1) New Christmas movies, 8 p.m. Hallmark and 8 p.m. ET, Great American Family. Yes, Christmas films … six days before Halloween. Both channels rerun previous ones all ay, then have a new one. For “GAF,” it’s “A Royal Icing Christmas.” For Hallmark, “Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper” has a weatherman (Robert Buckley, shown here) return home, where (surprise?) he sees his former teen crush. Read more…
1) “Boston Blue,” 10 p.m., CBS. With his son (a Boston cop) out of the hospital, Danny Donnie Wahlberg, shown here with Gloria Reuben and Sonequa Martin-Green) plans to return to New York soon. Then a murder case drops in front of him … literally. This hour reflects the show’s strengths — good characters, twisty story, action — and a flaw: With so many regulars, it tries to include everyone; that requires a clumsy plot detour. Read more…
Big things seem to happen in Ryan Kiera Armstrong’s shows.
She kicks people, shoots people, sets them on fire. She kills and is killed. Also, she plays the violin.
For someone who’s only 15, she’s been busy. But in “The Lowdown,” she has an opposite experience.
The show (on Hulu and 9 p.m. Tuesdays on FX) stars Ethan Hawke as a Lee, a writer who is brash, booming and a bit foolhardy; Armstrong (shown here) plays his daughter Francis, watching and absorbing and, on occasion, salvaging. “You have to be the counterbalance,” she said. Read more…
1) “Elsbeth,” 10 p.m., CBS. As a young widow, Raquel (Julia Fox, shown here) finds fame and fortune as a “grief influencer.” Things seem fine … until her husband turns out to be alive. It’s a clever hour, following a “Matlock” in which Matty and Olympia — once friends, now foes — must combine when the law firm probes its security breach. Read more…
1) “Anyone But You” (2023), 8 p.m., FX, rerunning at 10. Here’s a romantic comedy that gets it all right — clever plot (borrowing from Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing”), sharp direction and skilled stars (Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney, shown here). They have a great meet-cute and an arbitrary break-up, then keep bickering back toward love. Read more…
“Saturday Night Live” will have a lot of first-timers in November.
It will be the first time hosting for Nikki Glaser (shown here) and Glen Powell and the first time as music guests for Sombr and Olivia Dean.
The season started with three new episodes, pauses for a rerun Oct. 25, then has another string of three new ones. Coming up (11:30 p.m. on NBC) are: Read more…
1) “Doc,” 9 p.m., Fox. Yes, TV is stuffed with Ozempic ads, forever hinting at weight-loss benefits. But here’s a smart and neatly calibrated story: One doctor hates the notion of eagerly prescribing these pills; another (Amy, shown here in a previous episode) is hesitant. Alongside that, we see patients at opposite extremes. There’s another good patient story and some so-so doctor ones Read more…
1) “DMV” (shown here in a different episode), 8:30 p.m., CBS. This episode, like last week’s debut, is fast and fun. On a scorching day (shown here), these Department of Motor Vehicles workers are banned from touching the air-conditioning. Naturally, Colette obsesses on it … and on making sure the cute guy doesn’t quit. Read more…
Bright and bouncy, “The Brady Bunch” just wanted to have fun.
It had cute kids, pretty parents and lots of sight gags. So what was it like making the show?
Rough, Lloyd Schwartz says in “TV We Love,” at 8 p.m. Monday (Oct. 20) on CW. Robert Reed (shown here, alongside his TV wife Florence Henderson and two of their daughters) “fought constantly” about scripts.
Reed — who died of cancer in 1992, at 59 — was outspoken about his anger, especially toward the “Brady” creator.
“It was a well-known fact in Hollywood that Sherwood Schwartz was absolutely the worst writer working in television,” he once said. “But that all changed one day (with) one writer who was even worse. It was Lloyd, Sherwood’s son.” Read more…
1) “The Simpsons,” 8 p.m., Fox. The 36th Halloween special arrives, a tad early. It’s sometimes funny, sometimes way too violent, but always with sharp satire. One portion points to the quality kids’ shows that have ended. Others view our obsession with greasy food and with plastic (shown here). Homer fighting lard or turning into plastic? It’s both ominous and entertaining. Read more…
