Let’s watch these 2 watch other people make crafts

Let’s watch these 2 watch other people make crafts
Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman Photo: Evans Vestal Ward

Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Thursday, December 5. All times are Eastern.


Top pick

Making It (NBC, 10 p.m.): The quiet TV days are descending, but never fear: Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman are here. And they brought crafting supplies.

Tonight’s episode, titled “Wreathy Street” (of course it is), is the fourth in this delightful second season, which makes it the halfway mark. If you haven’t had the pleasure, feel free to catch up before diving in, but this is the kind of reality series where dropping in at whatever point suits you is an option as well. It’s just very nice. And tonight: wreaths!

Regular coverage

Wild card

Evil (CBS, 10 p.m.): This, on the other hand, is not a show you should just drop in on at random, no matter how excited you are about guest stars Renée Elise Goldsberry and Peter Scolari.

If you’re not up-to-date on one of the best new shows of the fall, let Erik Adams convince you to start:

Demonic possession and divine vision seem like an odd fit for Robert and Michelle King—only if you haven’t been following what they’ve been up to since The Good Wife ended. The Kings already dabbled in the unearthly with their one-and-done body-politic-snatching satire BrainDead, and their latest effort for the Tiffany Network, Evil, starts out grounded in the topical, post-Trump, reality-versus-unreality tension that drives their CBS All Access spin-off The Good Fight. Call it The X-orcist Files: Forensic psychologist Dr. Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers) is pulled out of the courtroom to help the Catholic Church distinguish between cases of genuine hell-on-earth and garden-variety delusion, alongside priest-in-training David Acosta (Mike Colter) and resident skeptic Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi). Despite some familiar trappings, it’s a lack of knowing that sets the tone for Evil’s early going, the protagonists haunted by startling outcomes and a shadowy figure of seemingly bottomless wickedness played by Michael Emerson. Eventually, Evil’s mysteries start to come into focus, but this much is always certain: There hasn’t been anything this stylishly unsettling on network TV since Hannibal.

Next week The X-orcist Files—sorry, Evil—airs its last new episode before the new year, so if you start at the beginning now, you should be caught up before it returns to close out its first season in January.

 
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