Worth Watching: ‘Agatha Raisin,’ HBO’s ‘Breslin-Hamill’ Tribute, ‘I Am the Night’ Premiere
A selective critical checklist of notable Monday TV:
Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate (streaming on Acorn TV): The delightful comedy-mystery, based on the novels of M.C. Beaton, wraps its second season (comprised of three movie-length installments) by welcoming the hottest vicar this side of PBS’s Grantchester to the village of Carsley. With hot curate Tristan (Olly Rix) setting the ladies’ — and at least one gay male admirer’s — hearts aflutter, amateur sleuth Agatha Raisin (Ashley Jensen) is among the few who are immune. And that’s mainly because she’s still embroiled in a messy love triangle between her ex-lover James (Jamie Glover) and her current admirer, Sir Charles (Jason Merrells). Given her reputation as a murder magnet, second only to Murder She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher, Agatha is soon up to her blonde locks trying to solve a murder where everyone’s a suspect, a few of whom end up dead themselves. Say a prayer that Agatha will be back with more capers before too long.
Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists (8/7c, HBO): A love letter to New York City through the lives and letters of two of tabloid journalist’s greatest personalities, this colorful documentary portrait of Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill takes us back to the days when the common citizen still devoured daily newspapers — on paper. Friends and often rivals, these columnists took different approaches to championing their working-class readers. Breslin was a pugilist with words, the more glamorous Hamill a street poet. As eyewitnesses to history — the political assassinations of the 1960s, the Son of Sam killings of the 1970s, Bernhard Geotz’s controversial subway shootings in 1984, up to the tragedy of 9/11 — they were first and foremost great storytellers.
I Am the Night (9/8c, TNT): This atmospheric six-part California noir, directed by Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman), stars Chris Pine as a washed-up journalist whose path crosses that of 16-year-old Fauna Hodel (sultry newcomer India Eisley), who travels from Nevada to L.A. in search of her unknown birth mother. The quest leads both of them into a sordid underworld, and the orbit of a shady gynecologist (Jefferson Mays, oozing menace) who may be connected to the infamous unsolved Black Dahlia murder of the 1940s.
Inside Monday TV: ABC’s The Bachelor (8/7c) heads to Singapore, where bungee jumping is among the exotic temptations… Now that Project NOAH has little Amy (Saniyya Sidney) in their clutches on Fox’s The Passage (9/8c), Agent Wolgast (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) makes a deal to stay by her side, while secretly investigating just what the top-secret lab is up to. (It’s not pretty.)… Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) has plenty of reason to identify with his latest patient on ABC’s The Good Doctor (10/9c), when he, Reznick (Fiona Gubelmann) and Lim (Christina Chang) treat a woman with autism… PBS’s Independent Lens presents The King (10/9c), Eugene Jarecki’s film about his musical road trip in Elvis Presley’s 1963 Rolls Royce, from Memphis to Vegas and beyond.
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