Best-bets for Oct. 21: skate stars and a jazz great

1) “Ron Carter: Finding the Right Notes,” 9-11 p.m., PBS. Growing up near Detroit, in a house his dad built, Ron Carter mastered classical bass. Then Leopold Stokowski told him he wanted to add him to the Houston Symphony, but the board wouldn’t accept “a colored boy.” Carter promptly became a legendary jazzman – with Miles Davis and then with everyone. Guinness said he’s on an unmatched 2,221 recordings. Here’s a superb portrait of a great (shown here), now 85. Read more…

1) “Ron Carter: Finding the Right Notes,” 9-11 p.m., PBS. Growing up near Detroit, in a house his dad built, Ron Carter mastered classical bass. Then Leopold Stokowski told him he wanted to add him to the Houston Symphony, but the board wouldn’t accept “a colored boy.” Carter promptly became a legendary jazzman – with Miles Davis and then with everyone. Guinness said he’s on an unmatched 2,221 recordings. Here’s a superb portrait of a great (shown here), now 85.

2) Figure skating, 7:30 p.m., USA Network. Here’s the start of a flurry – events in seven countries in two months. (It would have been nine, but Russia and China were canceled.) That begins today in the U.S., with the the men and pairs. They’ll have their finals at 3 p.m. Saturday on NBC (rerunning at 8 on USA), along with rhythm dance and the women’s first round. At 2 p.m. Sunday, NBC has the finals for women and free dance, plus a closing show.

3) “SWAT,” 8 p.m., CBS. The team’s Thai adventures have finished now and there’s a crisis at home: Someone has stolen SWAT’s armored vehicle. Teaming with an FBI agent (Jessica Camacho of “All Rise”), the team must stop it from being used in a terrorist attack.

4) “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, Pop. Last Friday, Amazon wrapped the first season of the “Rings” prequel. Wisely, Pop fills the void by showing these epics, at 5 p.m. (2001), 9:20 p.m. (2002) and 1:35 a.m. (2003). They compete with the superstars of the DC Comics world: At 7 p.m., TNT has “Wonder Woman” (2017) and HBO has “The Batman” (2022).

5) Streaming. It’s been a strong week for streamers, starting on Monday (Acorn’s delightful “Doc Martin”) and Wednesday (Peacock’s Rosa Parks documentary and Netflix’s “The School for Good and Evil.” Today, Amazon Prime’s “The Peripheral” has Chloe Grace Moretz as a virtual-reality player teetering between real and virtual. Also, Prime has a Japanese version of its “Modern Love” anthology; Apple continues its ambitious “Shantaram.”

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