Esquire, 12:00 p.m. ET
Today is Oct. 21, 2015 – the day in Back to the Future Part II to which Doc and Marty time-traveled from 1989. And to note that occasion, Esquire TV is presenting a marathon of all three movies in the series, beginning at noon ET, and repeating the trio of Michael J. Fox-Christopher Lloyd films again at 7:30 p.m. ET. Which means, if you really, really love this trilogy, you can watch it once, then immediately go back to Back to the Future all over again.
Fox Sports 1, 4:00 p.m. ET
Two league championship games are played today, and both could decide who goes to the World Series. The Toronto Blue Jays have the home-field advantage for today’s Game 5 in the American League Championship Series, but that’s about the only advantage the team has. Its opponent, the Kansas City Royals, has notched 15 hits against the Blue Jays two games in a row, and won Game 4 by an embarrassingly one-sided score of 14-2. The Royals lead the ALCS 3-1 – and unless the Blue Jays can win today (and the next two games after that), the Royals will be moving on to the World Series.
PBS, 8:00 p.m. ET
Part 1 of 2. No animals were harmed in the making of this very friendly two-part Nature documentary. It’s a look at the “private lives” of domesticated animals, from cats and dogs to horses and hamsters. Tonight’s Part 1 is called Playful Creatures, and explains the unspoken canine rules at a neighborhood dog park, visits an amazingly verbal parakeet named Disco, and tosses out one fun fact after another. Such as: all golden hamsters come from the same family, from the previous century, that lived in Syria. And: when kittens feed from their mother, each has a designated nipple to which it, and it alone, returns for each meal. Check local listings.
TBS, 8:00 p.m. ET
This is Game 4 in the National League Championship Series, and the Chicago Cubs host the New York Mets at Wrigley Field. But they don’t want to be too gracious as hosts, because the Mets have a 3-0 advantage in games, and can sweep the series tonight, and move on to the World Series, unless the Cubs find a way to win – tonight, and for the next several games. Does it matter that, in the Back to the Future Part II prediction about the then-future, that 2015 was the year the Cubs won the World Series? With the Cubs behind three games in a best-of-seven series, probably not…
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
The first of the four films selected tonight by guest programmer Nathan Lane is predictable: At 8 p.m. ET, it’s Mel Brooks’ brilliant 1967 comedy The Producers, starring Zero Mostel, the film which Brooks turned into a Tony-winning Broadway musical, with Lane in the (also Tony-winning) leading role. The others are more surprising, but equally outstanding. At 9:45 p.m. ET, it’s 1976’s All the President’s Men, followed at 12:15 a.m. ET by 1979’s Being There, and concluding at 2:30 a.m. ET with 1931’s City Lights. Mel Brooks, Alan J. Pakula, Hal Ashby, Charlie Chaplin – what a creative directorial quartet.
FX, 10:00 p.m. ET
Last week, both the flashback sequences and the present-day hotel ones were intriguing – with the best being Lady Gaga’s vampire sex scene and her post-coital instructional advice to a newly turned vampire. “Don’t fall in love,” she tells him. “That’s the part you save for me.” That led to what, I’m pretty sure, was a flashback within a flashback within a flashback, revisiting a previous tryst with another paramour (Matt Bomer). But it’s not the straightforward plot or the destination that matters most here – it’s the journey.