Andre Braugher joins the cast as The Good Fight returns for its sixth and final season. Tom Hanks is Geppetto in a live action/CGI remake of Pinocchio, one of many offerings on what is being billed as Disney+ Day. Lost’s Matthew Fox returns to TV in a Peacock ecothriller. Hulu turns the romcom on its head in Wedding Season. NBC presents the NFL Kickoff with the Bills playing the Rams in Los Angeles.
Elizabeth Fisher/Paramount+.
The Good Fight
The ridiculously entertaining Good Wife spinoff enters its sixth and final season with chaos on the streets of Chicago and within the law firm now led by Liz Reddick (Audra McDonald). “My world feels a little bit out of control,” confesses Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) to an unconventional doctor (Mad Men’s John Slattery) as she seeks some mental equilibrium. Good luck with that, now that the bosses on the top floor have installed the flamboyant Ri’Chard (Andre Braugher in full swagger) as a new name partner. While Marissa (Sarah Steele) struggles with her courtroom chops and Carmen (Charmaine Bingwa) acquires a dangerous new client, the case of the week is provocative as ever, involving an assault charge stemming from online avatar role play.
Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Pinocchio
“I’m not one to pass judgment on what’s real,” quips a CGI Jiminy Cricket (voiced by a folksy Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in a new version of the classic about a wooden puppet’s journey toward becoming a real boy. Robert Zemeckis (Who Framed Roger Rabbit) directs this charming live action/CGI-animated remake of the 1940 Disney favorite, with Tom Hanks perfectly sympathetic as the lonely woodcarver Geppetto. (Freeze the frame to catch all the Disney easter eggs amid his wall of prized cuckoo clocks.) Benjamin Evan Ainsworth provides the voice of the adorable Pinocchio, with Cynthia Erivo warbling “When You Wish Upon a Star” as the magical Blue Fairy. (Several new songs were written by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard.) The cast also includes a robust Keegan-Michael Key as the theatrically foxy “Honest” John, Luke Evans as the fearsome Coachman and Lorraine Bracco as a newly created character, the trusty seagull Sofia. Because Pinocchio needs all the help he can get to be the “brave, truthful and unselfish” boy he was meant to be.
MGM Television/NBCU/Peacock
Last Light
Part international eco-thriller, part disaster movie, this contemporary action miniseries (with all five chapters available for binge-watching) stars Lost’s Matthew Fox as Andy Yates, a scientist trying to avert a global attack on the world’s energy infrastructure. He’s stuck in the Middle East while his family—wife Elena (Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt), his climate-activist daughter Laura (Alyth Ross) and vulnerable blind son Sam (Taylor Fay)—are separated in London and Paris as transportation shuts down while chaos and riots break out on the streets. If Andy can’t save the world, can he at least reunite his terrified family?
Hulu
Wedding Season
Love means never having to play it safe in this giddily suspenseful eight-episode farce (all available for binge-watching) that subverts the usual romcom clichés. You’ve heard of runaway brides, but how about a fugitive bride accused of murdering her groom and his entire family at the reception? That’s the dilemma forcing Katie (Rosa Salazar) to go on the run with the hopelessly smitten Stefan (Gavin Drea), who had tried and failed to crash her “I dos” in a grand Graduate-style gesture and is now also a suspect. This irreverent twist on the meet-cute formula is equal parts mystery, chase thriller and opposites-attract love story.
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NFL Kickoff
A week before Prime Video becomes the exclusive home for Thursday Night Football, and three nights before the launch of Sunday Night Football, NBC airs the traditional kickoff game, with defending Super Bowl champs the Los Angeles Rams welcoming the Buffalo Bills to Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium. (In 16 seasons, the Super Bowl winner has come out on top in 11 of 15 Kickoff games.)
More from Disney+ Day:
- Thor: Love and Thunder: The summer blockbuster makes its streaming debut, with a behind-the-scenes Assembled: The Making of Thor: Love and Thunder special as a bonus.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: A Jedi’s Return: Another behind-the-scenes extra, with new footage from the Disney+ series starring Ewan McGregor as the Jedi master.
- The Simpsons: An original short, “Welcome to the Club,” features Lisa Simpson, who learns the potential upside of being bad.
- Dancing with the Stars: The Pros’ Most Memorable Dances: In advance of the new season airing exclusively on the streamer later this month, a compilation of 20 memorable performances by the pros from the first 30 seasons.
- Remembering: In an imaginative short, Brie Larson plays a writer who accesses her inner child to retrieve a lost idea. Accompanied by an Augmented Reality app for select subscribers.
- Growing Up: Larsen is also the creative force behind this innovative docuseries that tells 10 coming-of-age stories from diverse backgrounds.
- Frozen and Frozen 2 Sing-Alongs: Follow the on-screen lyrics in new sing-along versions of the recent Disney animated hits.
- Cars on the Road: An animated Cars spinoff features Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) on an episodic road trip.
- Epic Adventures with Bertie Gregory: Bertie is a 29-year-old National Geographic Explorer and cinematographer who immerses himself in the world of the wildlife he captures on camera, including whales in Antarctica and buffalo-hunting lions in Zambia.
- Tierra Incógnita: Produced in Latin America, this YA thriller stars Pedro Maurizi as a teenager who runs away to a horror theme park, where his parents disappeared eight years earlier.
Inside Thursday TV:
- Renovation Impossible (9/8c, HGTV): Dallas contractor Russell J. Holmes (Garage Rehab) and designer Paige Poupart come to the rescue of overwhelmed homeowners whose home makeovers need a reality check and a plan to finish the job on budget.
- The Con (10/9c, ABC): The docuseries’ season finale tells the story of “The Imposter Doctor Con,” all about “Dr. Love,” aka Malachi Love-Robinson, a baby-faced teenager who opened his own medical practice in West Palm Beach, Florida without bothering to get a degree.
- The Anthrax Attacks (streaming on Netflix): Not to be confused with the 2019 National Geographic miniseries, this documentary from director Dan Krauss (The Kill Team) revisits the FBI investigation into the 2011 anthrax bio-terror attacks that killed at least 17 people, causing a nationwide panic. Clark Gregg (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) appears in dramatic reenactments as microbiologist Dr. Bruce Ivins, who became a prime suspect.
- Emeril Tailgates (streaming on The Roku Channel): Famed chef Emeril Lagasse is the opposite of a food snob. Realizing the importance of serving great grub at a football tailgate party, he surprises a super-fan from a different football-crazed city each week, whisking them to his New Orleans kitchen to introduce a tailgate dish certain to make their buddies cheer.