SERIES PREMIERE: Today on CBS All Access, that streaming subscription service presents the first episodes of The Twilight Zone, the new version of the classic Rod Serling anthology series from 60 years ago. The new Zone is hosted by Jordan Peele, who is one of its executive producers – and for my review of the new Twilight Zone on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, visit the Fresh Air website and for the review on TVWW, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower. Meanwhile, it’s not at all surprising, on the same calendar day that this new Zone launches, that I can write about a rival series premiering the same day on a rival streaming service. As a comic counterpart to the new Twilight Zone, Hulu presents its own anthology series, Tales of the Expected. Some of the stories summarized in press materials for the opening season include people getting ready to go to work, doing the bills, and being visited by relatives. But today’s opener has a Twilight Zone feel, and twist, even while the blind auditions are over. Which marching towards an “expected ending” in “Send in the Clones,” a New York art curator mounts a show about the history of television, acquires a loan of Rod Serling’s typewriter, and puts it on display to the delight of museum attendees. But after hours, an unsuccessful screenwriter friend of the curator’s takes advantage of after-hours access to swab DNA samples from the typewriter and, from a scientist friend, clones a replica of Rod Serling, who begins cranking out brilliant new scripts almost immediately. That’s the Twilight Zone part. The Tales of the Expected part is that, when the screenwriter takes these new Serling scripts to the networks, passing them off as his own, the networks uniformly reject them.

SPECIAL PREMIERE: Once again, TV proves, as Fred Allen once observed, that imitation is the sincerest form of television. Because Masked Singer was such an instant success for Fox, the competition noticed just as instantly. And ABC, which ushered in the whole celebrity-competition genre in the 1970s with its tacky Battle of the Network Stars celebrity “track meets,” revives the concept and adds a hidden costumed aspect. Which is brilliant, in a way, because this way, viewers have to wait until competitors are unmasked to discover they weren’t really such big names in the first place. This time, watch Peacock do the 50-yard-dash, and Bee do the high jump…

SNEAK PREVIEW: This idea originated during the most recent TV writers’ strike, but was shelved when the strike ended earlier than some had predicted. Only now, with a potential strike on the agency side of the business, the concept is being revived, with contracts signed hastily before any strike may be called. The idea is to take existing, already written scripts from classic TV episodes, and have them enacted by today’s performers in doubleheader specials: first the originals, then the remakes. The sneak preview pilot episode filmed for Rerun Theatre, to demonstrate its potential, is the I Love Lucy episode “Lucy Does a TV Commercial,” the hilarious one in which she hawks an alcohol-laden tonic called Vitameatavegamin. After seeing that 1950s original, starring Lucille Ball, we see the brand-new 2019 version, starring Gillian Anderson (pictured) as Lucy. Also planned, if the strike occurs and this series continues, are Paul Giamatti in Peter Falk’s classic role of Columbo, and old pals Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon teaming to co-host and recreate an episode of the 1960s variety show classic, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, as Tom and Dick Smothers, respectively. And it’s worth noting, by the way, that April 3-4, in a very few days, marks the golden anniversary of the firing of the Smothers Brothers by CBS. All of today’s topical comedy programs owe them quite a debt, even 50 years on.

SERIES PREMIERE: Since ABC took over American Idol from Fox, it’s no surprise it’d find ways to spread the wealth – or, at least, dilute the product. Beginning tonight, ABC not only continues with the new season of American Idol, but presents the newly mounted version from the former U.S.S.R.  Why should American voters care about watching a show in which the most popular Russian singers are voted on by judges and voters? Because this time, by participating in the global voting, we get to meddle in their elections.

SPECIAL: In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt conducted the first of a series of what he called “fireside chats.” They were informal conversations to the American people, broadcast by radio, allowing the President to speak to his citizens directly. Presidential Fireside Tweets is the first in a series of planned weekly specials collecting and commenting upon President Donald Trump’s most recent flurry of presidential tweets. And each tweet is dissected by a panel of talk-show guests: one Republican politician, one Democrat, one historian, one standup comic, and one guest celebrity.