Month: June 2021

Best-bets for July 2: ongoing impact of Lear, Selleck

1) “America Masters: Norman Lear,” 9-10:30 p.m., PBS. It was a hard-scrabble start for Lear (shown here): His dad, full of dreams and schemes, spent three years in prison for selling phony stocks; Lear left college to fight in World War II, worked as a publicist … then did TV comedy. Two networks balked at “All in the Family,” but it became No. 1 for five straight years. At one point, Lear had five shows in the top nine, while nudging TV into topical turf. This excellent rerun profiles a strong talent who’s now 98. Read more…

Best-bets for July 1: “Good Girls,” double-Janney, quadruple-Elvis

1) “Good Girls,” 9 p.m. NBC. This won’t be back next year, but we can catch new episodes on the next four Thursdays. Desperate to dump their counterfeit cash, the women lost it all in Las Vegas. They were delighted; Rio, the gang leader who leads the counterfeit scheme, wasn’t. Now he takes a hostage; there are great moments for Mae Whitman (center) and Christina Hendricks (left), as Annie and her sister Beth. Read more…

On the Fourth, a world emerges festively

(This is an updated version of the previous 4th-of-July story, now including NBC and more of the performers.)
Sure, you could consider this year’s 4th-of-July mega-concert to be same-old, same-old.
After all, this is the 41st year for “A Capitol Fourth” on PBS …. and the 83rd year since July 4 became a paid federal holiday … and the 245th since the Declaration of Independence was signed.
But Ali Stroker, one of the performers, feels this time is different. “In the re-emerging, we have the option to make the world we’d like to have.”
She’s emerging from a year on pause. A Tony-winner (shown here on her winning night), she suddenly had no Broadway to audition for, fewer places to perform. “Singing in my bathroom, to my laptop, wasn’t necessarily prime conditions.” Read more…

Best-bets for June 30: “Bold” exit, bat expert

1) “The Bold Type” series finale, 10 p.m, Freeform. With smart characters and sleek visuals, this has seemed like the ideal show for Freeform’s young-adult target. At a magazine, three women became friends; Jane (right) writes, Sutton (center) designs, Kat (left) does tech. Now the network promises “big changes and hard decisions”; a brief sampling focuses on Jane: She bumps into Zach, whom she did a story on previously; also, she tries to nudge Kat into reviving the romance with Adina. Read more…

Best-bets for June 29: Cable goes big or goes quiet

1) “Motherland: Fort Salem,” 10 p.m., Freeform. Those first days of college can always seem rough – especially when this is War College (shown here) and everyone is a witch. Also, there’s a quick test that makes even an escape room seem easy. Complicating things: As they start classes, the friends still don’t know why, in a crucial moment, they were able to link explosively. It’s a good episode in an intriguing series. Read more…

“The Ice Road”: A bumpy ride through a frozen Hell

For fans of “Highway to Hell” and “Ice Road Truckers” and more reality, this all seems familiar.
Trucks get stuck in the snow, their wheels spinning … They teeter into a ditch … The ice buckles under them, preparing to dump them into the lake … Bikers zoom alongside, attacking the driver … And …
OK, maybe some of those don’t happen much in real life. That’s why we have fiction and Liam Neeson, whose movie characters keep having some very bad days.
His latest film is “The Ice Road” (shown here), which has just arrived on Netflix. It’s the worst nightmare of any driver’s ed instructor, times (approximately) a thousand. Read more…

Best-bets for June 28: Dating becomes a complex game

1) “Celebrity Dating Game,” 10 p.m., ABC. The “Dating Game” franchise has been around since 1965, but this is apparently a first for it – a contestant considering people from both genders. That’s Demi Burnett (shown here), whom viewers have seen dating a man (Colton Underwood) on “The Bachelor” and a woman (Kristian Haggerty) on “Bachelor in Paradise.” Now, answering her questions, will be both options. Read more…

The sharks are back — big, scary and maybe magnificent

Sharks are ready to consume our TV sets … again.
The 33rd Shark Week will be July 11-18 on Discovery and Discovery+. Spanning that and beyond is the eighth SharkFest, July 5-31 on National Geographic, Aug. 2-13 on Nat Geo Wild, and on Disney+.
Along the way, we’ll hear ominous things. A shark, one victim says, is “a submarine with teeth.” And it’s a big, fast one at that. “The first great white shark I saw was like a freight train,” said Valerie Taylor (shown here in the 1970s), who has spent generations surrounded by sharks.
But we’ll also hear actor Chris Hemsworth praise “the serene beauty of this magnificent creature.” Read more…

Best-bets for June 27: Great night for music, “Monday,” “Masterpiece”

1) BET Awards, 8-11:30 p.m., BET, MTV and VH1; BET also has a preview at 7 and a rerun at midnight. Taraji Henson hosts, Queen Latifah gets a lifetime award and there’s a barrage of performers. They included Andra Day (shown here in her Billie Holiday movies), H.E.R., DJ Khaled, City Girls, Migos and gospel’s Kirk Franklin. Others range from Lil Baby and Lil Durk to Roddy Ricch and Moneybagg Yo! They include Bree Runway, Tone Stith, Jazmine SuIlivan and Rapsody. Read more…

Week’s top-10 for June 28: a holiday’s flashy finale

1) “A Capitol Fourth” (shown here), 8 p.m. Sunday, PBS, rerunning at 9:30. This should be a festive night for a re-opening world, with performances spanning the country. It will be Alan Jackson in Nashville; Jennifer Nettles and Auli’i Cavalho in New York; Jimmy Buffett, Cynthia Erivo, Pentatonix and Train in California. In Washington, D.C., will be fireworks, plus the National Orchestra, Gladys Knight, Mickey Guyton, Jimmie Allen, Ali Stroker, Laura Osnes and (doing the National Anthem) Renee Fleming. Read more…