TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
One of the many Alfred Hitchcock classics, this one, from 1959, is full of stunts that only a great director could pull off with panache, and Hitchcock did. From its geographic plot line (literally crossing the country in the direction of the title) to its ability to milk horror from wide open spaces in broad daylight (the corn field and the crop dusting plane!), and ending with a literal cliffhanger – with the cliff being Mount Rushmore – what a movie. Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason star, and they’re all excellent, too.
HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET
This is the penultimate show of the season, so things are building to a climax. (Of course, on True Blood, there’s a climax every episode – and you can read that however you like.) Bill (Stephen Moyer) gets more under the spell of Lilith the more he tastes her blood – and his latest visions are so red-blooded that he walks away thinking he’s the Chosen One.
AMC, 10:00 p.m. ET
At the end of last week’s show, Jesse (Aaron Paul) screamed in horror as one of the cohorts on their latest illegal heist shot a witness in cold blood – a child on a dirt bike, who accidentally witnessed their theft of a meth-making chemical from a temporarily stopped train. There’s been death before on Breaking Bad, but this one crosses a line. But only, it seems, for Jesse. And that, too, may have eventual long-term consequences.
BBC America, 10:00 p.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: The latest TV series by Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson, who first teamed for NBC’s
Homicide: Life on the Street, is another cop show of sorts – but this time, it’s about a New York detective in the Civil War era, starring Tom Weston-Jones from
MI-5. One thing you have to say about it from the start: It’s not a TV concept you’ve seen that often. For a full review, see
Bianculli’s Blog.
HBO, 10:00 p.m. ET
Part 2 of 2. Last week’s episode, the start of a two-parter, had to do with a major power outage plunging the network’s New York newsroom into relative darkness. That story line continues this week, but makes room for another one – in which, in this show’s recent-past timeline, the cable news network gets to host one of the debates for the aspiring Republican presidential candidates. Standing in for the candidates at a test run-through? Some of the show’s producers and other staffers, as political operatives watch warily.