April 2015 TV premieres, movies

TV rarely has the blahs, even in April when people finally can shake off the winter blues. The calendar of TV premieres springs to life this month with new seasons of “Game of Thrones,” “Orphan Black” and “Salem” as well as the series premiere of Netflix’s “Marvel’s Daredevil.” And the Droughtlander ends with the return of “Outlander” on Starz.

And those are just five I’m excited about. See 10 more big TV premieres in the gallery above, and check out the longer, but still non-definitive, list of April TV premieres, movies, specials and finales below. (Everything is listed with Central times, and don’t forget to check your local listings—especially for the PBS shows.)

TV premieres for April 2015

Wednesday, April 1

7 p.m.

• “Idiotest,” GSN (season 2 premiere)
• “Rev Run’s Sunday Supper,” Cooking (season premiere)

8 p.m.

• “Man Finds Food,” Travel (series premiere; Adam Richman searches for hidden restaurant gems or off-menu specials)

Thursday, April 2

2:01 a.m.

• “Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street,” Amazon Prime (7 new episodes premiere)

7 p.m.

• “Iditarod 43: The Deep Freeze,” Sportsman Channel (special; 2015 Iditarod Sled Dog Race)

8 p.m.

• “Rx: The Quiet Revolution,” WTTW-PBS (special; film shows how a patient-centered philosophy can improve health outcomes and enrich the lives of patients)

9 p.m.

• “Archer,” FX (season 6 finale)
• “Olympus,” Syfy (series premiere; humans banish the gods to the realm of the unconscious)
• “Did He Do It?” Investigation Dis7covery (series premiere; prosecutor Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi faces off against defense attorney Darren Kavinoky)
• “New Girls on the Block,” Discovery Life Channel (series premiere; friends who are transgender)
• “Timber Kings,” Destination America (season 2 premiere)

Friday, April 3

2:01 a.m.

• “Derek,” Netflix (special)
• “All Hail King Julien,” Netflix (season 1, 5 new episodes)

8 p.m.

• “Meet the Smiths,” TBS (reality premiere; NBA Legend Kenny Smith and family)
• “Backstreet Boys: Show ‘Em What You’re Made Of,” VH1 (doc premiere; 20th anniversary of boy band)
• “Mysteries at the Museum,” Travel (season 8 premiere)

9 p.m.

• “Annie Lennox: Nostalgia Live in Concert,” PBS (“Great Performances” premiere)
• “Unlikely Animal Friends: Cheetah Cub, Puppy Love,” Nat Geo Wild (season finale)

9:30 p.m.

• “The Grace Helbig Show,” E! (series premiere; YouTube star gets talk show)

Saturday, April 4

7 p.m.

• “To Hell and Back,” TV One (movie premiere; modern day retelling of the Biblical story of Job)

8 p.m

• “Outlander,” Starz (midseason premiere)
• “A Bone to Pick: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery,” Hallmark and Hallmark M&M (movie premiere; author Charlaine Harris’ mystery-solving librarian gets a movie franchise)

9 p.m.

• “The Vanilla Ice Project,” DIY Network (season 5 premiere)

Sunday, April 5

7 p.m.

• “Sinatra: All or Nothing at All,” HBO (doc premiere; life, music and career of the legendary entertainer)
• “If There Be Thorns,” Lifetime (movie premiere; 3rd novel in V.C. Andrews’ series about the Dollanganger family)
• “30th Annual Stellar Gospel Awards,” TV One (special)

8 p.m.

• “A.D. The Bible Continues,” NBC (miniseries premiere; follow-up to “The Bible”)
• “Shameless,” Showtime (season finale)
• “Kingdom of the North,” Nat Geo Wild (series premiere; wilds of Canada)
• “Bar Rescue: Back to the Bar,” Spike TV (special; where are the now?)

9 p.m.

