Muppets Mayhem Gives The Electric Mayhem Its Own This Is Spinal Tap

Looking for your next binge-watch, or just need to fill an hour? Welcome to Your Weekly Watch List, our curated collection of the best shows on television. Here’s what to watch from Sunday, May 7 through Saturday, May 13.

This week, The Muppets Mayhem gives everybody’s favorite Muppet band a shot at the big time, spy drama Class of ’09 pits Kata Mara against Brian Tyree Henry’s AI technology, and post-apocalyptic animated comedy Mulligan tries to rebuild civilization.

The Muppets Mayhem

Wednesday, Disney+ (Full Season)

For anyone whose childhood was marked by Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem rocking out to “Can You Picture That?” in The Muppet Movie, the prospect of a series about the beloved rock-blues combo should have toes already tapping. There was always a ticklish, unspoken subversiveness to the house band’s gaggle of sleepy-eyed, hard-rocking burnouts, and The Muppets Mayhem leans into the bit: As it turns out, Dr. Teeth, Animal, Floyd, Janice, Zoot, and Lips were so into their 1980s hedonistic heyday that they forgot to ever record an album.

The series sees the legendary band prodded into finally laying down some recordings by worshipful junior exec Nora (Lilly Singh), as a truly dizzying array of real-life rockers (including everyone from Lil Nas X to Weird Al to deadmau5) explain just how formative the Mayhem’s music truly was. Look for cameos from the likes of Anders Holm, Kevin Smith, Kristen Schaal, Ben Schwartz, and many other Muppet aficionados when the entire 10-episode season premieres Wednesday.

Class of ’09

Wednesday, FX on Hulu

Kate Mara and Brian Tyree Henry lead an impressive ensemble cast in FX’s sci-fi thriller about a group of idealistic FBI recruits who discover that law enforcement’s reliance on artificial intelligence might not be the perfect crime-fighting tool they imagined. Spanning decades from 2009 into the increasingly Big Brother-tinged near future, the series, from The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’s Tim Rob Smith, examines how the government’s reliance on AI splinters the close-knit group’s allegiances, all while the specter of a computer-controlled surveillance state threatens to overtake society. While Claire Spellberg Lustig says the limited series’ time-hopping storylines could have done more to develop its characters, the strong cast and ominous echoes of current advances in computer-aided policing are intriguing stuff. The first two episodes drop Wednesday.

Mulligan

Friday, Netflix (Full Season)

After an insectoid alien race wipes out all but 1,132 people on Earth, it’s up to the survivors to rebuild society in Mulligan, a new animated comedy from creators Sam Means and Robert Carlock (30 Rock, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). When unlikely invasion hero and lunkhead Bostonian Matt Mulligan (Nat Faxon) discovers that blowing up aliens is a cinch compared to governing a decimated United States, an idealistic former beauty queen (Chrissy Teigen), a brilliant scientist (Tina Fey), and the world’s last remaining historian (Sam Richardson) are left to pick up the slack. Meanwhile, holdover old school politician Senator Cartwright LaMarr (Dana Carvey) schemes to bring back the days when only old white men were in charge. A stacked supporting voice cast including Ayo Edebiri, Daniel Radcliffe, Ronny Chieng, and Phil LaMarr (as the captive alien general, baffled that this group of knuckleheads managed to defeat him) all promise to make this Idiocracy-style apocalypse fun.

City on Fire

Friday, Apple TV+

Downtown grunge meets uptown wealth and power in this crime drama based on the novel by Garth Risk Hallberg. When a young woman named Samantha (Chase Sui Wonders) is found murdered in Central Park on the Fourth of July, 2003, her friends uncover disturbing connections between her life on the fringes of the New York music scene and the machinations of an impossibly wealthy real estate clan. Wyatt Oleff, Jemima Kirke, Omid Abtahi, and John Cameron Mitchell fill out the ranks of those seeking to solve — or bury — the mystery. Three episodes premiere Friday.

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie

Friday, Apple TV+

From the dizzying heights of his 1980s TV and movie stardom to the shocking discovery of Parkinson’s symptoms during the filming of Doc Hollywood, Michael J. Fox opens up about his struggles with fame, depression, and a debilitating illness in an intimate and inspiring documentary by Davis Guggenheim. Mixing interviews with the now 61-year-old Fox, archival footage, and scripted reenactments from the Back to the Future star’s eventful life, Still provides a powerful look at how an eternally resilient and optimistic actor confronted the unthinkable with the help of his wife of 35 years, actress Tracy Pollan.

If You Have...

An Hour

Jeopardy! Masters: Monday, 8:00 PM ET on ABC
Hannah Gadsby: Something Special: Tuesday, Netflix
Fear the Walking Dead Season 8 Premiere: Thursday, AMC+
Intelligence: A Special Agent Special: Thursday, Peacock

An Evening

2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards: Sunday, 8:00 PM ET on MTV
58th Academy of Country Music Awards: Thursday, 8:00 PM ET on Amazon Prime Video

A Full Day

African Queens: Queen Cleopatra: Wednesday, Netflix
The Great Season 3: Friday, Hulu

Up Next

The Family Stallone: Wednesday, May 17 on Paramount+
High Desert: Wednesday, May 17 on Apple TV+
Sisters: Wednesday, May 17 on AMC+ and Sundance Now
Mrs. Davis Season 1 Finale: Thursday, May 18 on Peacock

Dennis Perkins is a freelance entertainment writer with bylines at The A.V. Club, Paste, Ultimate Classic Rock, The Portland Press Herald, and elsewhere.