1) “Agents of SHIELD” (shown here), 10 p.m., ABC. In its seventh and final season. “SHIELD” keeps changing decades … and maybe changing genres Tonight, ABC implies, will be in the “film noir” style. Dumped into 1955, the team realizes that date is key to SHIELD history. The animated “Toy Story 3” (2010) precedes this at 8 p.m. Read more…
As Americans poked at the notion of social-distance drama, some Englishmen went full-throttle.
They created four separate tales. Now “Isolation Stories” (shown here with Darren Boyd) reaches the U.S. on June 23, via the Britbox streaming service.
Each story is only 15 minutes long, but stuffed with strong drama. Individually, most are terrific; combined … well, they need a bit more variety. Read more…
1) “One Day at a Time,” 6:30-10 p.m., Pop. Here’s the entire season – what there was, before the virus shutdown – plus a bonus, a new episode via animation. First, the reruns: They start with a very clever bit, with Ray Romano as a census-taker, explaining the characters to new viewers. Then “One Day” (shown here) settles into being a fairly good (albeit too broad) comedy, The new episode is at 9:30 p.m. (simulcast on TV Land) and reruns at 12:30 a.m. Guest stars include Lin-Manuel Miranda and Gloria Estefan. Read more…
(Yes, this does look suspiciously like a story I wrote a few weeks ago, about cartoon voice-master Billy West. Since then, there’s been a surge of animation, so I’ve updated it. Anyway, he’s an interesting guy and animation neatly fills some virus-shutdown time.)
As TV scrambles to find social-distance drama, a logical option appears: What about animation?
There’s been a flurry lately, sometinmes spurred by the virus, other times just a coincidence. Consider;
– STREAMING: Two new animated series – both planned long before the quarantine – have opened on streaming networks. “Central Park” (new episodes each Friday on Apple TV+) has drawn raves; “Crossing Swords” (which released all 10 episodes June 12 on Hulu) has drawn mixed reviews. They join “Disenchanted” (shown here) on Netflix and more, including Pixar on Disney+ and a ton of Japanese anime on HBO Max. Read more…
1) “Barkskins” finale (shown here), 9-11:03 p.m. ET, National Geographic, rerunning at 12:03 a.m. Brutal and bitter, this eight-hour mini-series will leave everyone with mixed emotions. Annie Proulx’s story of the 17th-century American frontier has a rich blend of characters, with little in common except intense cynicism. Now Cooke leads a mission to retrieve bodies … while claiming he doesn’t have the coveted pistols. Trepagny plans a wedding, while his housekeeper (and ex-lover) broods. Things explode powerfully. Read more…
If this is a time of underemployment, no one has told John Legend.
He’s about to have a special – this one on Father’s Day. It’s approximately his one-zillionth appearance since the COVID shutdown began. Read more…
Mae West strolled into a Hollywood that wasn’t ready for her.
This was a place that preferred women to be young, thin and quiet. She was none of those.
West (shown here) was 39, buxom and brassy. “I don’t allow myself any negative thinking,” she would explain later.
Now a documentary – “Mae West: Dirty Blonde” – debuts at 8 p.m. Tuesday (June 16), launching what Paula Kerger, the PBS president, calls an “effort to highlight trailblazing women this summer.” Read more…
1) “Songland” season-finale, 10 p.m. today, NBC. Four songwriters pitch songs to Usher (shown here) … who can sometimes mean a route to the top. He’s had 18 top-10 singles on the Billboard chart, half of them reaching No.1. Many lingered; for more than half of 2004 (28 of 52 weeks), an Usher song was No. 1. He also had two seasons on “The Voice,” coaching a champion (Josh Kaufman) and a runner-up. Now he’ll hear the pitches and choose three of the four songs for refining. Then he’ll pick one to record. Read more…
1) “Grantchester” season-opener, 9 p.m., PBS. Like most English villages, it seems, Grantchester has pleasant people, idyllic settings … and lots of murder. Fortunately, it also has a crimesolving vicar and his weary friend the cop. Their domain includes Cambridge University, where tonight they visit parties (shown here) and find beautiful students keeping ugly secrets. The whole thing gets solved quite easily, giving the show more time to work on lots of character details. The result is fairly entertaining, in a quietly classy way. Read more…
1) “The Last Dance,” 8 and 9 p.m., ABC. This acclaimed documentary series (originally on ESPN) concludes next week, with Michael Jordan (shown here) and the Chicago Bulls going for their final championship. First, this detour: At 30, Jordan found his life overloaded – three straight championships, the Olympics, gambling accusations and the murder of his father. He played minor-league baseball, quit basketball for a year-and-a-half … then returned to try to save the Bulls’ season. Read more…
