Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET
SEASON PREMIERE: For this new Season 4 of The Crown, Olivia Coleman continues (for now) in the role of Queen Elizabeth II, but there are some dazzling new players this season, and they establish themselves almost immediately. Emma Corrin shows up as Lady Di, and Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher… and they’re both wonderful, instantly.
CBS, 7:00 p.m. ET
Still new. And still, after all these decades, invaluable. Tonight: an interview with Barack Obama.
Fox, 8:00 p.m. ET
One of the executive producers of The Simpsons is the great James L. Brooks, who, in addition to helping midwife this series from the interstitial Matt Groening shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, wrote and directed such excellent movies as Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News. That latter film premiered in 1987, two years before Fox’s The Simpsons. And tonight, all these years later, we have a modern updated connection: a new Simpsons episode called “Podcast News.”
HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET
Keep watching this HBO miniseries, starring Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman, because watching it is like turning a prism as the light shines through it. The more you watch, the more things shift and change, and reveal new patterns.
FX, 10:00 p.m. ET
And with Fargo, another reason to keep watching is that we’re now up to Episode 9 – so near the end of this particular story, and season, that just because characters have survived this long, that’s no guarantee they’re going to make it past, or through, tonight’s episode.
HBO, 11:00 p.m. ET
What a week. Again. John Oliver, your move….