The Best Shows and Movies to Watch This Week: Shonda Rhimes’ Inventing Anna, Jennifer Lopez’s Marry Me

If our list of the best shows and movies to watch this week on CBS, HBO Max, and everything in between looks a little sparse on the quality TV front recently, you can blame the Winter Olympics. No one wants to counter-program against the Olympics because everyone still thinks we’re living in the 1980s, when the Olympics were a big thing. But kids (people under 35) don’t care about the Olympics anymore, so BE BETTER, TELEVISION SCHEDULERS! Netflix understands this, which is why we’re getting the energetic, somewhat true story of socialite imposter Anna Delvey in Inventing Anna, which comes out this Friday. Julia Garner is worth watching in anything, but here she puts on a mysterious blob of a European accent. The ‘Flix is also dropping new seasons of Disenchantment and Love Is Blind, as well as a Thai romance featuring a building that falls in love with a woman. Yes! 

Our list of editors’ picks for the week of Feb. 9-Feb. 15 is below, but if that’s not enough and you’re looking for even more hand-picked recommendations, sign up for our free, spam-free Watch This Now newsletter that delivers the best TV show picks straight to your inbox. You can also look at our massive collection of recommendations, as well as our list of suggestions for what to watch next based on shows you already like.

THE BEST SHOW TO WATCH TONIGHT

Disenchantment

Part 4 available Wednesday, Feb. 9 on Netflix
The Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s animated fantasy adventure is back for Season — er, Part — 4, which promises not to make life any easier for newly crowned queen Bean (Abbi Jacobson). On top of fending off everyone coming for her throne, she also has to deal with more of Dreamland’s secrets, the castle’s intense effect on her dreams, and her mother arranging her marriage in Hell. Typical! Bean finally starts to get her act together, and this is the thanks she gets. –Kelly Connolly [Trailer]

THE BEST SHOWS AND MOVIES TO WATCH THIS WEEK

Kimi

Thursday, Feb. 10 on HBO Max
One of the greatest movie genres is “lonely woman goes insane after witnessing a crime,” and Kimi gives Zoë Kravitz the chance to be the woman in question. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Kimi stars Kravitz as an agoraphobic (but still super chic) tech worker who stumbles on evidence of what she believes is a violent murder while reviewing a data stream. She’s brushed off when she tries to report it to her company (her boss is played by the one and only Rita Wilson) and is forced to venture outside her apartment in order to get answers. This is essentially 2022’s The Woman in the Window. –Allison Picurro [Trailer]

Inventing Anna

Limited series premieres Friday, Feb. 11 on Netflix 
This limited series is the first show superproducer Shonda Rhimes has created since Scandal, and the true story that got her to open up Final Draft again is a doozy. It’s the only-in-America-and-New-York-City-specifically saga of Anna Delvey, played by Ozark‘s Julia Garner, a wealthy German socialite who took New York society by storm in the mid-2010s — only it turned out she wasn’t wealthy or even technically German. She was a con artist who scammed various people and institutions out of hundreds of thousands of dollars thanks to her nearly supernatural self-confidence. She became famous thanks to a bombshell New York Magazine story, the writing of which drives the plot of Inventing Anna, as journalist Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky) tries to answer the question, “Who is Anna Delvey?” -Liam Mathews [Trailer] 

Love Is Blind

Season 2 premieres Friday, Feb. 11 on Netflix
Netflix is all-in on Love Is Blind this week. The reality dating sensation that was the biggest show in America right before the pandemic started is finally back for a second season. The premise now is the same as it was then: a bunch of single people are sequestered in a house where they meet potential romantic partners. They get to know each other while talking for hours in pods where they can’t see each other. Some of them get engaged, and then we follow them as they try to make it work outside of the pods and prepare for their weddings. It drops in batches of episodes over the course of a few weeks, each covering a different part of the process. It’s a fascinating social experiment with jaw-dropping surprises and wild characters (I will never forget Jessica from Season 1, who gave her dog wine on-camera). -Liam Mathews [Trailer] 

Marry Me

Friday, Feb. 11 on Peacock
We have high 2000s-style romcom hopes for this high-concept flick starring two of that era’s icons, Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson. J-Lo plays a pop star who gets stood up by her singer boyfriend (Maluma) at her livestreamed hybrid concert/wedding and picks a random regular guy (Wilson) out of the audience to marry instead. And wouldn’t you know it, they fall in love for real. But they live in two different worlds. Can they make it work? Find out in theaters or on Peacock, where it will be streaming the same day. -Liam Mathews [Trailer]

Bel-Air 

Series premieres Sunday, Feb. 13 on Peacock
All right, sure! Peacock’s dramatic reimagining of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Airis finally here. It’s the same story as the ’90s sitcom that launched Will Smith to superstardom — a West Philadelphia born and raised teenager named Will (Jabari Banks) gets in one little fight and gets sent to live with his auntie (Cassandra Freeman) and uncle (Adrian Holmes) in the opulent Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel Air. It’s like the CW show All American with a Philly accent. -Liam Mathews [Trailer]

Super Bowl LVI 

Sunday, Feb. 13 at 6:30/5:30c on NBC and Peacock
This year’s big game is between the Los Angeles Rams — who are playing at their home stadium — and the Cincinnati Bengals, who upset the Kansas City Chiefs to reach their first Super Bowl since 1988. The halftime show will be a host of West Coast hip-hop icons — Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and Kendrick Lamar — and Eminem, who is famously from Detroit. But they need him there to do the hook from “Forgot About Dre.” R&B legend Mary J. Blige is also part of it. It’s going to be an awesome show. It will be the first Super Bowl to ever stream on Peacock. -Liam Mathews

Ali Wong: Don Wong

Monday, Feb. 14 on Netflix
I can’t imagine better Valentine’s Day counter-programming than Ali Wong’s stand-up. Don Wong is her third Netflix special, following Baby Cobra and Hard Knock Wife, both of which she filmed while pregnant. She’s not pregnant in this one, but she still has a lot of opinions on marriage, parenthood, and how it feels to eat a quesadilla that a toddler threw on the floor. -Allison Picurro [Trailer]

AI Love You

Tuesday, Feb. 15 on Netflix
Full disclosure: I’m putting this in here because there’s nothing new of particular interest coming out on this day. But I’m also putting this on here because it’s a movie about a building that falls in love with a woman! The Thai sci-fi romance follows an apartment building’s artificial intelligence as it zaps itself into a human’s body for a shot at love with one of its tenants. It’s like Her except Thai and the AI eventually ends up in a cute guy. How is this coming out the day after Valentine’s Day? -Tim Surette [Trailer]

RECENTLY RELEASED

Love Is Blind: Japan

Series premiered Tuesday, Feb. 8 on Netflix
Love Is Blind became a quarantine hit after its February 2020 release, but the reality show — in which singles try to find a connection without seeing each other — has been dry since then. By comparison, Too Hot to Handle, Netflix’s horniest dating show, premiered in April 2020 and has already aired three seasons. Following a Brazilian version, Love Is Blind gets its second international edition courtesy of Japan before the flagship edition comes back for Season 2 on Feb. 11, but Love Is Blind: Japan should be different enough from the American version to excuse the questionable scheduling. For one, Japanese culture lends itself to the earnestness that the series is trying to capture, and second, the sets and destinations look ramped up from Season 1 of the U.S. version; for example, when the couples see each other for the first time, they do so under dazzling cherry blossoms. From there, it’s the usual mix of heartbreak and burgeoning love as the couples decide whether or not to get married. Reality TV, ladies and gentlemen! –Tim Surette [Trailer]