Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: This new Netflix series, which it says was “inspired by actual events,” takes four disparate stories, following four different protagonists, and sends them on a collision course. Instead of parallel lines that never meet, they’re story threads that are destined to collide, intertwine, and eventually twist around each other like a braid. It’s set in Australia, but the politics, class differences, immigration issues and other aspects are universal. Cate Blanchett, who just triumphed on TV in Hulu’s Mrs. America, serves as executive producer and co-star of yet another made-for-TV miniseries triumph. In Stateless, she plays a woman who, along with Dominic West from The Wire and The Affair, runs a self-improvement arts troupe that is part song-and-dance class, part EST-like cult. Yvonne Strahovski, from The Handmaid’s Tale, plays one of the main characters of Stateless, playing a woman whose aimlessless leads her, eventually, to an immigration detention center, along with a refugee family from Afghanistan, a working-class father, and a mid-level politician. Strahovski, born in Australia, finally gets to use her native accent in Stateless – as does the Australian-born Blanchett. But Dominic West, born and raised in England, fakes an Australian accent perfectly, as persuasively as he adopted an American accent in The Wire.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Mary Chase won a Pulitzer for her whimsical play about a large, invisible rabbit, which was a Hamilton-size hit in its day: It premiered on Broadway during WWII, in 1944, and ran for five years, until 1949. When the play closed, this movie version was made and released in 1950, with Chase writing the screenplay adaptation of her own stage comedy. But while Josephine Hill reprised her role as Veta Louise Simmons, the actor starring as the man who claimed Harvey as a friend, Frank Fay, was not cast in the film. Instead, the role of Elwood P. Dowd went to James Stewart, who is absolutely charming here.
ABC, 10:00 p.m. ET
Last week’s episode ended with a time jump, but not eveyone was on the S.H.I.E.L.D. plane when it jumped. Mack (Henry Simmons) was stranded in 1982 when the rest of the agents moved forward in time – and so was Deke (Jeff Ward). Which goes a long way towards explaining the title of tonight’s Eighties-set episode, “The Totally Excellent Adventures of Mack and the D.”