The Emmy-winning Traitors moves to NBC for an all “civilian” edition, with everyday Americans playing the game of deceit. Ella Beatty stars as accused ax murderess Lizzie Borden in the latest lurid edition of Netflix‘s Monster anthology. Adults ends its second season with an election spoof. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds plunges the Enterprise crew into a fairy-tale world of doppelgangers.
Euan Cherry/NBC
The Traitors
The game is the same, but the players aren’t the usual assortment of reality-TV and celebrity retreads. For the first time, The Traitors’ U.S. version (under the title New Blood) welcomes an entire cast of 22 civilian “everyday Americans” — ranging from a funeral director and an astrophysicist to a barrel racer and a dog groomer — to the Scottish Highlands, where they’ll become either a Traitor or a Faithful. Coming off its third consecutive Emmy win for Reality Competition Program and Alan Cumming‘s third as the devilish host, The Traitors: New Blood opens with a two-episode premiere, streaming the next day on the show’s other home, Peacock.
Courtesy of Netflix
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story
Having dramatized the criminal lives of Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers, and the grisly Ed Gein, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan‘s lurid Monster anthology profiles its first female subject. Ella Beatty (daughter of film greats Warren Beatty and Annette Bening) assumes the title role of the repressed Victorian-era Lizzie Borden, accused of slaughtering her abusive parents (Ed Gein‘s Charlie Hunnam and The Beauty‘s Rebecca Hall) with an ax in their New England home. The murders were never officially solved, but that hasn’t stopped more than a century’s worth of speculation, culminating in this psychosexual exploration of female rage. Vicky Krieps co-stars as the family’s feisty maid, Bridget Sullivan.
FX/Hulu
Adults
The caustic cult comedy signs off for a second season with two more uproarious episodes. The first is most definitely Not Safe for Work, when Anton’s (Owen Thiele) carefully composed office persona shatters after a slip of the lip, and he turns to Issa (Amita Rao) to disguise herself as a temp to restore his reputation. The season finale finds the affable Paul Baker (Jack Innanen) running for president of the neighborhood Homeowners Association against an incumbent (David Paymer) whose daughter (Girls alum Zosia Mamet) plays dirty. Amid the tumult, relationships within the friends’ house experience several unexpected upheavals. A third season can’t come soon enough.
Jan Thijs/Paramount+
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
The whimsical gimmicks keep coming as the fourth season of the sci-fi Trek prequel continues to live up to its title. After turning into puppets and then finding themselves in a soap opera, the Enterprise crew are now plunged into a medieval fantasy storybook world, where they’re confronted by doppelgangers who are bizarro versions of their true selves. At heart, it’s an allegory forcing security chief La’an (Christina Chong) to confront the darkness and light within. But this warrior is understandably appalled to be forced into the princess role: “My shadow self is a pathetic damsel in distress?” At least she has Prince Dashing, aka future Captain Kirk (Paul Wesley), to see her through the ordeal.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/Everett Collection
2001: A Space Odyssey
One of the most influential science-fiction movies ever made kicks off the lineup in the month-long tribute on Thursdays to the great director Stanley Kubrick. The groundbreaking 1968 Space Odyssey presents one of cinema’s first AI villains in the HAL 9000 supercomputer aboard the Jupiter-bound Discovery One. This is followed by the director’s even more controversial 1971 cult blockbuster, A Clockwork Orange (10:45/9:45c), and, once again, shifting gears, the sprawling period piece Barry Lyndon (1:15 am/12:15c), starring Ryan O’Neal.
INSIDE THURSDAY TV:
- Building Buffalo (7 pm/ET, NFL Network): A two-part documentary (concluding September 24) follows the construction of the Buffalo Bills’ new Highmark Stadium under extreme conditions, and what it means for the city and the team. The Bills’ first regular-season home game streams tonight (8:15 pm/ET) on Prime Video.
- A Killer Story (9/8c, HBO): In the second episode of the true-crime docuseries, citizen sleuths Eileen and Keen Umbehr continue their crusade to exonerate accused murderer Dana Chandler during her retrial.
- The Voice 30th Season Celebration (10/9c, NBC): In advance of Monday’s Season 30 premiere of the singing competition, Carson Daly reflects with coaches past (Blake Shelton, CeeLo Green) and present (Adam Levine, Gwen Stefani, and new coaches Queen Latifah and Riley Green) about the show’s history and future.
ON THE STREAM:
- The Howard Stern Show (3 am/ET, streaming on HBO Max): The unfiltered radio legend’s SiriusXM show is edited into a weekly streaming series.
- Stranger Things: Tales from ’85 (streaming on Netflix): Something’s haunting the woods in Hawkins as Valentine’s Day approaches in Season 2 of the animated spinoff.
- Plastic Beauty (streaming on Netflix): A Japanese-language drama recalls Nip/Tuck in its melodramatic dissection of the dark side of cosmetic surgery.
- Murderer Behind the Mask (streaming on Sundance Now): A two-part true-crime docuseries explores the 2012 disappearance and murder of Dublin childcare worker Elaine O’Hara and the trial of architect Graham Dwyer, exposing his sordid double life.