Tuesday TV: Bribery in NBA Recruiting
That the NCAA basketball tournament was called March Madness seems quaint now. In a much deeper era of madness, the absence of the event means no brackets, no elite eight,…
Monday TV: ‘One Child Nation’ on PBS
We are learning too clearly these days that government policy can have devastating consequences. It happened in China, too, and we’re not talking about the coronavirus. It was its one…
Sunday TV: Sad Songs Save So Much
How does popular culture confront every huge disaster? With a concert! It happens again tonight with the hastily-planned Living Room Concert for America (Fox, 9 p.m.) hosted by Elton John,…
Saturday: West Memphis Three Revisited
The 1993 murders of three 8-year-old boys in Arkansas gets another look tonight. Originally three teenagers who were into the occult and heavy metal were convicted in the community heavily…
Friday TV: Gunn, Klum in New Design Show
What’s different about the new fashion designer competition “Making the Cut” (Amazon, streaming)? It seems to have a more global approach. Judges confer in front of the contestants. Most of…
Thursday TV: Fleeing Brooklyn for Berlin
Shira Haas stars in Maria Shrader’s new four-part adaptation of Deborah Feldman, “Unorthodox” (Netflix, streaming), in which a young Hasidic Jewish woman leaves Brooklyn and the orthodoxy for a new…
Wisdom from Terrence McNally, 1938-2020
Theater suffered a loss this week when the playwright Terrence McNally died at 81, of complications of our current plague, the coronavirus. It was a sad irony since many of…
Wednesday TV: Traveling by Television
When travel began to be shut down due to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, religious landmarks were among the first to close. Thus a new series like “Earth’s Sacred Wonders” (PBS,…
Tuesday TV: ‘Council of Dads’ Debuts
A fragile and emotional time is probably the perfect atmosphere to introduce the new drama “Council of Dads” (NBC, 10 p.m.) in which a group of friends take over parenting…
Monday TV: A Boy’s Move to Fisherman
The documentary “The Rescue List,” making its premiere tonight on “POV” (PBS, 10 p.m., check local listings) follows a team working to rehabilitate two boys in Ghana who were trafficked…