Amazon Prime Video, 3:00 a.m. ET
SEASON PREMIERE: The first season of this Amazon series, about subliminal subterfuge and a conspiratorial deep state, had a huge box-office draw at its center in Julia Roberts. She’s gone for Season 2, and taking her place at the story’s center is Janelle Monáe. New co-stars include Chris Cooper.
Paley@Home, 12:00 p.m. ET
Available on the Paley Center for Media’s YouTube channel and Facebook page, and its own website, the latest edition of Paley Front Row is streamed beginning at noon ET. It’s all about the third, just-concluded season of HBO’s Westworld, and features a panel discussing led by the show’s co-creators and a big component of that season’s prominent cast. Co-creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, who are married, are there, along with actors Evan Rachel Wood (pictured), Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Ed Harris, and Tessa Thompson.
The Shows Must Go On!, 2:00 p.m. ET
SPECIAL: In 2013, NBC jump-started the new generation of live televised theater productions with its revival production of The Sound of Music, starring Carrie Underwood as Maria and Stephen Moyer (from True Blood) as Captain Von Trapp. The Shows Must Go On, until now, have been devoted to the musicals of website backer Andrew Lloyd Webber, but for this new offering – available only through the weekend, starting at noon ET Friday – the menu has expanded. This perhaps most famous of all musicals features the music of Richard Rodgers and the lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II. The original stage production was in 1959; this live TV production was produced by Craig Zadan and Neal Meron, and also features Audra McDonald, Laura Benanti, and Christian Borle. Like Zadan and Meron’s Bombshell benefit streaming special two days ago, this Sound of Music Live! repeat is a fundraiser for The Actors Fund.
AXS TV, 7:15 p.m. ET
In 1978, Martin Scorsese directed this energetic and monumental record of the final concert by The Band, with a roster of guest stars that – well, just check out the list. Bob Dylan. Eric Clapton. Joni Mitchell. Van Morrison. Neil Young. Muddy Waters. Ringo Starr. Neil Diamond. Paul Butterfield. Ronnie Wood. Ronnie Hawkins. Emmylou Harris. Dr. John. The Staple Singers. Oh, yeah, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti…
FX, 9:00 p.m. ET
DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE: Nick Sweeney produced and directed this new FX documentary, which was in the works the year before the 2017 death of Norma McCorvey, the woman referred to as “Jane Roe” in the landmark Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court case legalizing abortion. Sweeney interviewed McCorvey in depth, and even got what McCorvey called her “deathbed confession” about why she eventually switched sides on the issue of abortion. All the stories are complicated here, including whether the pregnancy McCorvey had sought to abort was the result of being raped, and even whether she eventually had an abortion. (Apparently, the answer to both questions is no.)
HBO, 10:00 p.m. ET
Tonight’s scheduled guests for this new at-home edition, after Maher took a week off, include Michael Moore and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, as well as author and physician Dr. Cate Shanahan.
The Movie Channel, 10:10 p.m. ET
This 1993 movie was a sleeper favorite of mine when it was released: a low-budget character study about a young boy who was gifted at chess, and the parents who didn’t know quite what to do with that gift. The screenplay adaptation of Fred Waitzkin’s book was written by Steven Zaillian, who also directed. The young boy is played, very touchingly, by Max Pomeranc, who quit acting shortly thereafter, and his parents are played – even more touchingly – by Joan Allen and Joe Mantegna. Two additional, wonderful performances are contributed by the actors playing the boy’s very different chess mentors: Laurence Fishburne and Ben Kingsley. Zaillian, by the way, went from Searching for Bobby Fischer to write the scripts for Schindler’s List (reuniting him with Kingsley), Moneyball, HBO’s The Night Of and Netflix’s The Irishman.
BBC America, 11:00 p.m. ET
In this new at-home edition, Norton’s guests include Will Ferrell and Mark Ruffalo. Two good reasons to watch.
TCM, 4:00 a.m. ET
David Lynch directed Eraserhead in 1977, when almost no one had heard of him. It’s a film that’s so weird – and so, well, Lynchian – that it would be understandable if no one ever did hear of him. But one of the people who did see Eraserhead back then was Mel Brooks, who was so taken by its originality and tone that he hired Lynch to write and direct his already risky Brooksfilms dramatic movie, 1980’s The Elephant Man. Watch Eraserhead now, in this restored version presented super-late at night on TCM, and see what you think. The stars, by the way, include two players who would resurface on Lynch’s ABC Twin Peaks series in 1990: star Jack Nance (who, as Pete Martell, would find Laura Palmer’s body, wrapped in plastic, in the opening scenes of Twin Peaks) and Charlotte Stewart (Betty Briggs).