The Emmys, ‘Moonflower Murders’ and More PBS Mysteries, ‘Tulsa King’ Returns, CNN’s Comedic News Quiz
Eugene Levy and Dan Levy host the 76th Emmy Awards Sunday on ABC. There’s a mystery within a mystery in Masterpiece’s engaging Moonflower Murders, sandwiched between new seasons of Ridley and Van der Valk. Sylvester Stallone returns as a New York mobster transplanted to Oklahoma in Season 2 of Tulsa King. CNN launches a comedy-skewing news quiz, Have I Got News for You, hosted by Roy Wood Jr. of The Daily Show alum.
Emmys
SUNDAY: Eugene Levy and Dan Levy, who both won Emmys for the final season of Schitt’s Creek, take the stage of L.A.’s Peacock Theater as father-son hosts of TV’s biggest awards ceremony. Expect major wins from FX’s Shogun in drama and The Bear in comedy (though some argue it should also be competing in drama) and Netflix’s Baby Reindeer in the limited series/anthology category. But don’t be shocked if there are a few surprises along the way.
Moonflower Murders
SUNDAY: Anthony Horowitz’s sequel to Magpie Murders is another tantalizing puzzle box of a murder mystery buried within a literary mystery. Lesley Manville returns as book editor Susan Ryeland, who gave up publishing to help her Greek beau run a struggling hotel in glorious Crete. She’s restless enough to consider a trip back to England, when parents (also hotel proprietors) of a missing woman beg her to use her expertise to solve an eight-year-old crime whose solution may be found in the pages of one of the novels by her late prize mystery author Alan Conway (Game of Thrones’ Conleth Hill). As she peruses those pages for clues, she’s haunted by the novel’s fabled sleuth Atticus Pünd (Tim McMullan), while events in the novel are enacted by the same actors playing the characters in the real-life mystery Susan is trying to solve. This Masterpiece diversion is sandwiched between the Season 2 premiere of Ridley (8/7c), starring Line of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar as a retired detective who now consults for the police, and Season 4 of Van der Valk (10/9c), starring Marc Warren as the title detective solving crimes in Amsterdam.
Tulsa King
SUNDAY: Having enjoyed exposure to a new audience when CBS aired Season 1 over the summer, the darkly humorous crime drama returns for its second season after more than a year and a half with transplanted New York mobster Dwight Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone, happily sending up his own tough-guy persona) in hot water. His sometimes girlfriend and federal agent Stacy Beale (Andrea Savage) has arrested him for bribery, and while he’s awaiting trial, he’ll also be defending his new Tulsa crime turf from a mob rival (Frank Grillo) and a local businessman (Yellowstone’s Neal McDonough). Heavy lies the head that wears the Oklahoma crown.
Have I Got News for You
SATURDAY: Sometimes after a hectic news week—and aren’t they all lately—you just need a good laugh. The Daily Show alum Roy Wood Jr. hears you, and he’ll keep it light but topical as host of a comedic news quiz based on a long-running BBC hit series. The edgy game casts Late Night with Seth Meyers regular (and former talk-show host) Amber Ruffin and comedian Michael Ian Black as team captains, welcoming celebrity guests—for the opener, A Black Lady Sketch Show’s Robin Thede and libertarian editor Matt Welch—to test their knowledge while riffing on current events. A sense of humor is required.
60 Minutes
SUNDAY: More seriously, TV’s premiere newsmagazine launches its 57th season with Scott Pelley’s report on the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, featuring interviews with one of the first to breach the Capitol, one of the Metropolitan police officers injured in the attack and U.S. attorney Matthew Graves. Cecilia Vega gets a first-hand look at the tension between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea, and Anderson Cooper profiles musician Dua Lipa.
Industry
SUNDAY: Was Yasmine (Marisa Abela) joking when she laughingly told her platonic bedmate Robert (Harry Lawtey) last week that she killed her father? One of the most emotionally lacerating episodes to date of the savage financial drama flashes back to that infamous boat ride aboard the Lady Jasmine to reveal exactly what happened. Her former colleague Harper (Myha’la) was there for her then, but can their friendship survive the skullduggery currently bedeviling the Pierpoint bank, where more than once you’ll hear someone wondering aloud, “Is the company in trouble?” Seems that it is, with a new CEO installed who’s described as “a butcher masquerading as a surgeon.” Yikes.
INSIDE WEEKEND TV:
- The Heiress and the Handyman (Saturday, 8/7c, Hallmark Channel): Fan favorite Jodie Sweetin stars as a down-on-her-luck heiress who moves to the family farm and bonds with her neighbor (Corey Sevier), even after she mistakes him for the handyman.
- On Patrol: Live (Saturday, 9 pm/ET, Reelz): The real-time law enforcement chronicle marks its 200th episode.
- Elementary (Saturday, streaming on Prime Video): All seven seasons of the enjoyable contemporary Sherlock Holmes procedural, starring Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu, begin streaming on the Prime platform.
- The Chosen (Sunday, 8/7c, The CW): Religious leaders confront Jesus (Jonathan Roumie) after he heals a blind man on the Sabbath.
- Nightmare in the Desert (Sunday, 8/7c, Lifetime): The network opens its fall movie lineup with a thriller starring Gia De Sauvage as Shae, whose hike through Joshua Tree National Park with boyfriend Chris (Tristan J. Watson), who plans to propose, takes a dark turn courtesy of a sinister stranger tracking them into the desert.
- Sunday Night Football (Sunday, 8:15 pm/ET, NBC): The marquee game features the Chicago Bears at Houston Texans.
- Emperor of Ocean Park (Sunday, 9/8c, MGM+): In the season finale of the political mystery, law professor Tal (Grantham Coleman) and his sister Mariah (Tiffany Mack) try to put their family’s dangerous past behind them. Followed by the second episode of the true-crime series The Wonderland Massacre & the Secret History of Hollywood (10/9c), where key witness Scott Thorson spills the beans on what he knows about the murders and the 1980s drug underworld while reminiscing about life with Liberace among Hollywood’s elite.
- Snowpiercer (Sunday, 9/8c, AMC): The penultimate episode of the futuristic thriller pits the citizens of New Eden against a sniper and other soldiers from the mammoth train, where Melanie (Jennifer Connelly) drops a bombshell on Alex (Rowan Blanchard) about the identity of her biological dad.