MONDAY
MAY 13
2019

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

NBC, 8:00 p.m. ET

We’ve arrived at the Top 8 semifinal performances – and tonight, the contestants are given access to the Beatles song catalog, as a promotional tie-in to the upcoming movie Yesterday – which, by the way, looks positively charming, as evidenced by the film’s promo.
 
  
 
 

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

Mark Cousins directs this new study of Orson Welles the filmmaker, actor and private person. The approach by Cousins is both hyper-personal (he narrates, asking questions of the long-dead icon) and arbitrary (the film is divided into almost capricious sections and sub-sections), but, like any film that looks closely at Welles’ life and work, is worth a look, and bound to offer up a previously unknown nugget of insight or vintage interview fragment. The true treat with tonight’s TCM Welles salute, though, has to do with the films that follow: three of his movies in which Welles pulls double duty as director and star. It starts with 1963’s The Trial at 10 p.m. ET, followed by his 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane at 2:15 a.m. ET (DVR Alert!) and, at 4:30 a.m. ET, 1948’s The Lady from Shanghai, co-starring Welles and Rita Hayworth.
 
  
 
 

Sundance, 10:00 p.m. ET

This is the start of the second and final week of this marvelous mini-miniseries: 10 episodes, about 10 minutes each, running weekdays, starring Chris O’Dowd and Rosamund Pike as a married couple meeting for a quick drink, and chat, before their weekly marital therapy sessions. We never see the sessions, but the pregame show is so raw, funny and revealing, State of the Union has become one of my favorite TV shows of the year – and so far, it’s less than an hour long. Catch up on line or On Demand, and tune in for tonight’s Part 6. Nick Hornby wrote all 10 episodes, and Stephen Frears directed them all. Hornby wrote the High Fidelity novel that Frears directed as a film, and this TV series displays the same flair for dialogue and credible, interesting character interaction.

 
  
 
 
 
 
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David Bianculli

Founder / Editor

David Bianculli has been a TV critic since 1975, including a 14-year stint at the New York Daily News, and sees no reason to stop now. Currently, he's TV critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and is an occasional substitute host for that show. He's also an author and teaches TV and film history at New Jersey's Rowan University. His 2009 Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour', has been purchased for film rights. His latest, The Platinum Age of Television: From I Love Lucy to the Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific, is an effusive guidebook that plots the path from the 1950s’ Golden Age to today’s era of quality TV.