The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching

The River

A missing explorer’s loved ones brave mystical threats while venturing deep into the Amazon jungle to find him. This new suspense series adopts the mock-documentary style of The Blair Witch Project and the Paranormal Activity films but throws in higher production values plus a dollop of Poltergeist: a family fighting to free one of its own from the grip of the supernatural. Tuesday, Feb. 7, at 9 p.m., ABC

Doomsday Preppers

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

This 10-part docuseries looks at the unusual lengths to which some Americans go to be ready for a major disaster. The first two episodes, airing back to back, include profiles of a Texas couple who have stockpiled 50,000 pounds of food in case the Earth’s poles reverse, and a woman who teaches self-defense in anticipation of a financial collapse. Tuesday, Feb. 7, at 9 p.m., National Geographic

Channel Independent Lens: The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Swedish filmmakers traveled from Harlem and Brooklyn, N.Y., to Oakland, Calif., to chronicle the growth of the Black Power movement. Their footage, unseen for decades until this film’s 2011 theatrical release, includes interviews with Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, and Eldridge Cleaver. Interviews with present-day scholars were added to create a “mixtape” that captures a country torn by race, assassinations, and war. Thursday, Feb. 9, at 10 p.m., PBS; check local listings

MLK: The Assassination Tapes

“I’m not worried. I’m not fearing any man,” Martin Luther King Jr. declared in an April 3, 1968, speech in Memphis, where he had come to support striking sanitation workers. The next day, King was assassinated. This riveting account of the tragedy uses contemporaneous television and radio news footage to convey the full texture of a defining moment in American history. Sunday, Feb. 12, at 9 p.m., Smithsonian Channel

Comic Book Men

Filmmaker Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy) is an executive producer of this unscripted series set in his own New Jersey comic book store. Like Smith’s iconic slacker comedy, Clerks, the six-episode show focuses on the shop’s quirky employees and customers. But it also plumbs the vagaries of collecting comics and related memorabilia. Sunday, Feb. 12, at 10 p.m., AMC

Other highlights

Underground Railroad: The William Still Story

The heroism of black abolitionists is highlighted in this documentary about a free black man who helped slaves escape to Canada. Monday, Feb. 6, at 10 p.m., PBS; check local listings

Person to Person

CBS revives a groundbreaking program that initially dispatched Edward R. Murrow to the homes of famous interviewees. The new hosts are Charlie Rose and Lara Logan. Wednesday, Feb. 8, at 8 p.m., CBS

54th Annual Grammy Awards

Rapper and actor LL Cool J will host this year’s music-industry awards event, to be broadcast live from Los Angeles. Scheduled performers include Rihanna and Paul McCartney. Sunday, Feb. 12, at 8 p.m., CBS