NBC, 9:00 p.m. ET
The most recent episode, two weeks ago, ended with Zoey’s romantic triangle unexpectedly coming back into play. So now what? With one workmate friend’s engagement called off, and another professing his love for her, what’s a song-hearing visionary to do? This week, it’s to witness a sort of West Side Story Sharks vs. Jets battle between her firm and another.
BBC America, 9:00 p.m. ET
In this week’s episode, Jodie Comer’s Villanelle tries to make the shift to management, by accompanying a young world-be assassin to witness the completion of his mission. But the young recruit doesn’t take his task seriously enough – and Villanelle, even though she and her charge have infiltrated the target location by dressing in costume, is not in any mood to clown around.
ESPN, 9:00 p.m. ET
DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE: ESPN has moved up its previously planned premiere date for this 10-part documentary, which covers Michael Jordan’s final championship run with the Chicago Bulls. The drama, both backstage and on court, of the team’s thrilling 1997-98 season is captured and presented here – and, uniquely, is presented in two different ways. On ESPN, The Last Dance is presented unedited and uncensored – but on ESPN2, it’s simulcast in a different version, with the profanity bleeped out, so the whole family can watch. Think of it as a locked-down family service. Or a way for the ESPN empire to get twice as much air time out of a single program. Either way, it works.
HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET
This entire Season 3 has been leading up to this, and tonight it happens. Last week, we learned that Dolores has spread her intelligence, and persona, among several Westworld “shells” – and tonight the mother of all Doloreses, or Delori, comes face to face with her sister artificial creation and new nemesis, Maeve.
Showtime, 9:00 p.m. ET
This is the penultimate episode of Homeland. Next week, it’s over. And this week, with Carrie having just turned herself in, and over to the custody of an American government that largely distrusts her, will anyone believe her accurate but hard-to-verify intel that the president’s death in a helicopter crash was indeed an accident, not an act of international terrorism? With this show about to end, there’s no reason to expect that ending to be happy – so hang on. Tight.
Showtime, 10:00 p.m. ET
DOCUMENTARY SERIES PREMIERE: With
Homeland about to conclude, and with its final story line concerning a threatened escalation of the war with Afghanistan to include Pakistan, this new Showtime documentary looks at the history of the war in Afghanistan. The documentary’s executive producers include
Homeland American TV adapters Howard Gordon and Alex Ganza. They’re recounting a history so complicated, and so lengthy, that it is, in American terms,
The Longest War. Hence the title.
For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower.
HBO, 10:30 p.m. ET
When I watched last week’s premiere episode of this new comedy, about former lovers who impulsively follow a long-dormant agreement, years after making it, and meet on a specific train going out of town, the situation, and their emotions, kept reminding me of something. I couldn’t place it, but the way Merritt Wever and Domhnall Gleeson looked so shocked and frazzled by their reckless impulsivity seemed familiar somehow. And then, finally, I got it: remember the dazed looks that Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross slowly slid into on that bus at the end of
The Graduate? Well, here’s my
aha moment:
Run is like what would have happened, with all the regret and awkwardness and excitement, had
The Graduate, and that bus, kept going…
HBO, 11:00 p.m. ET
Tonight’s socially distanced episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver should be an artistic triumph. After all, as he showed us gleefully at the end of last week’s show, he’s already got the art…