The terrific Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul launches the first half of its long-awaited sixth and final season. Tiffany Haddish pays back a Celebrity IOU to her best friend as the renovation series returns. One week before its series finale, FX’s Better Things packs up the family to go to London. Just six weeks after it hit movie theaters, box-office blockbuster The Batman begins streaming on HBO Max.
Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
Better Call Saul
Picking up after a two-year break, the compelling Breaking Bad prequel resumes with back-to-back episodes kicking off the sixth and final season. (Seven episodes air through late May, with the remaining six episodes returning in July.) Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) is now fully embracing his flashy-smarmy Saul Goodman persona—those ties! those socks!—with wife Kim (the brilliant Rhea Seehorn) taking time away from her pro bono work to help him plot his next move against the unsuspecting Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian). While that long con gets underway, a suspenseful subplot follows the violent fallout from the unsuccessful assassination attempt on drug kingpin Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton), with Nacho (Michael Mando) on the run and Mike (Jonathan Banks) and Salamanca arch-rival Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) doing damage control.
Celebrity IOU
The entertaining and emotional celebrity renovation show returns for a third season, with comedian Tiffany Haddish getting serious with a sledgehammer as she works with hosts Jonathan and Drew Scott to update her best friend Selena’s California home. For Haddish, this is the least she can do for a woman who stood by her for 20 years, including her time in the foster system and pre-fame homelessness. Between wisecracks, Haddish reveals her flare for knocking out cabinets and tiling a bathroom floor. Anything for her friend.
Miya Mizuno/FX
Better Things
Tally-ho! Life will never be quite the same for the Fox family after new dual citizen Sam (Pamela Adlon) heads to England, bundling up her daughters (Mikey Madison, Hannah Alligood, Olivia Edward) and mom (Celia Imrie, who shines in her home country) to join Sam’s brother and his disapproving wife on a personal mission. A first stop in Liverpool reveals more of the family history before moving on to London, where we’re reminded one week before the series finale that parting is going to be such sweet sorrow when it comes to this deeply felt and intensely human comedy.
Jonathan Olley / © Warner Bros. / Courtesy Everett Collection
The Batman
Writer-director Matt Reeves’ successful reboot of the DC franchise heads to streaming, just six weeks after its global theatrical launch. (The movie premieres on the linear HBO channel on Saturday.) Robert Pattinson takes on the dual role of the masked vigilante and billionaire Bruce Wayne in a dark and sprawling three-hour descent into Gotham City’s underworld, where he encounters the likes of Selena Kyle/Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz), the Riddler (Paul Dano) and the Penguin (Colin Farrell).
Inside Monday TV:
- The Paterno Legacy (8/7c, ESPN): A decade after Penn State football coach Joe Paterno’s death in the wake of the sex-abuse scandal that ended his celebrated career, an hourlong edition of ESPN E60 looks back at his downfall. John Barr interviews convicted sex offender and former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky from prison.
- American Idol (8/7c, ABC): In a live reveal, the Top 20 will shrink to a Top 10, with the judges choosing four more singers to move to the next Top 14 round.
- American Song Contest (8/7c, NBC): In the rival musical competition, the live qualifying round ends with 11 more artists performing original music, while three performers from week 4 move on to the semi-finals.
- Bob Hearts Abishola (8:30/7:30c, CBS): When Abishola (Folake Olowofoyeku) learns that Morenike (Tori Danner) has been disowned by her family for being gay, she rallies with Bob (Billy Gardell) and BFF Kemi (Gina Yashere) to help her cousin pay for school and stay in America.
- 9-1-1: Lone Star (9/8c, Fox): Marjan (Natacha Karam) forces her boss, Capt. Owen Strand (Rob Lowe), to face up to his anger management issues. As long as it doesn’t mess with his hair.
- NCIS (9/8c, CBS): Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) examines an undercover operation from his past when an arms dealer is released from prison and the body count starts rising again.
- The Good Doctor (10/9c, ABC): A documentarian becomes intrigued by Shaun (Freddie Highmore) when he treats her uncle, whose iron lung broke down.
- On the Divide (10/9c, PBS, check local listings): A timely edition of Independent Lens, filmed over seven years, goes inside the embattled Whole Woman’s Health clinic in McAllen, Texas, the last abortion clinic on the U.S./Mexico border.
- Hidden Assets (streaming on Acorn TV): In an Irish-Belgian spinoff of Acorn’s Acceptable Risk crime drama, the focus is on Emer Berry (Angeline Ball), lead detective for Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau. When a police raid reveals a stash of diamonds linked to bombings in Belgium, Emer works with Police Commissioner Christian De Jong (Wouter Hendrickx) to expose an international conspiracy.