1) “Wynonna Earp” season-opener, 10 p.m., Syfy. Life gets complicated for Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano, shown here). Her great-great-grandfather Wyatt just had to face gunfighters; she’s supposed to hunt demons and dispatch them back to Hell. Last season, her half-sister Waverly was kidnapped. To find her, Wynonna must enter Eden on a stairway that’s magic and maybe invisible. There’s lots of dry humor and then a fierce demon battle. Read more…
The current hot-button issues – COVID, race and politics – will be faced in four new documentaries.
Freshly added is an ABC special Tuesday, looking at the evolution of the U.S. virus crisis and interviewing Drs. Anthony Fauci and Robert Redfield and others. That joins one documentary (Sunday) on race and two (Friday and Tuesday) viewing conspiracy theories of Alex Jones as they affect politics. Details, chronologically, are: Read more…
1) Basketball. Last week, baseball finally started; now basketball resumes, helping fill the shutdown void. It starts with doubleheaders, at 6:30 and 9 p.m. ET Thursday (TNT) and Friday (ESPN). Then ESPN tops that with four games Saturday, 1, 3:30, 6 and 8:30 p.m. ET. ABC takes over Sunday at 13:30 and 8:30 p.m. Sunday. The two league-leaders each reach TV twice: The Bucks ar 6:30 Friday (facing the Celtics) and 8:30 Sunday (Rockets); LeBron James (shown here) and the Lakers are 9 p.m. Thursday (Clippers) and 8:30 Saturday (Raptors). Read more…
1) Baseball, 1:05, 4:10 and 7:15 p.m. ET, Fox. It’s the first full day of the season, the first in which all 30 teams are scheduled. Fox – which desperately needs something new this summer – celebrates with a tripleheader. The Cubs (shown here with Anthony Rizzo and Kevin Bryant) host the Brewers at 1:05 p.m., the Dodgers host the Giants at 4:10 and then – with the teams that opened the season Thursday – the Nationals host the Yankees. Read more…
This has, apparently, been a fun pandemic. Online, anyway.
CBS’ second at-home videos special (8 p.m. Friday, July 24) does the same as the first, only more so. It has a dizzying collection of videos people created at home.
(Shown here is one family’s “Les Miserables” take-off.) Read more…
1) “Great Performances: She Loves Me,” 9 p.m., PBS. At work, these two battle and bicker; at home, each has an anonymous pen pal … unaware they’re writing to each other. Yes, that sounds familiar. The story has become three movies, a play and this musical … which reached Broadway three times. This is the third one – light comedy, vibrant music, Tony-winning set and Tony-nominated performances by Zachary Levi and Laura Benanti (they’re shown here) and Jane Krakowski. It starts a five-Friday stretch of theater reruns. Read more…
1) “Blindspot” series finale, 9 p.m., NBC. Jane Doe (and the world) have been teetering for two weeks. NBC scheduled the 100th and final episode for last Thursday, then delayed it a week. That left Jane (Jaimie Alexander, show here) – who has already lost her memories once — in a room with a ZIP bomb that saps all memories. The team has stopped the evil FBI chief, who promptly killed herself. But Ivy is still out there with more ZIPs. Remember when there were hardly any evil women on TV (or, maybe, in life)? Read more…
As TV networks’ fall plans sputter, there’s a counterpoint:
PBS still has big plans for the season. That includes concerts (including Lea Salonga, shown here, and Wynton Marsalis), dramas (including Hugh Laurie), politics (including general rage), nature and whimsy.
Well, not a lot of whimsy. (This is PBS, after all.) But it will air “History of Zombies” on the eve of Halloween and visit “Santa’s Wild Home” before Christmas; it will also have a jazz tribute to “Sesame Street,” visit tropical islands and board the queen’s plane. Read more…
1) “Corporate” (shown here) season-opener, 10:30 p.m., Comedy Central. Two delightful TV take-offs propel this half-hour. One is a sci-fi show that tries too hard, with sudden plot twists. The other is a kids’ cartoon that doesn’t try at all; it just keeps singing “pickles for breakfast.” Now that they own some TV shows, these fictional people try a corporate approach: Just survey viewers and give them what they want. It’s a flawed plan, they learn: Good TV is often much more – giving us what we didn’t know we wanted. Read more…
1) “World of Dance,” 10 p.m., NBC. “America’s Got Talent” is pausing for a “best of auditions” special from 8-10 p.m., but “Dance” booms ahead. This is the first half of its junior-division “duels,” including a classic mismatch — Savannah Manzel (shown here), 9, facing a large teen group. (You can guess who gets the focus and sympathy.) Other duels are more fair: The two callback survivors – The Young Cast and grvmnt – compete; MDC3 – with a terrific variation on a romantic triangle – faces Chibi Unity. Read more…
