This is the third hour of the 24: Legacy 24-hour day – and we’ve already been hit with enough improbable subplots and plot twists to stretch credulity, and test patience, in viewers wondering whether they want to commit to this rebooted series. Corey Hawkins, in the leading role, has the necessary charisma and smoldering intensity to carry the show – but some of the supporting characters, especially the full-on or potential terrorists, are painted with very watery brushes. At least in the first few hours… But Jimmy Smits (pictured), the king of joining established series and making his own mark, may yet do for 24: Legacy what he did for, just to name a few, NYPD Blue, The West Wing, Sons of Anarchy and Dexter. What an all-star utility outfielder! Put him in coach, he’s ready to play…

This 1960 movie is a roman a clef – a fancy way of saying that while the story it tells basically is true, the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Or, at least, to prevent lawsuits, or claims for payment. Basically, though, the story told here is of public school teacher B.T. Cates, who is put on trial in the 1920s for teaching evolution. The attorneys are Matthew Brady for the prosecution, and Henry Drummond for the defense. Brady is played, with bluster and brimstone, by Fredric March, and Drummond, with laid-back homespun charm, by Spencer Tracy. (Think of him as the original Matlock.) In real life, the legal adversaries faced off in Tennessee in 1925, defending a substitute teacher named John T. Scopes, and using him as a test case to battle, in court, the appropriateness of scientific fact vs. faith-based beliefs in the school curriculum. The prosecuting attorney was Williams Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential candidate who was a strict fundamentalist arguing against the teaching of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory. The defense attorney was the famed Clarence Darrow. The arguments and the passions, and especially the discussions about what constitutes a “fact” that can be accepted by both sides, couldn’t be more resonant today. And they’re just as complicated: Bryan, the anti-science fundamentalist, was a Democrat, and the media circus then, even though radio was in its infancy, was astoundingly similar to today’s frenetic atmosphere. Oh, and just for fun, the young science teacher at the center of the trial in this 1960 film? He’s played by Dick York, the original Darren on TV’s Bewitched.

Tonight’s time-traveling episode returns to Prohibition, specifically in 1931 Chicago, to go all gangsta for a while. This series’ co-creator, Eric Kripke, reaches out to a recurring player from his previous series, Misha Collins (the angel Castiel on the CW’s Supernatural), to play the role of gangster-hunting Eliot Ness (pictured). In this episode, the gangster being hunted is none other than Al Capone.

Daryl Davis is an African-American musician who, over the years, has backed artists ranging from Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry to Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters. But he has a very unusual hobby: He likes to seek out and introduce himself to members of the Ku Klux Klan, to give them an opportunity to get to know a black man. It’s an impressively high-risk, change-the-world-one-step-at-a-time hobby. Me, I collected stamps. Check local listings.

SEASON PREMIERE: I really liked this show when it premiered on AMC, as a dark adaptation of an already dark Swedish series. William Hurt was one standout star last year, as an early-version developer of “synths” – humanlike robots who may or may not be more alive than their creators imagine. He’s gone, but Emily Berrington (pictured) and Gemma Chan, as synths Niska and Anita, are back, and a new cast addition this series is Carrie-Anne Moss, co-star of The Matrix movies, as a scientist. Between the two seasons of HUMANS, viewers have been treated to another exploration of this topic in HBO’s Westworld. But this one, remember, came first… so give it credit. And a second, or first, chance.