Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: This new Netflix limited series has a clever title – taking Apple’s ubiquitous iprefix, which already has given us such resonant TV series names as iZombie, and using it for a high-tech, computer-generated artificial environment equivalent of a deserted island. Or i-Land, get it? Sure, okay. But this story, which introduces us to 10 people who wake up on the same deserted isle with no memories, and have to work their way though a threatening, mysterious island while remembering and confronting their pasts. Yes, it owes an embarrassing debt to Lost, but The I-Land isn’t nearly as engaging. Or, once its central conceit is revealed, as dramatic. But no – their arrival on the island has nothing to do with a three-hour cruise. Natalie Martinez, Kate Bosworth and Bruce McGill star.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
The second week of TCM’s Thursday night salute to the James Bond movies begins at 8 p.m. ET with the one film starring Sean Connery’s temporary 007 replacement, George Lazenby. He takes up the role of British secret agent James Bond in 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which is much more noteworthy for featuring the classiest “Bond girl” in the canon’s history: Diana Rigg (pictured). Other films shown tonight are 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever(10:30 p.m. ET), with Connery reprising his Bond role; 1973’s Live and Let Die (12:45 a.m. ET), the first Roger Moore Bond movie, as well as the film with a great theme song by Paul McCartney and Wings; and 1974’s The Man with the Golden Gun (3 a.m. ET), the second Moore 007 film, and the one that proved beyond a doubt that Moore is less.
ABC, 9:00 p.m. ET
There are two immediate differences between tonight’s ABC debate among Democratic aspirants for the 2020 presidential nomination and the debates televised previously. For one thing, the field of qualifying debaters has shrunken to 10, a number manageable enough to be contained on a single stage, as well as a single night. For another thing, it’s the first debate in which the leading candidate, Joe Biden, will be facing his closest challenger, Elizabeth Warren, on the same debate stage. And facing the eight other top qualifiers as well…