Today in crime-solving: A restaurateur and the actual devil

By Allison Shoemaker | May 31, 2021 | 5:00am

TV Lists Clea Duvall

Today in crime-solving: A restaurateur and the actual devil

Kerry Godliman in Whitstable Pearl, Tom Ellis in Lucifer Photo: AMC Networks

Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Monday, May 31. All times are Eastern.

Top picks

For quite a few of you, today’s a day off! If you’re not in charge of the grill, perhaps you’d like to solve some mysteries with two of television-land’s more unlikely detectives: a nice restaurant owner/mom, and the actual devil.

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Lucifer (Netflix, streaming now, binge coverage continues): Lucifer Morningstar, nightclub owner and black sheep of the God family, returned to our screens back on Friday. His nice suits are as nice as ever, his interrogation-style remains intense, and LaToya Ferguson’s recaps are, of course, still great. Thank Dad, some things never change.

Whitstable Pearl (Acorn, 3:01 a.m.): The first two episodes of this whodunnit series arrived last week, and if you have yet to sign up for an Acorn trial, Whitstable Pearl should make for a solid incentive. Pearl (U.K. TV stalwart Kerry Godliman) owns the titular seafood joint in the Kentish seaside village of Whitstable, but she’s also got a side-hustle as a private investigator. For the most part, her clients come to her with strange small-town problems—who dropped 5,000 quid through my mail slot? Why did my recycling bins get moved?—but as is the case with all quaint towns in which fictional detectives reside, there are also quite a lot of murders. In today’s episode, Pearl’s will-they-won’t-they with Inspector Mike McGuire (Howard Charles) gets properly launched thanks to the murder of a war re-enactor, which sees the two of them on opposite sides for the first time. It’s the first installment to find and maintain a solid balance of the somber, the suspenseful, and the cozy-mysterious, thanks largely to Godliman’s warm, wry presence; while the show may be still finding its footing, her thoughtful performance makes Pearl one of most engaging detectives of the current TV landscape. If you want to spend the holiday guessing who did the murders, this first batch of episodes should do the trick. New episodes arrive weekly.

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Wild cards

Teen Titans Go!, “Space House” (Cartoon Network, 6 p.m.): In this one-hour special, the Titans and their new roommates the DC Super Hero Girls find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.

Housebroken (Fox, 9 p.m., series premiere): A solid voice cast—Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte, Clea Duvall, Jason Mantzoukas, and Tony Hale, among others—anchors this new animated series, the conceit of which is basically “pets do therapy.”

Dreamland: The Burning Of Black Wall Street (CNN, 9 p.m.), Tulsa: The Fire And The Forgotten (PBS, 9 p.m.), and Tulsa 1921: An American Tragedy (CBS, 10 p.m.): Tonight marks the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre and the burning of Black Wall Street. These three specials, along with a History Channel doc that aired last night and a scheduled Presidental visit to Tulsa, acknowledge and reflect on that horrendous act of police-backed white supremacist violence.