• “Wolf Hall,” PBS (“Masterpiece” miniseries premiere; Thomas Cromwell rises in Tudor court to become Henry VIII’s closest advisor)
• “American Odyssey,” NBC (series premiere; three strangers get tangled in an international conspiracy)
• “Salem,” WGN America (season 2 premiere)
• “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles,” Lifetime (limited series premiere; what happened after Lizzie Borden was cleared of killing her parents)
• “Happyish,” Showtime (sneak peek of new series)
• “The Raft,” Nat Geo (series premiere; two sets of strangers are set adrift on life rafts)
• “Ghost Asylum,” Destination America (season premiere)

10:30 p.m.

• “China, IL,” Adult Swim (season 3 premiere)

Monday, April 6

2 a.m.

• “A Place to Call Home,” Acorn TV (season 2 U.S. premiere; Aussie drama)

4 p.m.

• “Clarence,” Cartoon Network (daily premieres week; new eps every day this week; weekly eps begin 4 p.m. April 16)

7 p.m.

• “Love & Hip Hop NYC: The Reunion,” VH1 (2-part special ending April 13)

9 p.m.

• “Little Hope Was Arson,” PBS (“Independent Lens” premiere; look into the 2010 rash of church fires around Canton, Texas)

Tuesday, April 7

7 p.m.

• “Sinatra: All or Nothing at All,” HBO (doc finale)
• “Family Affair,” PBS World (“American Reframed” doc premiere; Chico Collard explores family secret: his father abused his sisters)

8 p.m.

• “Funny Girls,” Oxygen (docuseries premiere; six female comics in Los Angeles)
• “The Real Housewives of New York City,” Bravo (season 7 premiere; Bethenny Frankel returns)
• “Blood and Glory: The Civil War in Color,” History (4-part doc premiere; a fresh, colorized look at the Civil War)

9 p.m.

• “Your Family Or Mine,” TBS (sitcom premiere; a couple’s life as seen from different sides of the family each week)
• “Dance Mom UK,” Lifetime (docuseries premiere; Jennifer Ellison and her Dance Academy girls)

Wednesday, April 8

7 p.m.

• “Animal Homes,” PBS (“Nature” premiere; 3 parts continue April 15 & 22; examining the feats of architecture created by animals)

8 p.m.

• “Little Women: Terra’s Little Family,” Lifetime (docuseries premiere; continues pregnancy story of Terra Jolé and Joe Gnoffo from last season’s “Little Women: LA”)
• “William, Kate & George: A New Royal Family,” Reelz (doc premiere; baby No. 2 on the way)

9 p.m.

• “Celebrity Legacies—Princess Diana,” Reelz (episode premiere)
• “True Supernatural,” Destination America (premiere, 3-part series (also April 15, 22); checking in on America’s most prolific paranormal mysteries)

Thursday, April 9

2:01 a.m.

• “Resident Advisors,” Hulu (series premiere; workplace comedy set in college dorm)

7 p.m.

• “Apex Predator,” Sportsman (series premiere; hunting wild pigs alligator-style)

8 p.m.

• “My Dog’s Crazy Animal Friends,” Discovery Family (series premiere; surprising animal friends)
• “Life Below Zero,” Nat Geo (season premiere)

9 p.m.

• “Fortitude,” Pivot (season finale)
• “The Watch,” Nat Geo (series premiere; inside the human mind)
• “The Comedians,” FX (series premiere; older comic clashes with younger one)

9:30 p.m.

• “Louie,” FX (season 5 premiere)
• “Skee TV,” Fuse (series premiere; music and interview show)

Friday, April 10

2:01 a.m.

• “Marvel’s Daredevil,” Netflix (series premiere; blind lawyer fights crime at night)

6 p.m.

• “Horrible Histories,” Discovery Family (series premiere; mixing funny falsities with the factual as inspired by books of Terry Derry)

9 p.m.

• “Jump!” Lifetime (docuseries premiere; jump-rope team Floyd-Little Double Dutch practice and compete)

Saturday, April 11

5 a.m.

• “Cutting Crew,” El Rey (series premiere/all-day season 1 marathon; team of daring barbers; weekly encores begin 8 p.m. April 15)

8 p.m.

