Best-bets for Oct. 12: A double day for Justina

1) “One Day at a Time” season-opener, 9 and 9:30 p.m., CBS. For nine years this was a typical CBS comedy– smart, funny and produced by Norman Lear. Rebooted with a Latina cast and with Lear (now 98) still producing, it ran three seasons on Netflix and six episodes (before a COVID shutdown) on Pop. Now the Pop six spend three Mondays on CBS. Tonight’s first episode (shown here), with Ray Romano as a census-taker, is clever; the second is OK, but suffers from broad jokes and brash supporting characters. Read more…

1) “One Day at a Time” season-opener, 9 and 9:30 p.m., CBS. For nine years this was a typical CBS comedy– smart, funny and produced by Norman Lear. Rebooted with a Latina cast and with Lear (now 98) still producing, it ran three seasons on Netflix and six episodes (before a COVID shutdown) on Pop. Now the Pop six spend three Mondays on CBS. Tonight’s first episode (shown here), with Ray Romano as a census-taker, is clever; the second is OK, but suffers from broad jokes and brash supporting characters.

2) “Dancing With the Stars,” 8-10 p.m., ABC. Justina Machado is competing with herself now. She stars in “One Day” and is one of the leaders here. So far, her average score trails only two other celebrities, both from reality shows – Kaitlyn Bristowe of “Bachelorette” and Nev Schulman of “Catfish.” At the other end, Charles Oakley, Carole Baskin and Anne Heche have been ousted.

3) Baseball. We’re now one step away from the World Series. The American League games, on TBS, started Sunday; the National League ones start today on either Fox or its cable channel, Fox Sports1. Chances are, Fox will take today’s opener and the sixth game (if needed) Saturday. Then the network – which needs a boost from sports – gets the entire World Series, starting next Tuesday, Oct. 20.

4) “Mystery Road,” any time, www.acorn.tv. For two movies and two six-episode mini-series, Australian viewers have followed Jay Swan, a homicide detective who sometimes faces biases because of his indigenous roots. This is the second mini-series (two hours today, then one per week), with a grisly murder in a town where the locals are already battling a Swedish archaelogist. But it’s the sort of slow-moving tale that spends lots of time seeing people driving, parking and walking out of cars.

5) Also: “Soulmates” (10 p.m., AMC) has a beautifully crafted hour, with David Costabile (“Billions”) as a professor encountering temptation. “POV” (10 p.m., PBS) has a Kenyan activist trying to run a clean campaign against corrupt politicians. And “The Book Makers” ranges from authors and artists to people making books in traditional ways or in innovative, three-dimensional ways. Beginning today, it’s on pbs.org and some PBS station; on Oct. 27, it reaches the PBS World digital channel.

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