SUNDAY
APRIL 2
2017

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Showtime, 8:00 p.m. ET

On Sunday evenings, my busiest night for TV viewing, I’m happiest when both Showtime’s The Circus and HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver are present and offering new editions, as is the case tonight. I love learning new insights and perspectives on issues in the headlines, and I also get a bit of emotional release laughing at some of them. The funny thing is, with these two shows, the places you learn, and the places you laugh, aren’t always on the shows you might expect. But both are, for me, mandatory Sunday viewing. Every week seems to bring a new major crisis or intrigue. This week: Former National Security adviser Michael Flynn’s lawyers requested immunity in exchange for his testimony before congressional committees, and there were no immediate takers. Circus will reflect this turn of events one way – and Oliver, I’m confident, will go at it another.

 
  
 
 

AMC, 9:00 p.m. ET

SEASON FINALE: This seventh season began with Negan, the cruel post-apocalyptic tyrant played by Jeffery Dean Morgan, taking his barbed-wire-covered baseball bat and crushing in the skulls of two beloved Walking Dead regular characters. It ends tonight, finally, with Rick and company gathering enough resistance, ammunition and bravery to stage an attack to exact revenge and stop Negan’s reign. The tension, in this episode, probably will derive less from whether they’ll succeed (they should), but which other fan-favorite characters will die in the attempt. I’m just guessing, but be prepared to say farewell to at least one, as well as to Negan himself.  Bat’s all, folks!

 
  
 
 

HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET

MINISERIES FINALE: This costume party episode is supposed to be the end of this HBO limited series, revealing both the identity of the murderer and the murdered – so far, we don’t know either, just that someone was killed. But speaking of killing, Big Little Lies has killed in the ratings – doing so well that HBO reportedly is considering bringing the show back for more story, and another run. Nothing’s set yet – but in today’s TV landscape, Walking Dead-level audiences are nothing to walk away from lightly.

 
  
 
 

Showtime, 9:00 p.m. ET

Is it just me? Or does it seem to you, too, that the more that Carrie (Claire Danes) and this season’s Homeland explore the intrigue between the various intelligence agencies and the White House, the more it seems to be some sort of alternate-universe equivalent of what’s going on in real life? Of course, it really is an alternate universe, because the newly elected President of the United States is a woman…

 
  
 
 

FX, 10:00 p.m. ET

Tonight’s episode is called “And the Oscar Goes To….,” and has great fun with Joan Crawford’s jealous and fiendish campaign to try to steal some of the thunder from Bette Davis, her What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? co-star, who was nominated for an Academy Award while Crawford was not. The show even gets great drama out of the opening of an Oscar envelope – and when’s the last time that happened? Oh, yeah. I almost forgot….

 
  
 
 

HBO, 10:02 p.m. ET

Tonight’s episode title says it all: “What Will We Do This Time about Adam?” The performance of Adam Driver, as the unpredictable sometimes boyfriend of Lena Dunham’s Hannah, has been riveting from the start of this series – and it’s still riveting at the end. Adam comes to Hannah with some surprising news, while she, of course, has some significant news of her own. Will this lead to a reconciliation, and the former couple reuniting? Or is that too neat a ribbon to tie as Girls walks hesitantly towards its imminent finale?

 
  
 
 

HBO, 11:01 p.m. ET

Start with The Circus, and finish here. It’s a one-two punch of news and insanity, and you never know which show will be serving up which, or when.

 
  
 
 
 
 
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4484 Comments
 
 
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Aug 21, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
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David Bianculli

Founder / Editor

David Bianculli has been a TV critic since 1975, including a 14-year stint at the New York Daily News, and sees no reason to stop now. Currently, he's TV critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and is an occasional substitute host for that show. He's also an author and teaches TV and film history at New Jersey's Rowan University. His 2009 Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour', has been purchased for film rights. His latest, The Platinum Age of Television: From I Love Lucy to the Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific, is an effusive guidebook that plots the path from the 1950s’ Golden Age to today’s era of quality TV.