Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Friday, October 4 and Saturday, October 5. All times are Eastern.
Top picks
Dana Carvey: Straight White Male, 60 (Netflix, 3:01 a.m., Friday): Former SNL superstar Dana Carvey fun facts! 1. He made his movie debut in Halloween II. 2. This is his first stand-up special in eight years. 3. Carvey’s actually 61 at this point. 4. You suddenly feel even older than you did before you read that. 5. Carvey almost died on the operating table when his heart surgeon operated on the wrong artery. 6. That last one is less a “fun fact” and more a “fact,” or “bummer.” 7. Dennis Perkins is on hand to review.
The Ivory Game (Netflix, 3:01 a.m., Friday): Yay! A documentary about how greedy, vain, stupid humans are hunting majestic creatures to extinction! Just an idea—stop doing that. Mike D’Angelo braced himself for the review.
One & Done (Showtime, 9 p.m., Friday): Sports documentary about Ben Simmons, the 19-year-old Aussie lad who went #1 in this year’s NBA draft. Naturally, since he had the misfortune of winding up on the snake-bit 76ers, he immediately broke his foot and is likely to miss the first three months of the season. Still, he got this cool movie out of it.
2016 Breeders’ Cup (NBC, 8 p.m., Saturday): Tune in for a few minutes of action where horses run really fast in hopes of getting small humans off their backs so they can not run any more and eat some nice hay.
Who Killed JonBenét? (Lifetime, 8 p.m., Saturday): Nothing says good TV like exhuming a murdered child’s corpse one more time for an exploitative television movie. Followed by Lifetime’s even more totally necessary and tasteful documentary, JonBenet’s Mother: Victim or Killer?
Zero Days (Showtime, 9 p.m., Saturday): Alex Gibney’s new documentary traces the development and disastrous escape of Stuxnet, a U.S. and Israel developed piece of malware designed to infect and disable Iran’s nuclear program. Strangely, shockingly, the self-replicating thingy busted out onto the internet and probably harvested all of your personal information at some point.
400 Days (Syfy, 9 p.m., Saturday): Syfy’s first foray into theatrical releases came and went from those same theaters without making too much of a ripple, sadly. But, hey, that’s what Syfy is for! So kick back and watch the TV premiere of this sci-fi (note the spelling) tale of a group of astronauts (including Brandon Routh, Tom Cavanagh, and Dane Cook for some reason) whose virtual reality interstellar voyage drives them perhaps predictably buggy. By the law of mathematical titles, this should be infinitely better than Zero Days, so strap in!