Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET
DOCUMENTARY SERIES PREMIERE: This multi-part documentary has a purely British flavor, in approach and tone as well as subject matter. It tells of a period, in the mid-1970s, when a killer skulked around West Yorkshire, murdering and brutally disfiguring prostitutes in the general manner of the infamous Whitechapel murderer Jack the Ripper a century or so before. In such areas as Leeds, four women had been murdered in a 10-mile radius within 18 months – but then the patterns widened. From then on, it wasn’t only prostitutes who were attacked, and eventually, there was a survivor to tell her tale. But the murderer kept eluding police, and kept killing. The Ripper retells this tale methodically, patiently, and with what might be described as British understatement… making it a far cry from the usual sensationalized crime documentary or typical Dateline NBC murder case.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Tonight’s all-night Alfred Hitchcock binge from TCM begins at 8 p.m. ET in prime time with two movies centered around two of the director’s iciest blondes: Kim Novak’s mysterious femme fatale, or fatale femme, in 1958’s Vertigo (pictured), followed at 10:15 p.m. ET by Tippi Hedren’s kleptomaniac in 1964’s Marnie. And after those two movies, the Hitch just keep on coming. At 12:45 a.m. ET, there’s 1955’s The Trouble with Harry, followed at 2:30 a.m. ET by the 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, at 4:45 a.m. ET with 1956’s The Wrong Man, and concluding Thursday morning at 6:45 a.m. ET with 1959’s classic Hitchcock travelogue of intrigue, North by Northwest.