TCM, 6:00 a.m. ET
TCM has so many Humphrey Bogart movies on tap that it has no problem filling the day, as well as the night, with his films. So at 8 p.m. ET, to launch prime time, the network has a brilliant double feature. It’s a pairing of two movies featuring two very different boats, and two extremely different characters, both played by Bogart: the weathered, rumpled boatman of 1951’s The African Queen (pictured, with Katharine Hepburn), and the stiff, paranoid officer of 1954’s The Caine Mutiny. The Big Sleepat 2 p.m. ET, followed at 4 p.m. ET by 1948’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
CNN, 9:00 p.m. ET
Last week’s scheduled episode of The Movies, devoted to The Sixties, was pre-empted, and for a horrible reason: CNN’s breaking news coverage of last weekend’s tragic mass shootings. (It’s the shootings that were horrible, not the network’s coverage or programming decisions). CNN has rescheduled The Sixties for tonight, and I’ll be very relieved if we get to see it. Movies that ought to be covered in this installment include 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove and Lolita, as well as films directed by someone other by Stanley Kubrick. Films such as The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Cleopatra, Lawrence of Arabia, The Producers, Mary Poppins, Goldfinger, Barbarella, and A Hard Day’s Night.
HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET
SEASON PREMIERE: It’s interesting, and maybe even a little scary, that two of premium cable’s drama series tonight are built, tangentially or overtly, around the media and political reach and muscle of Rupert Murdoch. The Loudest Voice, on Showtime, features Murdoch as a recurring character in its story of Fox News and Roger Ailes – and tonight’s Season 2 premiere of Succession, on HBO, continues its story of a Murdoch-like tycoon patriarch.
Showtime, 9:00 p.m. ET
Last week’s episode ended with Jackie (Kevin Bacon) seeking revenge for his daughter’s sexual assault – and accomplishing it, in a sudden and brutal fashion that should shift the tone of the rest of the series. What a moment. What a climax. And tonight, in this season’s penultimate installment, what happens now?
Showtime, 10:00 p.m. ET
MINISERIES FINALE: Tonight’s episode, the miniseries’ final installment, takes us, and Fox News and Roger Ailes, to 2018, and to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Russia, are you watching?
HBO, 11:35 p.m. ET
Last week, with almost no time to prep, John Oliver hosted a powerful show suggesting a link between political rhetoric and last weekend’s mass shootings. After a week of reactions to those deaths, and a day of reaction to the apparent suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, how will John Oliver structure and focus this week’s show? I have no clue. But I’ll be watching…