TV: What to WATCH Feb. 18-21

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Britney Ever After

Saturday movie | 7 pm | Lifetime

As a musical artist, Britney Spears made a decent pop icon. She barely contributed to the writing of her music, her singing’s mediocre, and her perpetual comebacks are tiresome. But! To a generation of women, Spears is as important as Madonna was a decade prior. A Lifetime biopic was inevitable, and this cheap flick stinks of rush-job non-urgency and blech production (which began just five months ago). Spears’ entire life has been over-documented in the media, so there are no new revelations, just a sad reminder that Kevin Federline was once a thing.


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The Good Fight

Series debut Sunday | 7 pm | CBS

Remember how great The Good Wife was? Wasn’t Julianna Margulies awesome? And Archie Punjabi, Alan Cumming, Josh Charles and Jeffrey Dean Morgan? So how about a spin-off with none of those stars, on a pay-per-stream platform you’ve never heard of? (The network debut is a teaser; hereafter, the series is available only on CBS All Access). The Good Fight finds Wife attorney Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) starting over at another law firm and… I’m already asleep.


Big Little Lies

Series debut Sunday | 8 pm | HBO

Writer-producer David E. Kelley came back hard last year with Goliath, a legal drama juiced with tight scripting and star power. His new series doubles-down on the big names (Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley, and others), if not the writing. This could easily be condensed from a seven-hour nonsensical series into a 90-minute nonsensical movie. Pretty, rich white folks of pretty, rich Monterey and their pretty, rich kids are embroiled in a who-among-us-done-it murder mystery.


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EMILY SHUR

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The Detour

Season premiere Tuesday | 9 pm | TBS

Last year’s debut season exploded its National Lampoon’s Vacation inspiration into countless directions as new weirdness about couple Nate and Robin (Jason Jones and Natalie Zea) was revealed in every episode. The road trip may be over, but Season 2 builds on last year’s cliffhanger revelation about Robin’s mysterious past by moving the family to Manhattan and introducing a new crop of guest stars to clash against (including John Oliver, James Cromwell and Samantha Bee). Hulu Season 1 now!

Bill Frost writes about television for Salt Lake City Weekly.