1) “The Titan Games” finale, 8 p.m., NBC. “Titan” (shown here) has already found its winners, male and female, from its three regions. Now they compete, with one of each eliminated. That leaves two men and two women to reach Mount Olympus and go for the championships. Read more…
For fantasy fans, this is a time of plenty.
Most movie theaters may be closed, but our TV sets and computers have big stories, big ideas and, especially, big budgets.
Misha Green, a showrunner, can attest to that. Her previous series, for basic-cable, was about the Underground Railroad; her current one – “Lovecraft Country” (shown here), starting 9 p.m. Aug. 16 on HBO – also has racial themes, but puts them alongside big-deal monster stories.
The budget difference, she told the Television Critics Association, is huge. “One episode of this show is maybe five of ‘Underground.’”
From “Umbrella Academy” to “Utopia,” the TCA this week saw lots of big-budget science-fiction, Could this be a golden age for fantasy and sci-fi on TV and streaming? “I would say that’s absolutely true,” said Aaron Guzikowski, whose “Raised By Wolves” arrives next month on HBO Max. Read more…
1) “Agents of SHIELD” series finale, 9 and 10 p.m. Wednesday, ABC. An ambitious show ends in the relative obscurity of summer. “SHIELD” began with 22-episode seasons on the main schedule; it ends with a pair of 13-episode summers. Still, it all adds up – seven seasons, 136 episodes, a story leaping across planets and time. Last week ended with double evil – Sybil in the computer system, Malik in space, guiding laser shots toward the SHIELD bases. NowDaisy (Chloe Bennett, shown here) and friends have two TV hours to save the world. Read more…
1) Shark overlap, cable. This is the day “Sharkfest” slides from the National Geographic Channel to Nat Geo Wild, where it will linger for two more weeks. But it’s also when Discovery starts “Shark Week” – an idea it created 32 years ago. At 8 p.m., Discovery returns to the site off the high-leaping “Air Jaws” (shown here). At 9, it claims to have an underwater confrontation between sharks and Mike Tyson. And at 10, it’s in New Zealand, where giant great whites, some 20 feet long, thrive. Read more…
