TV
1. Watch Bob’s Burgers
Surprisingly warm.
It might take a few years for viewers to appreciate Loren Bouchard’s sitcom, but it has an underground-comix look (evoking the short-lived WB series Mission Hill) and a laid-back sense of humor, with deadpan repetitions and overlapping dialogue, that’s very King of the Hill. The Belchers are the rare TV clan whose members are essentially decent. And H. Jon Benjamin has the funniest pain-scream since The Simpsons’ Dan Castellaneta. —Matt Zoller Seitz
Fox, Sundays at 8:30 p.m.
Theater
2. See (and Hear!) Fran Drescher in Cinderella
The Nanny steps in as the Stepmother.
With her Queens honk and cartoon expressions, Drescher would seem difficult to cast onstage; did you catch her as a vengeful professor in Neil LaBute’s Some Girl(s) in 2006? But taking over for Harriet Harris as Cindy’s social-climbing monster of a stepmother may be just the ticket. —Jesse Green
Broadway Theatre, through April 13.
Art
3. See I.D. Photo Badge Portraiture
Check your cynicism at the door.
A subgenre of a subgenre of portraiture, these company badges are akin to passport pictures and mug shots. Hundreds of them lined up in a gallery, however, turn into a major wallop of vernacular power. I fell in love with a young naval nurse from the Great Lakes, considered whether the hunk who worked for Robbins & Myers could have been another Cary Grant, and wondered if the guy from Bethlehem Steel ever killed anyone. —Jerry Saltz
Ricco/Maresca Gallery, through February 15.
Pop Music
4. Hear 2 Chainz
No lie.
The current holder of rap’s Most Prolific title—the guy who seems to turn up as a guest on everyone’s album, sometimes in multiple songs—is also rap’s funniest and silliest and most charming. Watch out for flying punch lines! —Jody Rosen
Roseland Ballroom, February 5.
TV
5. Watch The Real Housewives of Atlanta
Any more fisticuffs and it’d be on pay-per-view.
This season is full of relentless get-togethers, but last week’s episode ended with a fight! An actual fight! And the person who got popped in the face is not the person who should have been popped in the face! On February 9, we’re in for round two.
Bravo, Sundays, 8 p.m.
TV
6. And Then Clear Your Head With Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth
Whew.
This American Masters episode traces the Pulitzer winner’s life from child of a sharecropper through the publication of The Color Purple. It glosses over Walker’s praise for the conspiracy theorist David Icke, but it does get into her activism and her estrangement from her daughter. —M.Z.S.
PBS, February 7.
Movies
7. Rewatch Amy Adams in American Hustle
A Best Actress who’s funny? Unheard of!
I never crusade against actors, especially ones I like, but Cate Blanchett’s lock on Best Actress for Blue Jasmine could stand loosening. It’s High Acting—totally artificial—under the helm of a director (Woody Allen) who’s borrowing the structure of A Streetcar Named Desire but with contempt for his protagonist instead of empathy. Why not recognize a comic performance by an actress with gumption, style to burn, and a way of seizing the moment that makes her co-stars stand at attention? —David Edelstein
In theaters now.
Opera
8. See Prince Igor
Ninety-seven years in the making.
They don’t make operas like this anymore: four hours of clashing armies, national dances, tormented sovereigns, massed choruses, and postapocalyptic ruins. They don’t perform them much, either: Borodin’s epic was last seen at the Met during World War I. —Justin Davidson
Metropolitan Opera, opening February 6.
Dance/Movies
9. See Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq
Ballerina, interrupted.
Muse to Robbins and Balanchine, and the latter’s last wife, Tanaquil Le Clercq was the original great Balanchine ballerina—then caught polio at 27 and never performed again. A profound look at her career and what happened when the dancing stopped. —Rebecca Milzoff
Film Society of Lincoln Center, February 5 through 25.
Dance/Theater/Art
10. See 4Chambers
Cupid’s target.
If you’re not in love when you enter this immersive experience choreographed by Jody Oberfelder, you may be as you leave. Dancer “docents” take participants through the work, and through movement and video you’ll explore yourself and your guide. You may also admit aloud some truths about yourself (and that’s all we’ll say about that).
Through March 22; details at jodyoberfelder.com.
Pop Music
11. Hear Kid Sister
Never quite grew up.
This Chicago rapper is a former Kanye West protégée who, briefly, around 2009, seemed like the Next Big Thing. She wasn’t. But that means you get to take in her Missy Elliott–inspired sass and ebullience in the cozy confines of Glasslands. —J.R.
Glasslands, February 12.
Dance
12. See A Place for Us
A duet in more ways than one.
Tiler Peck and Robbie Fairchild are, literally, the sweethearts of the ballet world right now—rising stars who are also about to be married. Christopher Wheeldon’s intricate duet, set to music for piano and clarinet by André Previn and Leonard Bernstein, is the ideal showcase for their electric, natural stage chemistry. —R.M.
New York City Ballet, February 7.
Opera
13. See Billy Budd
Great Britten.
