Another Period mashes up costume dramas and reality shows, fulfilling trash TV’s destiny
Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Tuesday, June 23. All times are Eastern.
Top pick
Another Period (Comedy Central, 10:30 p.m.): Having pretty much mastered sketch comedy—seriously, the network that once brought us Krod Mandoon and Secret Girlfriend has basically perfected modern sketch—Comedy Central turns its eyes toward costume drama and reality TV with this Natasha Leggero and Riki Lindhome-created sendup of shows ranging from Downton Abbey to Keeping Up With The Kardashians, which are pretty much the same show anyway, when you think about it. (Huh, we may have just tossed away a perfectly good hot take. Oh well.) Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is optimistic about the show in her pre-air review, up later today, while LaToya Ferguson will be along later tonight to kick off regular coverage of the goings-on in Bellacourt Manor, starting with a visit from Helen Keller.
Also noted
Inside Amy Schumer (Comedy Central, 10 p.m.): Meanwhile, Inside Amy Schumer moves up a half-hour, and the show makes the most of the promotion with an episode I which Amy falls in love with her barista and “loses her head,” which we hope is not just an expression and in fact means she literally misplaces her head, forcing her body to wander around in search of it, like in that one episode of The Young Ones. Sorry, Kate Knibbs is handing us a piece of paper reminding us we promised not to keep bringing up The Young Ones. Yeah, that’s not a promise we were ever going to be able to keep. Music!
Tyrant (FX, 10 p.m.): We’re not covering this weekly, but hey! That’s no reason not to include it in What’s On Tonight, especially when there’s literally nothing else on outside that one hour of Comedy Central stuff. (Seriously, it’s either this or, what, NCIS reruns?) Anyway, the second episode of the season finds Molly trying to rebuild her life in the US without Barry, all while “Jamal deals with the loss of a close relative,” which, knowing Jamal, probably won’t involve nearly as much feeling of emotions as it would for pretty much anyone else.
Elsewhere in TV Club
We check in with two very different television legends, as Katherine Brodsky interviews Carl Reiner and Stephen Bowie conducts a Random Roles with Diana Rigg. Hmm … could we please do a buddy comedy with Carl Reiner and Diana Rigg? We don’t ask for much, you know (though if you could also go ahead and read Joshua Alston’s Watch This on Burning Love, we’d be much obliged.)
What else is on?
Southern Fried Homicide (ID, 9 p.m.): “A single mom meets a struggling author who eventually shows his true colors.” Oh, we bet he turns out to be super nice!
How To Be A Grown Up (truTV, 10 p.m.): The title this week is “Gossip, Jury Duty and Potty Training.” Of those, one a part of being a grownup that most grownups try to avoid, another is a part of being a grownup that most grownups probably should avoid, and the third is something that you really ought to have mastered long before you reach adulthood. Honestly, we applaud truTV’s noble aspirations, but using this show to potty-train even a small segment of its adult viewers feels like far too little, much too late.
Leepu & Pitbull (History, 10:00 p.m.): This new reality series features a mechanic and car designer customizing cars that have seen better days, starting with a beat-up 1981 Camaro. Because 1981 is part of history, we guess?
Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel (HBO, 10 p.m.): We’ve got a couple heavy-duty stories here, as the team examines head trauma in youth soccer and the ongoing humanitarian disaster that is the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. In the midst of all that will also be “a look at the GoPro high-def video camera,” which we’re going to go ahead and guess won’t be quite as hard-hitting as the other bits.
Frontline (PBS, 10 p.m.): The latest episode looks into sexual abuse of immigrant women in the janitorial industry. Yeah, that sounds like fairly grim territory. Has Frontline considered tossing in a GoPro infomercial? You know, just to relieve the tension?
Jurassic Park III (Syfy, 7 p.m.): When discussing the record-setting Jurassic World with friends and acquaintances, we have often found it necessary to point out that it is the fourth film in the franchise, rather than the third (or even the second, for those who have accepted dangerously low levels of Jeff Goldblum into their lives). Anyway, the forgotten stepchild of the Jurassic Park franchise really doesn’t have that much to recommend it, other than a supporting turn by a reliably fierce William H. Macy, and his even more fierce mustache.
The A-Team (FXM, 8 p.m.): He’s kind of pulled back from this in recent years, what with his shift to being a multiple Oscar nominee and the galaxy’s coolest talking raccoon, but this is the movie where a post-Hangover Bradley Cooper appeared ready to evolve into a sentient smirk. We kind of miss unrepentant wiseass Bradley Cooper, especially when he was busy blowing shit up with Liam Neeson, Sharlto Copley, and Rampage Jackson.
MLB Baseball: Cardinals at Marlins (FS1, 7 p.m.): So, on the one side, you have one of the scummiest teams in baseball … and on the other side, you have the Miami Marlins. Oh, sure, the Marlins are owned by the repugnant Jeffrey Loria, who has ripped apart the team on numerous occasions for no clear reason other than to save money—even when he had just convinced the city of Miami to spend millions on a shiny new stadium—and generally appears to be running something closer to a multi-million dollar game of three-card monte than a baseball team. But at least the Marlins aren’t under an FBI investigation for industrial espionage of a rival team’s confidential files! So yeah, somehow the Marlins are the more morally upstanding team in this series. Go figure. (Also, in case anyone wants to point to the teams’ relative runs of success, we’d just point out they’ve won the exact same number of World Series titles in the last 32 years, which is particularly funny when you consider the Marlins didn’t exist for the first 10 of those.)
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