• “Garage Sale Mystery: The Deadly Room,” Hallmark Movies & Mysteries (movies premiere; garage sale maven/sleuth Jennifer Shannon returns)
• “Hollywood Hillbillies,” Reelz (season 3 premiere)

8:30 p.m.

• “Polka Kings,” Reelz (series premiere; Chardon Polka Band)

9 p.m.

• “New Girls on the Block,” Discovery Life (docu-series premiere; group of women in Kansas City, Mo., who all are transgender)

Sunday, April 12

7 p.m.

• “2015 MTV Movie Awards,” MTV (special)
• “Seeds of Yesterday,” Lifetime (movie premiere; last novel in V.C. Andrews’ series about the Dollanganger family)
• “The Amazing Spider House,” Nat Geo Wild (special; experts fill a house with spiders and watch what happens)

8 p.m.

• “Game of Thrones,” HBO (season 5 premiere)
• “Nurse Jackie,” Showtime (final season premiere)
• “Gone in Georgia: A Disappeared Special,” Investigation Discovery (special; Kelly Nash vanished from his Georgia home)

9 p.m.

• “Silicon Valley,” HBO (season 2 premiere)

9:30 p.m.

• “Veep,” HBO (season 4 premiere)

Monday, April 13

2 a.m.

• “The Driver,” Acorn TV (miniseries U.S. premiere; David Morrissey plays man who drives taxi for criminal gang in thriller)

7 p.m.

• “Lincoln’s Last Day,” Smithsonian (doc premiere; April 14th will mark 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination)

8 p.m.

• “Turn: Washington’s Spies,” AMC (season 2 premiere)
• “Living with Lincoln,” HBO (doc; five generations of filmmaker Peter Kunhardt’s family have created archive relating to Abraham Lincoln)
• “Bizarre Foods,” Travel (season 8 premiere)
• “Buying the Bayou,” Destination America (season 2 premiere)

9 p.m.

• “The Homestretch,” PBS (“Independent Lens” premiere; 3 homeless teens in Chicago)
• “Everything You Didn’t Know About Animals,” Nat Geo Wild (series premiere; facts about favorite animals)
• “Chaos Caught on Camera,” Science Channel (series premiere; user-generated video from disastrous situations is deconstructed with statistics to reveal the life-saving science at being the event)
• “Outback Nation,” FYI (series premiere; outdoor spaces reinvented)
• “Fear Thy Neighbor,” Investigation Discovery (season 2 premiere)

Tuesday, April 14

2:01 a.m.

• “Other Space,” Yahoo Screen (series premiere; Paul Feig’s space comedy set in 2105 aboard the UMP Cruiser)

7 p.m.

• “The Perfect Victim,” PBS World (“American Reframed” doc premiere; 4 women serving life sentences for killing abusive husbands to save their own lives)
• “Little Person: Boston Strong,” Discovery Life (special; Juli Windsor is the first runner with dwarfism to finish Boston Marathon)

8 p.m.

• “Deadliest Catch,” Discovery Channel (season 11 premiere)
• “Botched,” E! (season premiere)
• “Blood and Glory: The Civil War in Color,” History (4-part doc premiere; a fresh, colorized look at the Civil War)

9 p.m.

• “Good Work,” E! (series premiere; comedy talker about plastic surgery hosted by RuPaul)
• “Justified,” FX (series finale)

9:15 p.m.

• “Arranged,” FYI (series premiere; arranged marriages)

Wednesday, April 15

7 p.m.

• “Weird, Wild and Deadly,” Discovery Family (series premiere; dangerous animals)

8 p.m.

• “The Great Math Mystery,” PBS (“Nova” premiere; mathematical mystery tour)

9 p.m.

• “Dangerous Persuasions,” Investigation Discovery (season 2 premiere)

Thursday, April 16

7 p.m.

• “Jascha Heifetz: God’s Fiddler,” PBS (“American Masters” premiere)

9 p.m.

