ESPN, 7:00 p.m. ET
With most sports locked down by the pandemic, ESPN has a lot of hours to fill, and has to find other ways to fill it. This week, ESPN is digging into its own archives to repeat one of last year’s best documentaries: a massive five-part re-examination of O.J. Simpson’s rise, celebrity, athletic skills, pro football record, and slow-speed chase, murder trial and national reaction. Each installment is two hours, and ESPN is filling up the week by showing Parts 1 and 2 tonight, with the rest shown the other weekdays this week. If you’re in withdrawal from sports, and even if you don’t think there was anything new to say about the O.J. phenomenon and case, watch O.J.: Made in America. Surprisingly, there was.
Sundance, 8:00 p.m. ET
This Steven Spielberg war movie, with its memorable images, spectacular action scenes, and touching performances, brought WWII alive in a way that still resonates. That film, starring Tom Hanks as a weary but dedicated Army captain tasked with locating and bringing back safely a family’s last surviving son, is now 22 years old. Matt Damon, at the time he co-starred as Private Ryan, was 27 years old. And now that Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita, have tested positive for the coronavirus, there’s even more reason to watch this film empathically, and with extra vested emotion.
AMC, 9:00 p.m. ET
Tonight’s episode is titled “Wexler v. Goodman” – which means it’s a case, and an hour, pitting Bob Odenkirk’s now officially renamed Saul Goodman against his longtime girlfriend and fellow attorney, Rhea Seehorn’s Kim Wexler. They’re pitted against each other in court, while secretly working together. But outside of court, will that subterfuge bring them even closer, or begin to tear them apart?
HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET
In Episode 2 of this excellent new David Simon and Ed Gross miniseries, based on the fiction novel by Philip Roth, Charles Lindbergh’s candidacy for the presidency blossoms in full – and brings waves of isolationism and prejudice in its wake.
AMC, 10:10 p.m. ET
This is Episode 5 of this intriguing Jason Segel miniseries. So far, each episode has focused on one of the four game players caught up in the mysterious, mind-bending world being played in, around and under Philadelphia. For this episode, we focus on the object of their quest: The mysterious Clara.