“Melissa & Joey”
Tuesday 8pm, ABC Family
Holy Winona Ryder! Looks like the ’90s really are back. Take this new sitcom starring Melissa Joan Hart (“Sabrina the Teenage Witch”) and Joey Lawrence (“Blossom”) in an update of “Who’s the Boss?” with a dash of Raising Helen thrown in for good measure. Hart plays an aspiring politician who inherits her screwed-up siblings’ teenage kids. Overwhelmed, she puts an ad out for a nanny, and ends up with Lawrence (who looks reptilian with that shaved head). It makes sense, since Lawrence basically is the second coming of Tony Danza. Sadly, I don’t see a Mona analogue anywhere, which is strange, since I always assumed Katherine Helmond was the boss.
“The Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town”
Friday 10pm, IFC
The Kids haven’t been kids for nigh on 20 years, but they’re back with this new, original eight-part mini-series. You probably recognize most of the members of the groundbreaking Canadian sketch-comedy troupe: Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson have all had memorable character-actor roles, while Dave Foley somehow became a leading man in “NewsRadio” and other projects. “Death” features the group’s surreal, gender-bending antics as they tell the story of a small town turned upside down after the Grim Reaper arrives on a Greyhound bus, and one of the town’s most distinguished citizens ends up dead. Unlike other “Kids” efforts, this one tells a specific, serialized story, like a goofy take on “Twin Peaks.”
“If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise”
Monday-Tuesday 9pm, HBO
In 2006 Spike Lee captured the harsh realities of post-Katrina New Orleans in his Peabody- and Emmy-winning documentary When the Levees Broke. He knew the story wasn’t over, and returned with camera crews over the past six months to survey the rebuilding efforts in the Gulf, and to catch up with some of the region’s residents who shared their stories in Levees. The result is this four-hour project, which uncovers some shocking results. While areas of New Orleans have recovered, in some of the poorest areas only 38 percent of the private homes have been rebuilt. Charity Hospital, which served the city’s poor for 250 years, remains shuttered due to red tape. And of course there’s that whole five-million-gallon oil slick that’s destroying the coastal habitat. When are those bon temps supposed to start rolling, again?
