For weeks, viewers have had a basic question: Whatever happened to “The United States of Al”?
Now CBS has an answer. “Al” (shown here) – suddenly shelved during the Afghanistan withdrawal – has been rewriting its second-season opener.
Producers have created “an entirely new episode to address the current situation,” said Kelly Kahl, the network’s entertainment president. Read more…
1) 9/11 (shown here) coverage, all day. Twentieth-anniversary ceremonies start at 8:30 a.m.ET in New York and 9:45 a.m. in Shanksville, Pa., with the broadcast networks and cable news channels covering. There’s much more, with 9/11 marathons starting at 7 a.m. on History, 9 a.m. on Discovery and 12:30 p.m. on National Geographic. Reruns will dominate, but there are also new specials we’ll mention next. Read more…
Sure, there are roles that Jeff Daniels has had to stretch for.
In real life, he’s never been painted blue; he’s never been a gay man mourning lost love. He hasn’t been a president, good (George Washington) or bad (Warren Harding); he hasn’t been dumb or dumber.
He handled those roles easily. Still, he’s at his best playing rock-solid guys with a Midwestern vibe. That peaks as Del Harris in “American Rust” (shown hee), debuting at 10 p.m. Sunday (Sept. 12) on Showtime. Read more…
“Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” has just received an extraordinary reprieve.
It’s only a partial one, though. The show remains cancelled, but will have a holiday movie this year on the Roku Channel … which will also show the 25 previous episodes this fall.
“Playlist” (shown here) tells of a young woman in a San Francisco tech company, who suddenly has a strange gift: She can hear people’s thoughts, expressed through pop songs. Read more…
1) “Race Against Time: The CIA and 9/11,” 8-10 p.m., CBS, and more. On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the 9/ll attacks (shown here), the biggest networks jump in. CBS views the CIA’s failure to spot the attack in advance … and its success in finding Osama bin Laden. ABC counters with “20/20”: At 9 p.m., David Muir talks about the ways 9/11 shaped American life; at 10. Diane Sawyer talks with 40 families that lost husbands and fathers that day. And at 10, NBC’s “Dateline” talks to the families of people whose loved ones died in the Shanksville, Pa., crash. Read more…
1) Pro football season-opener, 8:20 p.m. ET, NBC, with pre-game at 7:30. A new season begins, just when we all need (and deserve) a distraction. Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Bucs had a slow start last year, then finished with eight straight wins and the Super Bowl championship. They host the Dallas Cowboys, with Dak Prescott back. Last year, the Cowboys were 2-3 before his inury, 4-7 afterward. Read more…
The title character in Disney+’s new “Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.” (shown hee) keeps juggling worlds.
She’s a teen-ager, feeling her first romantic crush; she’s also a doctor. Her roots are Hawaiian/Asian on her father’s side, Irish or Scottish on her mom’s. She’s surfing one moment, saving lives the next.
There’s a crowd inhabiting her psyche … but that seems to fit Peyton Elizabeth Lee, who plays her. Read more…
1) “Riverdale,” 8 p.m., CW. Great music and a so-so story combine, for what could be a pilot for a new series – and a good one. Josie McCoy (Ashleigh Murray) did the first few “Riverdale” seasons – mostly singing, alone or with the Pussycats. She left for the “Katy Keene” series, then disappeared … until now. The story is rather monotone, repeating similar emotions from each character and scene. But the music – six numbers, ranging from “Little Shop of Horrors”(shown here) to a Nina Simone ballad– is sensational. Read more…
For more than a century, the British have mastered the art of murder mysteries.
Lately, some of their younger colonies – Canada, Australia , New Zealand – have joined in. And Americans … well, we get to watch them, at a time when they’re really needed.
Bertie Carvel, starring in a new batch of Adam Dalgliesh tales (arriving in November), points to Dalgliesh’s creator: “I think P.D. James said she thought people like murder mysteries because they bring order out of chaos …. That’s something we need right now.”
Lucy Lawless – producing and starring in the current “My Life is Murder” series (which is shown here, with Lawless and Ebony Vagulans – agreed. “It’s giving people a sense of justice. The world’s been so unjust for the last six years and people are hungry for it.” Read more…
For the next week, our TV sets will become history machines.
Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, with ceremonies at the 9/11 memorial (shown here) and beyond. Much of the coverage will be packed into Friday and Saturday, but there will also be a couple earlier reports.
Here are some of the highlights. Afterward, I’ve included three separate stories that I posted last week: Read more…
