Marilyn Monroe RIP, HBO’s ‘Survivor’ Story, ‘Nick News’ in Ukraine, Disney’s ‘Sketchbook’

The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes

Even 60 years after her tragic overdose death at 36, Marilyn Monroe remains an object of fascination and speculation. Biographer Anthony Summers (Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe) provides new information from his archives of taped interviews regarding her turbulent life and rumor-shrouded death. Among the revelations: According to insiders, after her death in her L.A. home, then-President John F. Kennedy and brother Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, with whom she allegedly had affairs, had fixers remove items that had to do with the men.

The Survivor

His body was a weapon, his soul collateral damage. That’s the wrenching real-life story of Auschwitz survivor Harry (born Hertzko) Haft, introduced as “the pride of Poland” in his post-war career in America as a pro boxer. Each punch he absorbs carries PTSD flashes from his time in the concentration camp, where he was kept alive only to pummel doomed fellow prisoners for their Nazi captors’ amusement. The remarkable Ben Foster undergoes extreme physical transformation to portray Harry from emaciated prisoner to beefy refugee. He yearns to take on the legendary Rocky Marciano if only for publicity that might help him connect with the love of his life, who disappeared in the camps. Barry Levinson directs with unflinching realism and compassion.

Nick News

CBS News correspondent Vladimir Duthiers hosts a new installment of the renowned news-for-kids series, which goes to war-torn Ukraine for a report from CBS’s Imtiaz Tyab about kids in Lviv who’ve been driven from their hometowns by carnage but refuse to give up hope. Another segment features Nick star Gabrielle Nevaeh (That Girl Lay Lay, All That) in a trip to New York City to profile the members of Girl Scout Troop 6000, which serves the thousands of girls living in the city’s shelter system.

Sketchbook

Watch the pros bring classic and contemporary Disney animated characters to life in a docuseries that doubles as instructional video and window into the minds of these gifted artists. Each episode focuses on one character—Olaf from Frozen, Captain Hook from Peter Pan, the Genie from Aladdin, Mirabel from Encanto, Young Simba from The Lion King and Kuzco from Emperor’s New Groove – and as an animator walks viewers through the steps to replicating these figures, they reveal their own life journeys that brought them to Disney and the drawing board.

Good Sam

With NBC and ABC mostly in repeats, this is one of the few scripted originals airing on broadcast TV tonight. In the penultimate episode of the first season, Griff (Jason Isaacs) girds himself for fallout from his DUI confession, but he also gets blowback from Lex (Skye P. Marshall) over what she sees as a betrayal. While Sam (Sophia Bush) prepares for a risky surgery that could advance her career, Malcolm (Edwin Hodge) makes a run for his mother’s newly vacated board seat.

Inside Wednesday TV:

• Music’s Greatest Mysteries (8/7c, AXS TV): John, Paul, George and … Jimmie? The docuseries looks back to a two-week period in 1964 when Beatles drummer Ringo Starr was sidelined by tonsillitis and session drummer Jimmie Nicol subbed as his replacement at the start of the band’s world tour. Why then did Nicol regard this as the worst moment of his career?
• A Million Little Things (10/9c, ABC): Series star Allison Miller (Maggie) directs an episode in which Gary (James Roday Rodriguez) navigates a seemingly endless series of predicaments that threaten to keep him from meeting a key deadline.
• Bullsh*t The Game Show (streaming on Netflix): America’s Got Talent judge Howie Mandel moonlights as host of a game show with a twist: Contestants could win big money even if they don’t know the answer, so long as they can convince other players that they’re right.