The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching

last updated 8 January 2015

The Borgias

The Crying Game director Neil Jordan created this new drama series about a family of nobles in Renaissance Italy who became synonymous with corruption and Machiavellian scheming. Jeremy Irons stars as Rodrigo Borgia, whose ascent to the papacy, via bribery, dominates Episode 1; the cast also includes Joanne Whalley as his mistress and François Arnaud as their son, Cesare. Monday, April 4, at 8 p.m., Showtime

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From Elvis Presley to Led Zeppelin, Frank Sinatra to John Denver, some of the biggest names in music were managed or promoted by Jerry Weintraub, who later turned to Hollywood and created such hits as The Karate Kid and Ocean’s Eleven. This colorful profile traces Weintraub’s sometimes-stormy five-decade career, and includes interviews with such associates as George H.W. Bush, George Clooney, and Julia Roberts. Monday, April 4, at 9 p.m., HBO

During the Soviet Union’s long repression of avant-garde art, Russian collector Igor Savitsky came up with a daring way of saving proscribed works—by preserving them in a museum in the middle of a remote Uzbek desert. This profile of a man who risked everything for art is generously larded with colorful images of the remarkable trove Savitsky assembled. Tuesday, April 5, at 10 p.m., PBS; check local listings

Fifteen years after the Rwandan genocide, filmmaker Deborah Scranton (The War Tapes) follows one survivor’s dogged quest for the truth about his father’s murder. In a parallel story, this thought-provoking documentary also focuses on the efforts of current Rwandan president Paul Kagame to heal his nation, in part by releasing a troubling report on France’s role in the 1994 mass murder of some 800,000 people. Wednesday, April 6, at 8 p.m., HBO2

From the makers of the award-winning Planet Earth and Life nature documentaries comes this similarly dazzling six-part series showing how humans adapt to extreme environments. Highlights of Part 1, “Rivers and Oceans,” include high-def looks at the houseboat-dwelling Bajau Laut and the daring fishermen of Galicia, Spain; “Mountains,” which follows immediately, travels to western Mongolia and the Himalayas. Sundays, April 10–24, at 8 p.m., Discovery

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