You know how fireworks shows taper off and then go wild in one last dazzling display? The Glyndebourne production’s arrival is the explosive coda to last year’s Benjamin Britten centennial. —J.D.
Brooklyn Academy of Music, February 7 through 13.
Movies
14. See Vengeance Is Hers
The eternal Wronged Woman saga.
This BAMcinématek series profiling women who kick ass, metaphorically and otherwise, blasts off with Pasolini’s Medea and a new restoration of Abel Ferrara’s pistol-packin’ grindhouse classic Ms. 45. Men can feel a disturbing tingle at the feminist watershed Jeanne Dielman, Coffy, and even an adaptation of the would-be Warhol assassin Valerie Solanas’s “S.C.U.M. Manifesto.” —D.E.
BAMcinématek, February 7 through 18; full schedule at bam.org.
Classical Music
15. Hear Jennifer Koh
Bach and re-Bach.
There are few more intimate musical experiences than hearing an unaccompanied violinist play Bach. Koh walks the audience into another sound world, pairing the D-minor Partita with a new work it inspired: Kaija Saariaho’s Frises, for violin and electronics. —J.D.
Miller Theatre, February 6.
TV
16. Watch The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles
You know you should be glad.
CBS pays tribute to the band’s breakthrough Ed Sullivan Show 50 years ago (see this slideshow) with a tribute concert taped on January 27. The lineup includes Stevie Wonder, Katy Perry, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, Keith Urban, and John Legend—plus Paul and Ringo. —M.Z.S.
CBS, February 9.
Dance
17. See Royal New Zealand Ballet
A homecoming.
Ethan Stiefel, who left ABT to run this troupe on the other side of the world, comes back with a forward-looking program by Benjamin Millepied, Venezuelan choreographer Javier De Frutos, and Andrew Simmons. —R.M.
Joyce Theater, February 12 through 16.
Movies
18. See Alphaville
Nouvelle vague anew.
Godard never worked so explicitly with an established form—in this case, gumshoe film noir and dystopian sci-fi—as in this bleak 1965 portrait of a future rooted in a depersonalized here-and-now. Eddie Constantine repeats the role of hard-drinking P.I. Lemmy Caution, here dispatched to search for a missing agent (Akim Tamiroff) and finding, instead … The ellipses give you the vibe. —D.E.
Film Forum, February 7 through 13.
Books
19. Hear Rebecca Mead and Friends
Three smart women, one event.
Park Slope’s favorite indie bookstore hosts Mead to talk about My Life in Middlemarch, her new not-quite-memoir about Eliot’s masterpiece and how it helped her make sense of her own life. She’ll be joined by Heroines author Kate Zambreno and New York’s Kathryn Schulz.
Community Bookstore, February 13.
Pop Music
20. Hear The Soul Rebels
NOLA band in NYC.
An insanely fun New Orleans brass band that’s a great option for singles who want to have a dance party and forget about Valentine’s Day.
Brooklyn Bowl, February 14 and 15.
TV
21. Watch The Fosters
Yes, they’re a foster family. And yes, their name is Foster.
On a network known for the flashy, soapy Pretty Little Liars, this is the meaty little drama that could. Sherri Saum and Teri Polo star as the interracial lesbian couple raising biological, adopted, and foster kids, all of whom face teen or tween crises. Callie (Maia Mitchell) is living in a group home after her arrest, and this week it’s “family day,” the first time she’s allowed to see the Fosters. Rosie O’Donnell plays the head of the home, in case this didn’t sound crunchy enough.
ABC Family, Mondays, 9 p.m.
Books
22. Attend The Night We Called It a Day
Free party for readers.
Bookforum, my favorite literary magazine that not enough people are reading, is lately doubling as my favorite literary magazine sponsoring fabulous events. It’ll host this reading by David Byrne, Rivka Galchen, Zadie Smith, and more at the New Museum. —Kathryn Schulz
New Museum, February 12.
Pop Music
23. Listen to Slow Phaser
Sing it.
Nicole Atkins has a smoky alto that’s gritty one minute, slinky the next. Though her theatrical croon and taste for fifties beats have earned comparisons to Roy Orbison, on Slow Phaser she more brings to mind Sheryl Crow’s bluesy good old days—a smart girl troubadour with the slyest observations on human nature in the room.
Oh’Mercy! Records.
Puppies!
24. See the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show
Plus an extra event.
The American institution gets an addition worth investigating: the Masters Agility Championship at Westminster, essentially a mini-steeplechase for pups. It’s Westminster’s first event in well over a century that is open to non-purebreds, too, so start training Spot for next year.—J.G.
Madison Square Garden and Piers 92 and 94, February 10 and 11; Agility Competition, Pier 94, February 8.
Books
25. Read A Place in the Country
Rediscovering Sebald.
The writer Teju Cole once said something beautiful to me about W. G. Sebald: that his books somehow seem to have always been posthumous. Now we have a genuinely posthumous one—a collection of essays about writers and artists central to his literary imagination. I was familiar with only one of them, which made reading the book like going for a walk with a beautifully talented, deeply passionate novelist from Mars. —K.S.
Random House, February 11.