Decades, 12:00 a.m. ET
The N.Y.P.D. marathon, showcasing this 1967-69 ABC series, continues on Decades today. And though the transfers they’re televising are washy and hardly of the highest quality, this on-location New York half-hour police drama was a clear improvement over the average cop shows of that period. There are at least two episodes to catch today: At 9:30 a.m. ET, “Encounter on a Rooftop,” in which one of the series’ lead characters, a Black detective played by Robert Hooks, is shot by an eager, and bigoted, young white cop. Then, at 11 a.m. ET, there’s “Deadly Circle of Violence,” featuring the first screen appearances by both Al Pacino and Jill Clayburgh. Jack Warden, Robert Converse and Hooks co-star.
Various Networks, Check local listings
Thursday’s opening night game of the 2020 pro football season was an indication of things to come this year. The fans in attendance are capped at a small percentage of stadium capacity, the announcers work without having to deal with a lot of crowd noise, and the contact on the field – both the hard hits and the celebrations after a good play – leads invariably to thoughts of COVID-19 transmission. This is the first Sunday of this year’s NFL season, so see for yourself. Games played today include, on the national TV stage, the Los Angeles Chargers and Cincinnati Bengals (4 p.m. ET, CBS), the Tampa Bay Bucs and New Orleans Saints (4 p.m. ET, Fox), and the Dallas Cowboys and Los Angeles Rams (8:20 p.m. ET, NBC). That Cowboys-Rams game, scheduled as the official unveiling of the Rams’ grand new SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA, could be postponed – because of dangerously poor air quality due to California’s oppressive, still-spreading wildfires.
CBS, 7:00 p.m. ET
Scott Pelley interviews Bob Woodward about Woodward’s latest book, and bombshell, in which he recorded President Donald Trump for nine hours of total interview sessions – and already has made headlines for some of the things Trump told him. It’s the second President for whom Woodward’s reporting has dealt with accusations and impeachment proceedings, smoking-gun audiotape recordings, and led to the key question, “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” Pelley’s a very good interviewer, and 60 Minutes is a standard stop for Woodward when he’s releasing a new book – but I’d have loved the synergy, and the symmetry, if Woodward’s interviewer this time around would have been another 60 Minutes veteran correspondent, Lesley Stahl. That fateful day in 1972 when Woodward covered the original court appearance of the group that came to be known as the Watergate burglars, one of the only other reporters in the courtroom that day, covering as a young reporter for CBS, was… Lesley Stahl.
Showtime, 8:00 p.m. ET
How widespread has the impact of the Bob Woodward interview tapes with President Donald Trump been this week? The reporters on The Circus will tell you, by tracking the reactions, inside and outside the Beltway.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Bizet’s opera Carmen comes to the big screen in this 1954 adaptation, which updates the setting to the lead-up to the Korean War – and adapts the sultry story by filling it with an all-Black cast. The offstage collaborators include an unlikely duo: director Otto Preminger and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, who wrote new lyrics to some of Bizet’s music. But on screen, wow: Dorothy Dandridge stars in the title role, as the siren who ensnares most of the men around her, including pilot-in-training Joe, played by Harry Belafonte. Both of the leading roles had their singing voices dubbed by others: LeVern Hutcherson subbed for Belafonte, who had an amazing singing voice but was dubbed anyway. And Dandridge, an accomplished singer and stage entretainer also, had her singing voice dubbed by someone whose own voice soon would become very famous in its own right: Marilyn Horne. On-screen co-stars in Carmen Jones include Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll, and Brock Peters. One weird final note: In 2001, MTV presented its own updated version of Bizet’s opera, keeping the all-Black cast approach, but adapting it to rap music instead. Directed by Robert Townsend, it was called Carmen: A Hip Hopera, and starred, in the title role, Beyoncé. And her voice, for that production, was not dubbed.
HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET
You know that saying about walking in another person’s shoes? Tonight, thanks to a magic spell, Ruby (Wunmi Wosaku) gets to do just that.
Showtime, 10:00 p.m. ET
MINISERIES FINALE: This is the sixth and final episode of this crime story and character study, involving two couples (coincidentally, both pair a Black man with a white woman) – and each pair has an equal claim to the phrase in the title. One couple hunts people to kill; the other couple is hunting the killers. And tonight, the latter catches up to the former. But then what?