HBO's Small Town News sheds light on a free-spirited Nevada news station

Also tonight: A new Bachelorette and National Geographic's Drain The Oceans explores the Wild West

By Saloni Gajjar | August 2, 2021 | 5:00am

TV Lists HBO

HBO's Small Town News sheds light on a free-spirited Nevada news station

Missey Kohler and Deanna O’Donnell in Small Town News: KPVM Pahrump Photo: Gilles Mingasson/HBO

Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Monday, August 2. All times are Eastern.

Top pick

Small Town News: KPVM Pahrump (HBO, 9 p.m.): This new HBO documentary series follows the hilarious, heartwarming people who run a local independent news station in Nevada. Based in the desert town of Pahrump (population 37,000), the privately-owned KPVM now plans to expand to Las Vegas with aims to be accessible to 2.6 million more people. The six half-hour episodes chronicle the owners and employees of the news station and their scrappy, hard-working attitude to empower the small community. Small Town News: KPVM Pahrump will premiere with two episodes, with two new installments airing every Monday through August 16. Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato of Catch And Kill: The Podcast Tapes serve as two of the co-executive producers.

Regular coverage

The Bachelorette (ABC, 8 p.m.)

Wild cards

Jack Irish (Acorn TV, 3:01 a.m., season finale): The third season of this Australian thriller comes to an end with its fourth episode. In the show, Guy Pearce plays an ex-lawyer turned private investigator names, you guessed it, Jack Irish. With the help of his on-again, off-again girlfriend and journalist Linda Hillier (Marta Dusseldorp), Jack takes on cases that plunge him into Melbourne’s criminal underbelly.

Drain The Oceans (National Geographic Channel, 8 p.m., season premiere): This Australian and British documentary series returns for its fourth season with historical expert and archaeologist Chelsea Rose as the host. She explores the Wild West frontier through the lens of 19th Century steamboat wrecks, the Little Bighorn battleground, and a decaying Californian mining town. It aims to expand on Wild West history to reveal it’s more complex and diverse than the movies ever showed.