HBO, 8:00 p.m. ET
Comedian Jon Stewart has written and directed two movies to date – one while on hiatus from The Daily Show, the other last year, pre-pandemic, years after leaving that Comedy central hosting job. The first film was 2014’s Rosewater. The second, making its premium cable premiere tonight on HBO, is 2020’s Irresistible, which stars old Daily Show cohort Steve Carell as a political operative who descends upon a small town in Wisconsin to steer the candidacy of a local man (Chris Cooper) running for mayor. Carell’s nemesis, a political planner on the other side of the ideological fence, is played by scene-stealer Rose Byrne, who’s proven to be as adept at comedy as she is at drama, when starring in such grim series as Damages.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Mel Brooks directed The Producers movie in 1968, stunning audiences with his audacious musical spoof “Springtime for Hitler.” In 1974, he stunned audiences again, lampooning Westerns by casting African-American actor Cleavon Little as “Black Bart” in Blazing Saddles. TCM presents both films as a deliriously entertaining double feature – and what’s amazing about Mel’s writing and directing here is that both movies are as inventive, and outrageous and politically incorrect, as they were so many decades ago. But if you want to watch two movies that display and lay bare the ignorance of prejudice, it’d be hard to find two better, funnier examples. And give special kudos to Gene Wilder – he not only co-starred in both of these brilliant Brooks comedies, opposite Zero Mostel (pictured with Wilder) in the former and Little in the latter, but also starred in a third: Young Frankenstein, made the same year as Blazing Saddles.
NBC, 11:29 p.m. ET
Another new episode, and a very significant one. Dan Levy of Schitt’s Creek is the guest host – something his dad, Schitt’s co-star Eugene Levy, never got to do, though he and John Candy did pop up for a cameo in one SNL installment back in 1985. When SNL was in its early glory days in the late 1970s, of course, so were Eugene Levy and Candy — and another Schitt's co-star, Catherine O'Hara — as founding members of a competing sketch variety series, the brilliant Second City TV, a.k.a. SCTV. Maybe it’s too much to hope that Dan Levy brings along his dad for another cameo, but I’m hoping anyway: After all, one SNL cameo every 35 years or so doesn’t seem to be pushing it. The musical guest tonight, by the way, is another SNL first-timer: Phoebe Bridgers.