Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Wednesday, October 21. All times are Eastern.
Top pick
The Conners (ABC, 9 p.m., third-season premiere): Slowly but surely, we’re beginning to see TV shows produced after the big shutdown in March. Most to this point have been produced remotely, whether it’s by having a bunch of actors deliver monologues to their webcams or by sticking John Oliver in a shapeless white void. But now the first crop of COVID-compliant series are beginning to arrive, and unlike The Bachelorette, we’re actually interested to see what The Conners have to say about These Troubled Times. Danette Chavez will drop in on the premiere.
Can you binge it? Nope. A handful of episodes from season two are available for free on Hulu and ABC.com, but in the case of the former, they’re scheduled to be removed from the site sometime today. You can buy season two from places like Amazon and iTunes, but season one is, so far as we can tell, only available for purchase through YouTube.
Regular coverage
Archer (FXX, 10 p.m.)
From Film Club
Rebecca (Netflix, 3:01 a.m., premiere): “This Rebecca is billed as a new adaptation of the novel, but since the Hitchcock version is largely faithful to [Daphne] du Maurier, much of it plays like a scene-for-scene remake, with tweaks and additions to account for today’s apparently less adventurous tastes in old dark house stories. The first obvious change is that the unworldly and unnamed protagonist (Lily James) and the widowed Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer) are now basically the same age (though Hammer is actually older than Laurence Olivier was when he played the role in the Hitchcock version).” Read the rest of Ignatiy Vishnevetsky’s film review.
Wild cards
My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman (Netflix, 3:01 a.m., complete third season): The guests who will definitely not be introduced (such formalities are unnecessary) include Kim Kardashian West, Robert Downey Jr., Dave Chappelle, and Lizzo.
The Goldbergs (ABC, 8 p.m., eighth-season premiere, back-to-back episodes) and black-ish (ABC, 9:30 p.m., seventh-season premiere): It’s not just Laurie Metcalf and John Goodman returning to your screens this evening. ABC’s Wednesday comedy block bows in unison, with The Goldbergs paying tribute to Airplane! and black-ish’s Bow (Tracee Ellis Ross) powering through life as an essential worker.
537 Votes (HBO, 9 p.m., premiere): If somehow you’re in the mood to watch a relevant but stressful documentary about the 2000 election, the Supreme Court, and Miami-Dade County, HBO has you covered.