• “Sophie and Shannon,” UP (series premiere; following Shannon Tweed-Simmons and her daughter with KISS star Gene Simmons, Sophie Tweed-Simmons

Friday, April 17

2:01 a.m.

• “Chris D’Elia: Incorrigible,” Netflix (standup special)

7 p.m.

• “Bitten,” Syfy (season 2 premiere)
• “Cedric’s Barber Battle,” CW (series premiere; reality competition)
• “Children of ‘Giant’,” PBS (“Voces” premiere; how the 1955 filming of “Giant” changed the lives of people in Marfa, Texas)

7:30 p.m.

• “Whose Line is it Anyway?” CW (season premiere)

8 p.m.

• “The Messengers,” CW (series premiere; 5 strangers may be key to preventing the Rapture)
• “Knock Knock, It’s Tig Notaro,” Showtime (special; comic road trips to perform in bizarre places)

9 p.m.

• “Lost Girl,” Syfy (season 5 premiere)
• “Angry Planet,” Pivot (season premiere)

Saturday, April 18

7 p.m.

• “Good Witch,” Hallmark (season 1 finale)

8 p.m.

• “Orphan Black,” BBC America (season 3 premiere)
• “The Ride,” VH1 (series premiere; behind-the-scenes with such artists as Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Linkin Park, T.I.)
• “TV Land Awards,” TV Land (special)

9 p.m.

• “Tatau,” BBC America (series premiere; two friends discover new abilities tied to Maori myths)
• “Anne Frank: Beyond the Diary,” American Heroes (doc premiere; Eva Schloss, Auschwitz survivor and childhood friend of Anne Frank, later became stepdaughter to Anne’s dad, Otto Frank)
• “Inside Mayweather vs. Pacuiao,” Showtime (4-part doc premiere; immediately following “Showtime Championship Boxing: Chavez vs. Fanfare”)

Sunday, April 19

8 p.m.

• “In My Dreams,” Hallmark (movie; magic fountain brings lovers together)

9 p.m.

• “Naked and Afraid,” Discovery (season premiere)
• “Land of the Lemurs,” Nat Geo Wild (special)

Monday, April 20

2:01 a.m.

• “Deadbeat,” Hulu (season 2 premiere)

8 a.m.

• “Celebrated,” Reelz (series premiere; celebrity biographies)

8 p.m.

• “Animals Gone Wild,” Nat Geo Wild  (season 2 premiere)

9 p.m.

• “The Great Invisible,” PBS and Pivot (“Independent Lens” premiere; impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
  on the Gulf region, its residents)
• “Time Traveling with Brian Unger,” Travel (series premiere; tales from America’s past; back-to-back episodes)
• “Hubble’s Cosmic Journey,” Nat Geo (special; 25th anniversary of Hubble Space Telescope)

10 p.m.

• “StarTalk,” Nat Geo (talk show premiere; Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson hosts)

Tuesday, April 21

7 p.m.

• “Fresh Off the Boat,” ABC (season finale)
• “Hannah Ranch,” PBS World (“American Reframed” doc premiere; profile of rancher Kirk Hanna)

7:30 p.m.

• “Repeat After Me,” ABC (season finale)

9:30 p.m.

• “Inside Amy Schumer,” Comedy Central (season 3 premiere)

Wednesday, April 22

6:30 p.m.

• “Saving My Tomorrow Part 3,” HBO (premiere; Part 3 of 6-part series on environmental issues)

7 p.m.

• “Operation Orangutan,” Nat Geo Wild (special; orphaned orangutans)

8 p.m.

• “Invisible Universe Revealed,” PBS (“Nova” premiere; Hubble Space Telescope’s 25th anniversary)
• “NASA’s Unexplained Files,” Science Channel (season 2 premiere)
• “Junkyard Empire,” Velocity (series premiere; behind the scenes at Andy’s Auto Parts)

9 p.m.

• “The Americans,” FX (season 3 finale)
• “Broadchurch,” BBC America (season finale)
• “The Prancing Elites Project,” Oxygen (series premiere;  African-American, gay and gender non-conforming dance team)

Thursday, April 23

8 p.m.

