Fox, 9:00 p.m. ET
This is not a recommendation: This is Fox’s meta reboot of Beverly Hills, 90210, in which many of the stars from the original teen soap play now much older, caricatured versions of themselves. Is the joke still on them, if they’re making fun of themselves? That’s a question you might want to ponder while watching this new series – but I don’t want to ponder or watch. And Fox wasn’t making this available for preview by critics, while deciding to dump it in August, a year shy of the original show’s actual 30thanniversary. (Yes, in a few months, 1990 will be 30 years ago. Shudder.) Luke Perry died before he could participate in BH90210, which, along with appearing in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, might morbidly be considered his last, best career move. But other 90210 cast members, including Tori Spelling and Jennie Garth, are here playing themselves, and, in this new series called BH90210, considering reuniting for a new series called
BH90210. Personally, I’m considering not watching.
CW, 9:00 p.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: This new CW summer series is a new U.S. variant on the British show You’re Back in the Room, which turns stage hypnosis into a non-interactive TV experience. (In other words, you just watch, and, unlike seeing a similar act in Las Vegas or elsewhere, have no danger of being called up from the audience as a volunteer.) With another British show, Love Island, already invading America successfully this summer, on CBS, it would be foolish to dismiss this latest transcontinental import and revamp from CBS’s owned-and-operated CW network. Each week, four volunteers are allegedly hypnotized and put through their paces. Taye Diggs hosts; Keith Barry handles the hypnosis duties. Does it work as a TV series? I’m not sure yet – but even watching the promo made me feel verrry verrry sleeeeeeeeepy…