1) “Saturday Night Live,” 11:29 p.m., NBC. Fresh from her Emmy triumphs, Phoebe Waller-Bridge hosted the season’s second “SNL.” She had some great sketches – including a gem (shown here) involving wartime letters – and had Taylor Swift as the music guest. It added up to one of the year’s best “SNL” episodes … a neat follow-up to winning three Emmys as the “Fleabag” writer-producer-star. Read more…
1) Juneteenth” programs, ABC, FX, FXX and FXM. There’s fresh interested in Juneteenth, marking the day (June 19, 1865) Texas slaves finally learned they were free. At 8 p.m., ABC News has a special, looking at the history and at current celebrations. Also, the FX channels have replaced their schedules with a simulcast of movies (“Hidden Figures” at 7 a.m., “Selma” at 10 a.m., “Get Out” latenight at 12:47 and 3:17 a.m.) and TV reruns – “Black-ish” from 1-8 p.m., “Atlanta” from 8 p.m. to 12:47 a.m. Read more…
1) “In the Dark,” 9 p.m., CW. Occasionally – not often– an OK show turns terrific. That’s happened in the second season of this story. Previously (shown here) Murphy, who is blind, was almost caught slipping drugs to her ex-boyfriend Mas in . When her ex-boyfriend Max in prison. Now forces converge – Max … a crooked cop … an almost-honest cop … Nia and Josiah, the competing drug lords … Jess, the ex-friend … Ben, the druggie employee. The first seven minutes and the final minute are sensational; the rest is very good. Read more…
1) “Agents of SHIELD” (shown here), 10 p.m., ABC. In its seventh and final season. “SHIELD” keeps changing decades … and maybe changing genres Tonight, ABC implies, will be in the “film noir” style. Dumped into 1955, the team realizes that date is key to SHIELD history. The animated “Toy Story 3” (2010) precedes this at 8 p.m. Read more…
1) “One Day at a Time,” 6:30-10 p.m., Pop. Here’s the entire season – what there was, before the virus shutdown – plus a bonus, a new episode via animation. First, the reruns: They start with a very clever bit, with Ray Romano as a census-taker, explaining the characters to new viewers. Then “One Day” (shown here) settles into being a fairly good (albeit too broad) comedy, The new episode is at 9:30 p.m. (simulcast on TV Land) and reruns at 12:30 a.m. Guest stars include Lin-Manuel Miranda and Gloria Estefan. Read more…
1) “Barkskins” finale (shown here), 9-11:03 p.m. ET, National Geographic, rerunning at 12:03 a.m. Brutal and bitter, this eight-hour mini-series will leave everyone with mixed emotions. Annie Proulx’s story of the 17th-century American frontier has a rich blend of characters, with little in common except intense cynicism. Now Cooke leads a mission to retrieve bodies … while claiming he doesn’t have the coveted pistols. Trepagny plans a wedding, while his housekeeper (and ex-lover) broods. Things explode powerfully. Read more…
1) “Grantchester” season-opener, 9 p.m., PBS. Like most English villages, it seems, Grantchester has pleasant people, idyllic settings … and lots of murder. Fortunately, it also has a crimesolving vicar and his weary friend the cop. Their domain includes Cambridge University, where tonight they visit parties (shown here) and find beautiful students keeping ugly secrets. The whole thing gets solved quite easily, giving the show more time to work on lots of character details. The result is fairly entertaining, in a quietly classy way. Read more…
1) “The Last Dance,” 8 and 9 p.m., ABC. This acclaimed documentary series (originally on ESPN) concludes next week, with Michael Jordan (shown here) and the Chicago Bulls going for their final championship. First, this detour: At 30, Jordan found his life overloaded – three straight championships, the Olympics, gambling accusations and the murder of his father. He played minor-league baseball, quit basketball for a year-and-a-half … then returned to try to save the Bulls’ season. Read more…
1) “Prideland” and “The Lavender Scare,” 9 and 10 p.m., PBS (check local listings). Here’s a reverse time machine, showing us attitudes toward gays, present and past. First, Dyllon Burnside (“Pose”) journeys through his native South — he’s shown here in Texas — and finds a get-along mood. The early segments are bland, but then a church-school teacher in Mississippi passionately recalls her adjustment to learning her sons are gay. Contrast that with “Lavender,” a chilling account of an era when the federal government fired all gays. Read more…
1) “Man With a Plan” series finale, 8:31 p.m., CBS. When Matt LeBlanc’s “Friends” ended its 10-year run, it was a big deal, a time for mourning. When his “Plan” ends a four-year run … it’s sorta worth noting. This is an adequate comedy, with LeBlanc in the cliched role of a semi-bumbling husband and dad. Tonight, he plans to surprise his wife (Liza Snyder, they’re shown here in a previous episode) on their 20th anniversary, re-creating their honeymoon. Read more…