• “Saving Private K-9,” Sportsman Channel (season 2 premiere)

Friday, April 24

7 p.m.

• “No en Espanol,” PBS (“Voces” premiere; look at lives of 5 Latina actresses who dub “Desperate Housewives” for Spanish language audiences)

8 p.m.

• “America’s Ballroom Challenge,” PBS (season premiere)

9 p.m.

• “The Truth About Cats,” Nat Geo Wild (special)
• “Jim Norton: Contextually Inadequate,” EPIX (standup special)

Saturday, April 25

Noon

• “The Real Girl’s Kitchen,” Cooking (season 2 premiere)

7 p.m.

• “When Calls the Heart,” Hallmark (season 2 premiere)
• “Cleveland Abduction,” Lifetime (movie premiere; dramatization of Michelle Knight’s memoir of her kidnapping and imprisonment by Ariel Castro)
• “Valley Uprising,” Discovery (Elevation Weekend premiere; 50 years of rock climbing at Yosemite Valley, Ca.)

8 p.m.

• “Lake Placid vs. Anaconda,” Syfy (movie; crocodiles and anacondas clash)

9 p.m.

• “Everest Avalanche Tragedy,” Discovery (Elevation Weekend premiere; rescue and recovery efforts after 2014 Mt. Everest avalanche)
• “The Dead Files,” Travel (season 7 premiere)

Sunday, April 26

8 p.m.

• “Boomtowners,” Smithsonian Channel (docuseries premiere; oil boom in North Dakota and Montana)
• “Spring Baking Championship,” Food (series premiere; bakers compete)

8:30 p.m.

• “HAPPYish,” Showtime (comedy series premiere; folks looking for happiness)

9 p.m.

• “Queens of Drama,” Pop (series premiere)

Monday, April 27

2:01 a.m.

• “Murdoch Mysteries: The Movies,” acorn.tv (U.S. premiere; these 2004 adaptations of Maureen Jennings’s novels serve as darker prequel to popular Canadian series)

8 p.m.

• “Tales of the Grim Sleeper,” HBO (doc premiere; In 2010, computer DNA matching accidentally links Lonnie Franklin to the Grim Reaper murders of 1985-2007)

9 p.m.

• “Dick Cavett’s Vietnam,” PBS (doc premiere; Vietnam war and its impact on America)

Tuesday, April 28

7 p.m.

• “Kent State—The Day the ’60s Died,” PBS (doc premiere; four unarmed Kent State students were shot dead by Ohio National Guardsmen in 1970)
• “Perfect Strangers,” PBS World (“American Reframed” doc premiere; the art of giving compassionately)

8 p.m.

• “Last Days in Vietnam,” PBS (“American Experience” premiere; how Americans tried to save South Vietnamese friends)

9 p.m.

• “Chopped All-Stars,” Food (season 4 premiere)
• “Sons of Winter,” Discovery (series premiere; the Barks family lives off the grid in Northern Saskatchewan)

Wednesday, April 29

7 p.m.

• “The Casual Vacancy,” HBO (miniseries premiere; J.K. Rowling’s global bestseller centers on Pagford, a seemingly idyllic English village that really is a town at war)

8 p.m.

• “Unearthed,” Discovery (series premiere; digging for black truffles in Oregon)
• “Tia Mowry at Home,” Cooking Channel (series premiere; actress’s recipes for success and for dinner)

9 p.m.

• “Ripper Street,” BBC America (season 3 premiere)
• “First Peoples,” PBS (series premiere; how early humans evolved)
• “White Collar Convicts: Life on the Inside,” CNBC (doc premiere; behind bars in a white-collar prison)

Thursday, April 30

8 p.m.

• “Backstrom,” Fox (season finale)

• “Made from America,” GAC (series premiere; Retro T-shirt designer Gabe Johnson finds inspiration for his custom tees)

9 p.m.

• “Impractical Jokers Punishments: Funny ‘Cause It Hurts,” truTV (special; show’s best punishments and never-before-seen footage)