It may not be the weekend yet, but it’s Close Enough
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Thursday, July 9. All times are Eastern.
Top pick
Close Enough (HBO, 3:01 a.m., complete first season): “Close Enough shifts its point-of-view from Regular Show’s burnout-aesthetic of twentysomethings within a vaguely bleak setting and opaque career and life pursuits to the complex, hazy world of millennials ‘settling down’–i.e., of living and surviving in your thirties. Quintel’s work, at its best, pinpoints the absolute baffling and confusing minutiae of ‘adulting,’ and while that word as a meme is annoying, it speaks to the ever-present question of how to adjust from, or how to find a modern balance between, the freewheeling quasi-dependency of one’s teenage and college years, to the more grounded, self-reliant reality of being an adult. Combined with the truth of a lost social contract allowing a clear path to stability and security, Close Enough has the potential to be a defining show of the 2020s.” Click here to read the rest of Kevin Johnson’s pre-air review.
Regular coverage
On stage At home
The Deep Blue Sea (National Theatre Live via YouTube, 2 p.m., available until July 16): The great Helen McCrory (Peaky Blinders, Penny Dreadful, a thousand other things) stars in this towering Terence Rattigan drama, alongside Tom Burke (The Souvenir) and Peter Sullivan (Poldark). A 2011 film adaptation starred Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston, and Weisz is an incredible performer, but you know who else is? Helen Goddamn McCrory, that’s who.
Wild cards
Expecting Amy (HBO Max, 3:01 a.m., complete first season): This three-part documentary follows Amy Schumer as she prepares for the taping of a comedy special she’s not sure she’ll actually be able to film, due to a complicated, difficult pregnancy.
Cannonball (USA, 8 p.m., series premiere): If you woke up this morning and thought, “Wow, I need more of The Miz and/or TV shows where people bounce off things and fall into water,” then please spend tomorrow morning wishing for a more just universe.