CBS All Access, 3:00 a.m. ET
In last week’s Season 4 premiere, Christine Baranski’s Diane Lockhart had a Wizard of Oz experience of sorts, in which she imagined herself as living in a very, very different world. It was a world in which Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, had ascended to the White House in 2016 – and series creators Robert and Michelle King had great fun playing with, and against, the expectations of that alternate-universe premise. But at the very end of the episode, Diane awoke from her concussion, then laughed when asked by a concerned EMT caregiver to identify the current president of the United States. Great ending to a super-smart episode. But now, The Good Fight is back to reality, and back to basics – basics which involve a new season-long plot about a way for the elite one-percenters to find a way not just to win in the courts, but to virtually disregard them. And here we go…
Hulu, 3:00 a.m. ET
MINISERIES CONCLUSION: Devs has been so disturbing, in a good way, that it has specialized in pulling the rug from under the viewer and defying expectations. Characters you thought would be central turn up dead, and stay that way. Plots you think are leading in a certain direction suddenly pivot, and don’t stay that way. In recent episodes, the development team at Devs, working with and against their wealthy and somewhat unhinged project leader, have cracked a way to witness and eavesdrop on the past. So what’s left for this final episode, except, of course, the future? I love what writer-director Alex Garland has done here… and I also love the music, which is so distinctive, I’m begging for a soundtrack.
Syfy, 6:00 a.m. ET
Syfy is one of several cable networks reacting to the pandemic, and its sudden increase in TV viewers isolated at home for lengthy periods, by dusting off a page from the old cable TV playbook. Back in the old days, or the semi-old ones, some cable networks would pad out their 24-hour schedules by running marathons of TV reruns of a chosen series; some still do. And in direct response to current conditions, Syfy has unearthed and scheduled complete-series showings, sprinkled throughout its schedule, of such shows as Battlestar Galactica (the Syfy remake, not the horrid 1970s original) and, starting this morning, Lucy Lawless’ breakout female-empowerment action series, Xena: Warrior Princess. What Gal Gadot got such credit for doing, and representing, in Wonder Woman quite recently, Lawless and Xena were doing back in the late 1990s. Two decades later, in these Thursday daytime mini-marathons working their way through all six Xena seasons, it’s an influential, as well as enjoyable, series to revisit. Unless, that is, you’re Xena-phobic.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the in-person part of this year’s scheduled TCM Classic Film Festival has been cancelled. But the show, and the movies, must go on, so strap in for several days of some absolutely fabulous filmmaking and salutes to movies, pulling from both the TCM archives and from telecasts of past Classic Film Festival events. Kicking things off tonight in prime time are two movies embracing all that and more. At 8 p.m. ET, TCM presents 1954’s A Star Is Born, which was the opening night offering at the very first TCM Classic Film Festival a decade ago, presented then by Alec Baldwin and founding TCM host Robert Osborne. Then, at 11 p.m. ET, comes the closing night film at that same 2010 festival: a newly restored version of 1927’s Metropolis. And when that’s over, there’s still more from that inaugural festival, including a 1:45 a.m. ET repeat of a 2011 interview with Luise Rainer, the first consecutive Best Actress Oscar winner, and a 2:30 a.m. ET showing of the second of her winning performances, in 1937’s The Good Earth, pictured. (She had also won the previous year for her starring role in 1936’s The Great Ziegfeld.) Rainer was 100 years old when interviewed and saluted at that festival. She lived another four years.
