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” “The Lego Movie”). Described as “a genre-defying series” about the reunion evening that ended in death, each of the eight episodes focuses on one character’s account of the events. Tiffany Haddish, Sam Richardson, Zoë Chao and Ilana Glazer are part of the ensemble cast for the series that debuts with three episodes on Friday. The remaining episodes will be released on consecutive Fridays.
— AP Television Writer Lynn Elber
