Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Friday, July 26, and Saturday, July 27. All times are Eastern, unless otherwise noted.
TOP PICK
Borgen (LinkTV, 10 p.m. Pacific, Friday): Everybody’s favorite Danish political drama returns for its second season. “But What’s On Tonight!” you might say. “It never really left.” And to that, we would respond with a hearty, “Sure!” but you have to put yourself in the shoes of our Danish compatriots, who had to wait a good, long while before they finally got to see what happened after Birgitte’s whole private life blew up and she isolated her best friend in parliament, just to keep being prime minister and all that. Todd VanDerWerff blew up his private life for no real reason just yesterday.
REGULAR COVERAGE
Magic City (Starz, 9 p.m., Friday): The description for this week’s episode includes the phrase “bacchanalian DJ convention,” and we’re going to see how often we can work that phrase into polite conversations with Will Harris, who’s here at the Television Critics Association press tour with us.
Comedy Bang! Bang! (IFC, 10 p.m., Friday): Academy Award nominated superstar recording artist Anna Kendrick drops by, and if the episode is half as entertaining as her surprisingly enjoyable Twitter feed, then we suspect David Sims will give this episode the A++++ that it will almost certainly deserve.
TV CLUB CLASSIC
Babylon 5 (11 a.m., Friday): One of this week’s episodes is entitled “Ship Of Tears,” which sounds pretty badass. Or at least we think so. We’re thinking about making that the name of the first album by our prog-rock collective, The Rowan Kaiser Conundrum, but Rowan’s not so sure he can get behind that.
The Larry Sanders Show (1 p.m., Friday): This week's set of episodes kicks off with Hank spreading lesbian rumors to keep Jon Lovitz away. Kyle Ryan can't see any way this could possibly go wrong, and he’s adopted several similar strategies in his own life when confronted with any number of problems.
Wonderfalls (3 p.m., Friday): With episode titles like “Lovesick Ass,” it’s a wonder to us that this show didn’t take off. Fox or Bryan Fuller or someone should have hired a skywriter to write, “ONE OF THIS SHOW’S EPISODES IS CALLED ‘LOVESICK ASS.’” Les Chappell says, “Mmmm! That’s viral marketing!”
The Twilight Zone (1 p.m., Saturday): Todd VanDerWerff checks out what happens when a girl who can’t talk is taken in by some friendly suburbanites. Naturally enough, since this is The Twilight Zone, this isn’t, like, Nell or anything. Instead, she has telepathic powers, which cause all sorts of problems.
WHAT ELSE IS ON
William, Kate, & The Royal Baby (OWN, 8 p.m., Friday): If you missed this one the first time around—and we know you guys, so we know you didn’t—then you’re going to be super psyched to see that you can catch it all over again. You can discuss the wisdom of naming a baby George while watching, too.
Primetime: Would You Fall For That? (ABC, 9 p.m., Friday): To be certain, we would fall for that. We would fall for that nine times. We’re easily confused by the simplest of tasks, and we can’t remember which of our cats is which. So don’t try and pull one over on us, ABC! We’ll get mad about it later!
Continuum (Syfy, 10 p.m., Friday): The Canadian time travel import continues its ramble through its second season, with an episode where Kiera embarks on a search for several missing time travelers at the same time. Our best guess? Lightning zapped those time travelers to the Old West. Exciting stuff!
72 Hours (TNT, 10:30 p.m. Friday): We’ve been told by connoisseurs of reality television that this is one of the finer examples of the form, but it would seem the viewing audience doesn’t agree, since it’s ending its first season in a really weird timeslot on a Friday night. Watch it while you still can.
American Haunting (A&E, 8 p.m., Saturday): If you enjoyed the wacky ghouls of The Conjuring and grooved on the extremely unlikely “based on a true story” of it all, then you should probably spend all night watching this, just the latest in a long run of “let’s recreate your dubious haunting!” reality shows.
Axe Cop/High School USA (Fox, 11 p.m., Saturday): Fox’s new Animation Domination High Definition bloc moves into its forever home with new episodes of both of these shows. If you liked them when they previewed last Sunday night, you’re in luck. If you didn’t like them, you can go ahead and ignore.
Day For Night (TCM, 8 p.m., Friday): Francois Truffaut played himself in this Oscar-winning film about a filmmaker struggling to complete his film, despite numerous setbacks. For whatever reason, TCM is showing a bunch of Truffaut this month, and we’re totally okay with that. Who else is gonna do it?
Ted (HBO, 8 p.m., Friday): Or you could watch this and celebrate the unlikely conquer of the multiplex by Mr. Seth MacFarlane. As a talking teddy bear, MacFarlane is his usual self—right down to the voice he does—while Mark Wahlberg is the guy who finds his now-living stuffed toy to be a pain in the ass.
X-Men: The Last Stand (FX, 8 p.m., Saturday): Open question time: Which of the X-Men films is worse? This one, which takes several potentially awesome story ideas and mostly pisses all over them, or X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which just really, really sucked. Our vote is for this one. What do you think?
Boxing: Burgos-Amidu (super featherweights) (ESPN2, 9 p.m., Friday): Both Juan Carlos Burgos and Yakubu Amidu have had considerable success in their careers, with Burgos suffering only one loss so far and both landing a similar number of knockout punches. That should make for a thrilling fight.
UFC: Johnson vs. Moraga (Fox, 8 p.m., Saturday): Demetrious Johnson and John Moraga take each other on in a flyweight bout coming to you out of Seattle. That’s literally all we know about this, because we can’t be bothered to Google anything. We need to get this done so we can go have free cocktails!
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Friends (Thursday): Sure, you’ve been following along with Sonia Saraiya and Joe Reid’s pieces on this show every week, but did you know that there’s an episode featuring Jon Lovitz this week? Well, you probably did, since you’ve been following along, but we thought that the fact bore repeating.