“TV” is short for “TeleVision,” which is itself short for “Telegrams You Can See Using Your Sense of Vision.” Back when “TeleVision” was invented by Nikola Tesla and Elon Musk, they were also developing “Telegrams You Can Hear Using Your Sense of Ears,” which became the “TelePhone,” and “Telegrams You Can Smell with Your Big Ol’ Schnoz,” which became “Putting a Fish in Someone’s Glove Compartment on a Hot Day.” This has been your TV history lesson for the day. For TV present, keep scrolling.
Our picks for the best shows and movies to watch on linear TV and streaming this week include a pair of streaming shows that will be airing on CBS to fill holes in the network’s COVID-depleted schedule, a movie that’s skipping COVID-depleted theaters and heading straight to Netflix, and a really good paranoid thriller series on Amazon, among other nice things.
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The Emmys 2020
Sunday at 8/7c on ABC
There’s no way the live, remotely-produced 72nd Primetime Emmys won’t be a mess. In the interview above, the producers straight-up say things are going to go wrong, and they’ll just have to roll with it. So if you go into this with your expectations low and just appreciate that it’s happening at all, maybe it’ll be a good time. Sometimes a trainwreck is in the eye of the beholder. It’s likely that some really good shows will win big, so that’s something to look forward to. Jimmy Kimmel hosts.
Manhunt: Deadly Games
Monday at 10/9c on CBS
Limited series Manhunt: Deadly Games originally premiered as a Spectrum Original earlier this year, which means no one saw it despite its positive reviews. More people will see it now that it’s airing as a space-filler on CBS. It’s about the search for Eric Rudolph (Jack Huston), the right wing extremist who set off a bomb at the Centennial Olympic Park during the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996. It’s a recent historical event also covered in the film Richard Jewell, but this is more about the search as a whole, not just Jewell, played here by Mindhunter‘s Cameron Britton.
Enola Holmes
Wednesday on Netflix
Stranger Things‘ Millie Bobby Brown stars as Sherlock’s kid sister in this adaptation of Nancy Springer’s lighthearted mystery series. Sherlock (Henry Cavill) isn’t the only sleuth in the Holmes family anymore, as Enola tries to solve the mystery of her missing mother (Helena Bonham Carter), against her disapproving big brother’s wishes. The script was written by Jack Thorne, the impossibly prolific writer who wrote the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and has nine credits on IMDb in 2019 and 2020 alone. This was supposed to be MBB’s movie star moment with a theatrical release, but the pandemic has forced her back to Netflix. Alas. [TV Guide Review]
Star Trek: Discovery
Thursday at 10/9c on CBS
The pilot episode of Star Trek: Discovery RETURNS to CBS. The series originally premiered on CBS proper back in 2017 as an enticement to get people to sign up for CBS All Access, the show’s forever home. But now that CBS needs to fill time on the schedule until the shows that are reentering production have episodes to deliver, Discovery is back on the Eye for real, with several episodes airing after this. I don’t know if they’ll get through the whole 15-episode season, but they’ll almost certainly air through the Season 3 premiere, which is coming to All Access on Oct. 15.
The Murders at White House Farm
Thursday on HBO Max
This limited series is known in the UK simply as White House Farm, because the crime it tells the story of is one of the most infamous in the country’s history. In 1985, a family was brutally murdered in what was initially ruled a murder-suicide, but then it emerged that it very much was not. Freddie Fox plays the real killer, Jeremy Bamber, who was the son, brother, or uncle of the victims, and Mark Addy and Stephen Graham play the detectives on the case. This show was controversial when it aired on ITV earlier this year, because a lot of viewers felt Stephen Graham’s Welsh accent was terrible.
Utopia
Friday on Amazon Prime Video
This twisted thriller series comes from Gone Girl‘s Gillian Flynn and stars John Cusack, in his first series regular role, as a biotech CEO who may be intentionally spreading a devastating virus that’s going to wipe millions of people out, and Rainn Wilson as a virologist he hires to “stop” it. Also, there’s a comic book that predicted this pandemic and may hold the key to stopping it, and a lot of people are after it, and some of them are willing to do some extremely brutal stuff to obtain it. Also, it’s a lot funnier than it sounds. [TV Guide Review]
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