Best-bets for April 15: Feel-good dancers, feel-bad cops

1) “Come Dance With Me” debut, 8-10 p.m., CBS. An OK dance competition gets buried in a sea of feel-good excess. Kids who are serious dancers – prizewinners, maybe professionals – team with parents who aren’t (shown here). The performances are quite good; after all, half the dancers are talented and they’re give excellent costumes, choreography, music and lighting. But “Come Dance” pushes too hard; it feels forced, surrounding acts with emotion and praise. Read more…

1) “Come Dance With Me” debut, 8-10 p.m., CBS. An OK dance competition gets buried in a sea of feel-good excess. Kids who are serious dancers – prizewinners, maybe professionals – team with parents who aren’t (shown here). The performances are quite good; after all, half the dancers are talented and they’re give excellent costumes, choreography, music and lighting. But “Come Dance” pushes too hard; it feels forced, surrounding acts with emotion and praise.

2) “Blue Bloods,” 10 p.m., CBS. Two weeks from now, life will be back to normal, with new episodes of “Magnum P.I.” and “Blue Bloods.” Until then, however, it’s two hours of “Dance,” followed by a “Blue Bloods” rerun. Tonight, Jamie helps his sister, the assistant district attorney, investigate a bar that’s a favorite of cops and firefighters. Also, their brother probes a murder at a prestigious school.

3) “Now Hear This,” 9 p.m., PBS. As a couple repaired an old house in small-town Illinois, there was a remarkable discovery –a huge quantity of compositions by Florence Price. Those had been considered lost; they were found in 2009, more than a half-century after she died at 66. Now Scott Yoo views the life of Price — the first African-American woman to be a well-known classical composer–  and plays her music. Price, who moved from Arkansas to Chicago at 40 , wrote 300 works, including four symphonies.

4) “The Call of the Wild” (2020), 8 and 10 p.m., FX. This Yukon classic has starred Clark Gable, Charlton Heston, Rutger Hauer and Rick Schroder. Now it’s Harrison Ford’s turn … but he worked opposite a dog created by special effects. The good news is that this let us get closer to Jack London’s novel, centering on the dog. The bad is that it gives “Wild” a distant, artificial feeling. Despite sweeping visuals and strong work from Ford, it has trouble gripping us.

5) ALSO: This is already a big streaming week, led (on Britbox) by Hugh Laurie’s witty mystery “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?” Others include Hulu’s “The Kardashians” and Netflix’s “Our Great National Parks.” Now comes more: Netflix has two six-episode series — the British “Anatomy of a Scandal” and Brazilian “Verdict” – plus a horror tale, “Choose or Die.” Apple TV+ has a new anthology series, something it’s good at; “Roar” has eight stories about women in modern crises.

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