Lola Versus starts with such promise: Lola (Greta Gerwig), on the beach, engaging in morning yoga while through voiceover informing us about life and the changes on the horizon. In particular, she alerts us to the fact that she (like most of us) is not good with change.  

With issues surrounding fracking, natural gas and oil dominating headlines recently, Josh Fox’s 2010 Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning documentary Gasland seems all too relevant. The film is two years old, but the stories presented in the film are now — more than ever — resonant with the people of Ohio.  

From writer/producer Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network, Moneyball) comes a new series about the people behind nightly cable news. The Newsroom (10 p.m. Sundays, HBO) follows journalist Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) and his journey from fair-and-balanced News Night anchor to cable rebel after a revealing and potentially career-ending public outburst in which he shares his opinions about news and politics.   

I’m sure that at some point during last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, some outlet in the world referred to Tanya Wexler’s Hysteria, which humorously probes into the birth of the vibrator, as “a feel-good” story, so I will shamelessly insert my own play on this idea. I must, because the premise simply demands this kooky kind of lowball take.   

HBO’s Documentary Films Summer Series presents a different intriguing, timely film each Monday through July 30. The series covers a vast array of topics, from social issues to pop culture, each with a unique perspective. First up is One Nation Under Dog: Stories of Fear, Loss and Betrayal (9 p.m. Monday), a three-part documentary that sheds light on America’s complicated relationship with canines.  

In a remote Lebanese village (hard to believe that such out-of-the-way places actually exist), Christians and Muslims live together, side by side, working and entertaining themselves as a community that is as close as family. Boys being boys joke and cross lines that are familiar to both sides, the men drink and eye women — although there is a sense of respect and honor truly from another time.   

A few seconds of True Blood’s opening credits (set to Jace Everett’s “Bad Things”) are all it takes to set the mood and excite audiences of the intoxicating vampire drama, which returns for a fifth season Sunday (9 p.m., HBO). With flashes of alternating sexual and religious, gritty, Southern-fried, swampy images, this intro perfectly encapsulates what fans love about the show without even mentioning vampires.  

Pulp — there it is again — the good cheap stuff is back and, not surprisingly, it has found its way onto the big screen. Jo Nesbø, the Norwegian bestseller trawling these murky shores, provides the basis for a solid anchoring with Headhunters.   

Comedy Central’s Workaholics (10:30 p.m. Tuesdays) might not be ground-breaking, but the stoner comedy will expand your vocabulary, or at least make you feel better about your crappy job.
  

I have a question for Greta Gerwig, the odd naturalistic beauty who has bounded out of the Mumblecore underworld into the bright and glaring lights of mainstream attention, while still skipping back and forth across the great divide.   

HBO’s latest television film follows the professional and romantic journey of literary great Ernest Hemingway and legendary journalist Martha Gellhorn. Starring Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman as the title characters, Hemingway & Gellhorn is on at 9 p.m. on Mondays.
  

Based on Deborah Moggach’s novel These Foolish Things, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel imagines a final adventure for a group of English men and women — one last hurrah where they can get away from the familiar day-to-day they’ve come to know all too well, or their busy families caught up in living in the digital now, which in some cases is hopelessly unknowable to their elders.   

Ever since the days of Stick Stickly (Nickelodeon’s popsicle stick seasonal host of the ’90s), I’ve loved me some summer television. When you get burnt out on bikinis and barbeques, crank up the AC, crack open a beer and check out these summer shows.   

Sometimes a film event comes along that is so special, we owe it to our readers to present the review in a form fitting the auspicious nature of the release. That is certainly the case with Rave Theater’s regional screenings of Yellow Submarine, a classic that will unspool, likely for the last time, in theaters.  

The ignorant, beer-bellied McDonald’s masticator: It’s a punchline of American society. But the fact that nearly 70 percent of American adults are overweight or obese is not a joke — and the makers of The Weight of the Nation (8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, HBO) show that it’s more detrimental to our country than many believe.