LOVECRAFT COUNTRY
HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET
This second episode has an awful lot going on within its one-hour running time – and while keeping all those plot twists secret, I have to mention the music that opens and closes the episode, because it gobsmacked me in such a positive way. When Jurnee Smollett’s Letitia dives into the closet of posh clothes available to her in the Braithwhite mansion, she does so to the tune of “Movin’ On Up” from The Jeffersons – and at the end of the hour, after a series of confrontations with overtly racial overtones, the music on the soundtrack is Gil Scott-Heron’s justifiably angry tone poem with bongos, “Whitey on the Moon.” Both music cues made me laugh, and drop my jaw in admiration.