Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Tuesday, February 1. All times are Eastern.
Top pick
Late Night With Seth Meyers (NBC, 12:30 a.m.): Technically, it’ll actually be the wee hours of Wednesday when Late Night (and late-night) icon David Letterman makes another visit to the latest incarnation of the talk show he started back in 1982. But such is the television hinterland Late Night turned into appointment viewing. These days, it’s Seth Meyers warming the chair there, and he welcomes his illustrious progenitor into 30 Rockefeller Plaza to talk shop and, most likely, get cantankerously roasted, as is Letterman’s way.
Letterman spent over 1,800 episodes (before jumping NBC for CBS) redefining the late-night format in his own inimitably cranky, Midwestern-absurdist image. And if Meyers’ Late Night is essentially a different program, it’ll be interesting to hear how these two veteran interviewers and comedians view the role of late-night host in a very changed TV landscape on this, Late Night’s 40th anniversary broadcast. Of course, it’s Letterman who initiated most of those changes, with his inventively low-rent irreverence toward the formerly glitzy showbiz chit-chat format changing what audiences expect from the traditional movie-promoting sit-down.
With Letterman spending his semi-retirement only interviewing people he actually gives a damn about, this will be a rare appearance for Dave in the guest’s chair. (Unless Meyers swaps seats in deference to his predecessor.) And while it’s unlikely that the more earnest and news-minded Meyers will bust out some stupid pet tricks, an Alka-Seltzer suit, or the dancing waters in honor of his guest, perhaps the Late Night pickle will make an appearance, for old times’ sake. Regardless, please, for the love of god—no wagering.
Regular coverage
This Is Us (NBC, 9 p.m.)
Wild card
Raising Dion (Netflix, 3:01 a.m.): It’s been a long time since this engaging superhero series’s first season ended. But that’s only given precociously superheroic Dion (the confidently adorable Ja’Siah Young) to grow into his mysterious telekinetic/teleportation/other powers, and to work on his kickass version of a superhero costume with the help of his supportive but understandably concerned mom, played by Alisha Wainwright.
Two years after discovering the abilities that make him the most powerful grade-schooler in the world, now Dion is learning to harness them with the help of a trainer at the superhero-studying Biona corporation. (No chance they’ll turn out to be secretly evil and bent on exploiting superpowered people for their own nefarious ends, we can only assume?) Meanwhile, Dion has to deal with a spooky new kid in class who may be even more powerful, a horde of what one can only term super-zombies, and what sure looks in the trailer like an evil conspiracy masterminded by a seemingly benevolent research institute. (Called it.)
Executive-produced by Michael B. Jordan (who pops up in flashbacks as Dion’s late father), and based on the comic from Dennis Liu, Raising Dion is yet another, if more intriguingly diverse and novel, entry in the saturated superhero cape-scape. (Dion is still contemplating whether a cape is in or not.)