TOP PICK
Tyrant (FX, 10 p.m.): The pre-air buzz for this new FX drama is pretty toxic—then again, when have dictatorships ever been popular? (Also, when have they been afraid of toxic materials? Haha, we kid you, homicidal despots of the world!) Todd VanDerWerff’s review of the first four episodes paints a building-sized mural of a show that doesn’t realize how boring it is, and Dennis Perkins is stepping up to take that boredom on episode by episode. He might as well, because without Fargo, Tuesdays just got pretty boring themselves.
TV CLUB CLASSIC
The Shield (Classic) (11 a.m.): Brandon Nowalk covers “Hurt,” but not in the way Johnny Cash covered “Hurt”—because Cash’s “Hurt” is a rendition of a Nine Inch Nails song, not an episode of The Shield in which Mackey and Rawlings bust the heads of a Russian mobster and some social-care workers, respectively (and mostly metaphorically).
ELSEWHERE IN TV CLUB
You might not know who’s moving on to the World Cup’s knockout round, but by the end of the day you will know one of the finalists for the Tournament of Episodes: Sonia Saraiya will come to judge the quick, the dead, and anything that’s related to a matchup between The Good Wife episode in which shit is “Hitting The Fan” and that Hannibal with the human beehives. Unpleasant imagery, any way you slice it.
WHAT ELSE
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