1) “Patience,” 8 p.m. PBS. After a so-so start to its second season, this show finally has the sort of smart hour that filled the first year. An autistic girl may have seen her father killed; Patience Evans, also autistic, struggles to help. It’s a neatly complex story and a subtly perfect, Emmy-worthy performance by Ella Maisy Purvis (shown here) as Patience.
2) “Hammerhead Sharks Up Close,” 9 p.m., National Geographic. Bertie Gregory struggles to film the hammerheads, a dwindling bunch. It takes a long time to find them, which is fine with us: Along the way, we get gorgeous undersea footage, plus proof that Mexico’s preservation plans are working.
3) More sharks. This is opening day of National Geographic’s “Sharkfest.” Most days, there are new films from 9-11 p.m. — (at 10 today is “World’s Biggest Sharks”) — and reruns the rest of the time. Adding to our pleasure (or discomfort), AMC has Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” (1975) at 6 p.m. today.
4) Sports. Yes, soccer is still gobbling up TV time; today’s World Cup games are at 4 and 8 p.m. ET on Fox. But baseball tries to remind us that it is (or was) the national pastime. Today, Peacock has all 15 games; two are also on NBC — Mets-Braves at 12:30 p.m. and Padres-Dodgers at 7:20.
5) “The Vampire Lestat,” 9 p.m., AMC, rerunning at 10:15. This episode veers wildly in time. We see Lestat plodding ahead with his rock album nowadays … and as a reluctant crypt-keeper, centuries ago. We see Louis with Claudia (briefly) long ago and with a Claudia lookalike now. It’s all quite bizarre, but comes together powerfully in the final minutes.
— Mike Hughes, TV America