Year: 2021

1) “Shark Beach With Chris Hemsworth” (show here), 9 p.m., National Geographic. TV’s shark summer is back: “SharkFest” starts today, for a six-week run on two Nat Geo channels; “Shark Week” is July 11-18 on Discovery. We’ll see lots of creepy creatures, including (at 8 and 10 p.m. today) “When Sharks Attack” and “Rogue Shark?” But “Beach” has a feel-good tone. Hemsworth says he “grew up in paradise” in Australia and surfed at 6. He meets diving veteran Valerie Taylor … and sees his first great white. Read more…

1) “A Capitol Fourth,” 8 p.m., PBS, rerunning at 9:30. This celebration spans the country. From Washington, D.C., there’s host Vanessa Williams, plus Gladys Knight, Mickey Guyton, Jimmie Allen, Ali Stroker, Laura Osnes, Renee Fleming (singing the National Anthem), the National Orchestra and closing fireworks (shown here in a previous year). Also: Alan Jackson will perform be in Nashville and Jennifer Nettles and Auli’i Cavalho in New York City, with Jimmy Buffett, Cynthia Erivo, Pentatonix and Train all in California. Read more…

1) “Saving Private Ryan” (1998), 6:05 p.m., Showtime; and/or “Top Gun” (1986), 8 p.m., Starz. For this 4th-of-July weekend, cable has some military movies that are strong on patriotic fervor. “Private Ryan” is a Steven Spielberg masterpiece that manages to be a strong human draman (with Matt Damon, shown here, Tom Hanks and more) and a stirring adventure. And in its 20-minute D-Day scene, it’s a reminder of the horror of war. “Top Gun” is a peacetime (mostly) tale of hot-shot pilots at work and play, brilliantly directed by Tony Scott. Read more…

1) “America Masters: Norman Lear,” 9-10:30 p.m., PBS. It was a hard-scrabble start for Lear (shown here): His dad, full of dreams and schemes, spent three years in prison for selling phony stocks; Lear left college to fight in World War II, worked as a publicist … then did TV comedy. Two networks balked at “All in the Family,” but it became No. 1 for five straight years. At one point, Lear had five shows in the top nine, while nudging TV into topical turf. This excellent rerun profiles a strong talent who’s now 98. Read more…

1) “Good Girls,” 9 p.m. NBC. This won’t be back next year, but we can catch new episodes on the next four Thursdays. Desperate to dump their counterfeit cash, the women lost it all in Las Vegas. They were delighted; Rio, the gang leader who leads the counterfeit scheme, wasn’t. Now he takes a hostage; there are great moments for Mae Whitman (center) and Christina Hendricks (left), as Annie and her sister Beth. Read more…

1) “The Bold Type” series finale, 10 p.m, Freeform. With smart characters and sleek visuals, this has seemed like the ideal show for Freeform’s young-adult target. At a magazine, three women became friends; Jane (right) writes, Sutton (center) designs, Kat (left) does tech. Now the network promises “big changes and hard decisions”; a brief sampling focuses on Jane: She bumps into Zach, whom she did a story on previously; also, she tries to nudge Kat into reviving the romance with Adina. Read more…