BBC America, 9:00 p.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: If you’re a fan of nature documentaries, you’ve probably already seen footage of the animals of Singapore – not the ones in the unpopulated areas, but the monkeys and other creatures who have found a way to not only survive, but thrive, in the dense city landscape. Now there’s a whole series devoted to that city, and topic – and it gives entertaining new meaning to the term “urban jungle.”
CNN, 9:00 p.m. ET
Tomorrow night, this CNN documentary series on the cinema will premiere an installment devoted to “The Seventies,” one of my favorite decades of film. But tonight, as an out-of-sequence appetizer, CNN is repeating the three episodes of The Movies it has aired thus far, covering the 1980s to the present. It’s a great way to catch up, and get set for what’s still to come.
National Geographic, 10:00 p.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: Gordon Ramsay seems to be all over the Fox schedule – but for this new National Geographic series, he sets out to conquer the world. Or, at least, to visit it, one remote community at a time. The setting for the premiere is Peru’s Sacred Valley, and Ramsay tours the area, climbs trees, samples food, and even cooks his own variations on local recipes. The program’s eagerness to go to distant places and try unusual things is a nod to, if not a petty theft of, the late Anthony Bourdain, but Ramsay is a bit more set in his ways. When he samples a fried caterpillar, he spits it out – whereas, long ago on another culinary travel series, that program’s host, Michael Palin of Monty Python fame, bit into a similarly exotic offering, smiled, and ad-libbed wickedly, “Good grub!”