How Much Watching Time Do You Have This Weekend?

‘Three Pines’

When to watch: Friday, on Amazon.

Alfred Molina stars as Chief Inspector Armand Gamache in this adaptation of Louise Penny’s novels, which follow a detective in a small Canadian town who solves unusual crimes. How Canadian and unusual? The show’s first two episodes investigate a Rube Goldberg machine-esque electrocution at a Boxing Day curling tournament. “Pines” blends its appealing quirk with a more serious examination of the recurrent disappearances of Indigenous women and police departments’ failures to address this crisis, and the result is a show with real punch and panache. Two episodes arrive weekly.

… a few hours, and I like when the computer is sad.

‘Pantheon’

When to watch: Now, on AMC+.

If you like your techno-futurism bleak, cynical and beautiful, try this textured animated drama. Maddie (voiced by Katie Chang) is a bullied high schooler who thinks maybe her dead dad is trying to communicate with her through “uploaded intelligence.” But that’s just a sliver of the sprawling conspiracies, competing corporations and mangled exploitation of human emotions that power the world of the show. “Pantheon” is meaty and intense — a little “Black Mirror,” a little “Blood of Zeus,” savvy about both technology and psychology. The eight-episode first season is available now, and a second season is scheduled to arrive next year.

‘Ghosts’

When to watch: Now, on Paramount+.

I remain partial to the British original of this comedy (which is available on HBO Max), but the American version has grown on me a lot. Rose McIver stars as Sam, who along with her husband inherits a ramshackle country property. After a strange accident, she discovers she can see and talk with the ghosts of people who died on the estate, including a Revolutionary War soldier, a jazz-age singer and a Viking. “Ghosts” sometimes feels like a JV version of “The Good Place,” wrestling with ideas about mortality and purpose, in its way, but more often happier to be a sweetheart ensemble comedy. The show is in the middle of its second season, but you can start anywhere.