NBC, 8:00 p.m. ET
This show still is worth watching, without question, but NBC isn’t making it easy. First it banishes the show to Saturday nights – and tonight, in a subplot involving promotion for the now-opened Broadway show Bombshell, it has Kathie Lee Gifford, playing herself, donning a Marilyn Monroe wig and bringing along the Today camera crew for a feature on the musical. That’s a mega-meta plot line: a show within a show about a show within a show. But somehow, by adding Today, this Smash show may not get to be around for too many more tomorrows.
BBC America, 8:00 p.m. ET
Last week’s show was a ghost story that turned out to be a love story. This week? A sci-fi story that will turn out to be… who knows what? But there’s a spaceship involved, as well as a crash landing that send Clara (the enchanting Jenna-Louise Coleman) deep into the heart of the TARDIS.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
This Oscar-winning 1956 movie about Texas wildcats, cattle, and untamed men and women was the unofficial template for TV’s Dallas, but stands tall in the saddle on its own merits. And how could it not? Elizabeth Taylor is here, and (in his last film role) James Dean, as well as Rock Hudson and a young Dennis Hopper.
BBC America, 9:00 p.m. ET
Tatiana Maslani, in this series, has died almost every week now – but that’s because she’s playing various cloned versions of herself, and each different iteration has a different personality, agenda, and dangerous problem. On tonight’s show, many of those problems collide, which makes it tricky for the heroine in this brain-teasing sci-fi drama. But she is women: hear her roar.
HBO Family, 9:00 p.m. ET
Adrian! Yo, Adrian! Released back during the Bicentennial year of 1976, this film, written by and starring Sylvester Stallone, introduced a figure that turned out to be as iconic as he was simple: beef-punching Rocky Balboa, the original stairmaster. Watching it so many decades later not only gives a glimpse of a hungry but ultra-confident writer and actor, but also a good look at the Philadelphia of more than 35 years ago.