Fox, 9:00 p.m. ET
This is not a recommendation: I warned about last week’s premiere of BH90210 based on circumstantial evidence, noting that Fox was dumping the series in August, a year before its 30thanniversary, and not previewing the show for critics. As it turned out, Fox did make the initial episode available, but not until days before its on-air premiere. At any rate, I was right then – and after seeing last week’s premiere, I’m even firmer in my conviction. This is not a recommendation.
IFC, 10:00 p.m. ET
On the other hand, this new IFC parody of vintage soul music shows is charmingly original, and unabashedly goofy. The snazzily dressed host, Sherman (played by Bashir Salahuddin, who created the series with Diallo Riddle), says in one vintage excerpt, staring straight into the camera, “To all our viewers in Oklahoma: Hello, Margaret!” I laughed out loud at that one – and the show had just started. Tune in and see what’s got me unexpectedly hooked.
TCM, 1:50 a.m. ET
Ingmar Bergman wrote and directed this 1966 character study, which elevated Swedish cinema to an internationally recognized source of existential angst. (Bergman had been doing such films for a decade, but this one really caught the zeitgeist. Woody Allen would mine it for comedy for years afterward.) In Persona, Liv Ullman plays a traumatized actress who will not speak, and Bibi Andersson plays the nurse who gets to know her patient so well, their personalities begin to merge and trade. A rarely televised classic.