James Stack/Channel 4
Everyone Else Burns
The CW’s comedy lineup moves to a new night, with season premieres of Canadian imports Son of a Critch (8/7c) and Run the Burbs (8:30/7:30c), and a new-to-CW episode of Children Ruin Everything (9/8c). But the real highlight is the premiere of the wildly irreverent Everyone Else Burns from the U.K. It’s the very definition of a cult comedy, a rapturously funny satire of devout derangement, depicting the Lewis family of Manchester, England, who believe apocalypse is imminent. In this household, a daughter’s straight-A report card is greeted by a “Where did we go wrong?” lament by parents (Simon Bird and Kate O’Flynn) who’d rather their kids be proselytizing than studying. The greatest sin: the hideous bowl haircut worn by judgmental father David, whose unholy ego makes him feel he deserves promotion to elder of their strict sect, the Order of the Divine Rod. There’s hell to pay when he’s passed over, which only makes Burns feel even more heaven-sent.
FX
American Horror Stories
The current season of American Horror Story: Delicate is on hiatus until the new year, but the series’ anthology spinoff fills the Halloween void with four creepy stories. These contemporary tales of terror involve an online relationship gone awry, an AI smart-home device that grows too attached to its user, a dating app with sinister motives and a cautionary tale, titled “Tapeworm,” about a model with an insatiable craving for fame. Among the more familiar guest stars: Reid Scott, Lisa Rinna, Seth Gabel, Raúl Castillo and The Walking Dead’s Laila Robins.
National Geographic/Ryan Valasek
Explorer: Lake of Fire
The documentary franchise more than lives up to its title with this depiction of a harrowing 2022 expedition to the subantarctic Saunders Island in the South Atlantic Ocean, where scientists and their guides risk a dangerous ascent in harsh conditions to reach the top of the unexplored volcano Mount Michael. Their goal: to discover and study an active “lava lake” that might help them predict future eruptions.
Paramount+
Star Trek: Lower Decks
“Why is my daughter trying to get herself killed?” demands Capt. Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) of her crew, regarding the increasingly reckless behavior of Mariner (Tawny Newsome), who’s been acting out ever since being promoted, against her will, to Lt. Junior Grade with the rest of her former ensign buddies. In a more-serious-than-usual episode of the animated Trek spinoff, the captain sends Mariner and her gang—including the ever-skeptical Vulcan T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz)—on a mission that appears so safe that Mariner gripes, “Where’s an unexplained high-stakes space anomaly when you need one?” Be careful what you wish for, because soon enough, Mariner is leaping once more into peril, only to engage in some necessary soul-searching in advance of a cliffhanger setting up next week’s Season 4 finale.
INSIDE THURSDAY TV:
- Ms. Christmas Comes to Town (Hallmark Movies & Mysteries): The channel launches its “Miracles of Christmas” movie series with a heartwarmer starring Erica Durance and Brennan Elliott as shopping-channel staffers helping a beloved host, Ms. Christmas (Barbara Niven), face a terminal diagnosis while spreading holiday cheer across the U.S.
- The Haunted Museum (10/9c, Travel Channel): Artifacts with spooky histories from Zak Bagans’ Haunted Museum in Las Vegas inspire short films executive produced by Eli Roth. The Season 2 opener, “The Cursed Brothel Bed,” concerns a nightmarish bed from Nevada’s fabled Bunny Ranch Brothel that claimed the life of the brothel’s owner and is now targeting a single-mom sex worker.
- True Crime Watch: A special edition of CBS’s FBI True (10/9c) relives the manhunt for notorious Boston mobster Whitey Bulger and a mission to thwart gang violence in the small New York town of Newburgh. On Dateline NBC (10/9c), an Ohio River Valley town is rocked by the murder of a local coal miner. SundanceTV’s True Crime Story: Citizen Detective (10/9c) follows Orlando mom and daughter Judy Weaver and Deb Murray as they challenge police, insisting Judy’s son Ronnie’s death in 2005 was more than a bicycle accident.
ON THE STREAM:
- The Despaired and Stay Out (streaming on BET+): In two new horror movies for the Halloween season, a mail carrier finds a letter that brings her husband back from the dead, and a businessman inherits an estate from an uncle who practiced black magic and possesses his nephew for dark purposes when he comes to claim his inheritance.
- The Vanishing Triangle (streaming on Sundance Now and AMC+): Downton Abbey’s Allen Leech stars as a detective who teams with a journalist (India Mullen) to investigate the disappearance of women across Ireland in a six-part psychological crime thriller.
- Our Flag Means Death (streaming on Max): Blackbeard (Taika Waititi) considers a return to piracy in an eventful Season 2 finale of the revisionist historical comedy.