What to Watch on Sunday: Highlights of Discovery’s Shark Week 2021
Shark Week - Shark Week 2021 (not to be confused with SharkFest over on National Geographic) starts today and runs through July 17, and has special programming featuring Tiffany Haddish, William Shatner, Brad Paisley, the cast of “Jackass” and of course, dozens of expert marine biologists.
Typically, the shows will premiere on Discovery and are then available the next day on discovery+ streaming service, but there are a few shows that are exclusive to discovery+.
Scroll down for some non-Shark Week TV recommendations.
Shark Week 2021 Highlights
Here some of the highlights of this year’s Shark Week, but be sure to check the Shark Week page and the Discovery schedule for all shows.
JULY 11: Tiffany Haddish Does Shark Week (9 p.m.) - Tiffany Haddish and friends travel to the crystal blue waters to dive into something they’ve never done before -- swim with sharks. Knowing nothing about sharks, Haddish will meet up with the world’s top shark experts to learn everything there is to know about the ocean’s top predators.
JULY 11: Jackass Shark Week (10 p.m.) - Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Wee Man are back after a 10-year hiatus to complete their Jackass voyage. At the top of the agenda is a Shark Week in which they’re donating their bodies, pride and common sense to all in the name of shark science. They have enlisted the help of new Jackass cast members, Poopies, Jasper, and Dark Shark to dial up a series of shark stunts and pranks that will test their bravery, stupidity and thresholds of pain.
JULY 11-15: Josh Gates Tonight (11 p.m.) - For the first five nights of Shark Week, Josh Gates talks sharks and more with some familiar faces from Shark Week and beyond.
JULY 12: Expedition Unknown: Shark Trek (10 p.m.) - Josh Gates links up with his childhood hero, William Shatner, to boldly go where Shark Week has never gone before. The mission: enter shark-infested waters to understand the nature of fear and come face to face with an apex predator. This is Shark Trek.
JULY 13: Brad Paisley’s Shark Country (9 p.m.) - Country star Brad Paisley and comedian JB Smoove meet in the Bahamas to attract new fans: sharks. With Dr. Austin Gallagher’s help, they put Brad’s musical talents to the test in shark-infested waters to see how sound can attract or repel sharks
JULY 14: The Real Sharknado (9 p.m.) - We have all seen the movies, bloodthirsty sharks jumping into boats, circling in tornados and risking their own lives in hopes of attacking humans. Could any of these larger than life feasts of sharks actually happen? Ian Zehring and Tara Reid pick up their chainsaws once again to see if a real sharknado could actually happen.
JULY 14: Return to the Lair of the Great White (10 p.m.) - Dr. Craig O’Connell and Marc Payne return to where they unexpectedly filmed a juvenile great white during a past mission. Believing there’s a nursery nearby, they follow the trail to a discovery that could change everything we know about great whites.
JULY 16: Ninja Sharks 2: Mutants Rising (8 p.m.) - In the icy waters of Alaska, off populated beaches of New York, and lurking in ghostly shipwrecks off the coast of North Carolina, scientists have discovered three sharks that have developed unique and deadly ninja skills.
JULY 17: I Was Prey: Shark Week 2021 (10 p.m.) - This show recounts two horrific shark attacks told by the survivors who overcame life and death circumstances to tell their stories.
NOTE: If you need even more than Shark Week and SharkFest can offer, streaming service Magellan TV is making four feature-length shark documentaries free this.
Other great TV picks
The White Lotus (9 p.m., HBO) - From Mike White, this six-episode limited series is a social satire set at an exclusive Hawaiian resort, and stars Connie Britton, Jennifer Coolidge, Alexandra Daddario, Jake Lacy, Steve Zahn and others. The series follows the vacations of various hotel guests over the span of a week as they relax and rejuvenate in paradise. But with each passing day, a darker complexity emerges in the picture-perfect travelers, the hotel’s cheerful employees and the idyllic locale itself. Recurring guest stars include: Molly Shannon and Lukas Gage.
Unforgotten (9 p.m., PBS NC) - The fourth season of this Masterpiece series starts with Cassie and Sunny investigating a cold case with alarming links to the police force. After a dismembered corpse is found in a scrapyard, four suspects emerge, and all four participated in the same police training course back in 1989.
Professor T (10 p.m., PBS NC) - This new series, based on a popular Belgian series of the same name, follows Professor Jasper Tempest, who is obsessed with cleanliness, structure and order (hello, “Monk”). But his genius for solving crimes means he constantly has to get his hands dirty, helping the police to crack their most difficult cases. In tonight’s premiere, a police detective persuades Professor T to help her investigate a serial rapist.
Some programming descriptions are provided by networks.
