1) “Saturday Night Live,” 11:29 p.m., NBC. For Lady Gaga (shown here), appearances on “SNL have been rare, but spectacular. She’s been the music guest four times in the past 15 years (not counting Peacock’s “SNL” mega-concert), often with visually ambitious numbers. Only once, however, did she double as host; now comes her second time doing both. Read more…
The CW network will continue to keep Wednesdays as its oasis of new, scripted shows.
This spring, that will include the debut of “Sherlock & Daughter,” the return of “Children Ruin Everything” and the third season of “Sullivan’s Crossing” (shown here) … just five months after the second one ended. Read more…
As “Righteous Gemstones” (shown here) starts its final season (10:01 p.m. Sunday, March 9, on HBO), it might seem sort of fleeting.
This is the fourth nine-episode season. Next to, say, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (26th season, 565 episodes) that’s a mere blink of an eye.
Still, it feels like it goes way back. “When we finished the pilot in 2018, it was a different world,” said Tim Baltz, who co-stars.
The first season went smoothly enough; the second didn’t. “We were shooting for two days and then we shut down for Covid,” said Danny McBride, the show’s creator and star. Read more…
1) “North by Northwest” (1959), 8 p.m. ET, Turner Classic Movies. Post-Oscars, there are still good movies to try. This zesty Hitchcock adventure (shown here with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint) is surrounded by the Marx Brothers’ “A Day at the Races” (1937) at 6 and “Lover Come Back” (1961) — an amiable Rock Hudson/Doris Day film with an Oscar-nominated script — at 10:30. Read more…
(This is the eighth chapter of a book-in-progress, “Television, and How It Got That Way.” For previous chapters, scroll down under “stories.”)
For TV people, some lessons are learned, unlearned and learned anew.
Flash back to Pat Weaver, who ran NBC from 1953-55.
“Once you’ve chosen the creative people and put them to work, you leave them alone,” he wrote later. “You wouldn’t tell Milton Berle what jokes to use. You wouldn’t tell a producer like Fred Coe how to climax a dramatic story for ‘Television Playhouse.’ At least I never did.”
That’s the same notion Grant Tinker had during his two turns at NBC – first (1961-67) as West Coast programming chief, later (1981-86) as network president, propelling an era of “Cheers” (shown here), “L.A. Law” and more. “The mission,” Tinker wrote later, “was to get good producers and let them produce.” Read more…
1) “Grey’s Anatomy” (shown here) return, 10 p.m., ABC. In the midst of a heat wave, Jo and Lucas went to a convenience story to get ice. There was a gunman, a fight and a shot; now – 15 weeks later – we learn what happened. There’s chaos in the hospital and Ben’s emergency plan faces challenges. Also, Amelia and Winston disagree about a patient. Read more…
As AMC moves out of the witches’ den and back to the reservation (shown here), it’s time for a nagging question:
What’s ahead for scripted shows on basic-cable? Will they all go away?
Cable “is in a state of steady decline,” Variety (the show-business trade paper) wrote recently. “Some would call it a state of decay.”
Others wouldn’t. The collapse “is irreversible,” one expert (Naveen Sarma) told Variety, “but there is no immediate cliff. We expect the decline will be a steady one that will take years.” Read more…
1) “The Amazing Race” opener, 9:30-11 p.m., CBS. It’s the show’s largest line-up, with 14 duos. There are married nurses and dating nurses. Three more duos are married, including Las Vegas performers and the parents of eight boys. There are father-son lumberjacks (shown here) and Chicago’s retired gangs-and-narcotics chief, who’s with his daughter. Read more…
This year’s Academy Award show gave us 31 great minutes.
It also gave us 194 not-great (and, sometimes, not good at all) minutes. But at least we got something.
The great ones were at the very start. There was a musical burst from Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo that took an 85-year leap from “Over the Rainbow” to “Defying Gravity.”
Then came Conan O’Brien’s sharp monolog. (We’ll forgive his nasty mini-film that preceded it; O’Brien made up for that later with a terrific little film introducing younger generations to movie theaters.) Read more…
1) Presidential address, 9 p.m. ET, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS and news channels. Technically, it’s not a “State of the Union” speech until a year into the term. But the last seven presidents also delivered a talk their first year, so here it is. The follow-up (including Democratic response by new Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan) continues to at least 11 ET. Alternatives, listed next, include “Will Trent” (shown here), Tom Hanks and more. Read more…
Best-bets for March 14: some cops, lots of fantasy 
Best-bets for March13: lots of laughs (plus sharks) 
Best-bets for March 12: a fun night, even with crime 
