If TV is your favorite Labor Day activity, you’re in luck. Among the many new offerings: Acorn serves up a delectable light mystery, Comedy Central presents a comedy film from one of The Office’s top producers (and actors), National Geographic takes you to the edge with adventure athletes, and The CW closes the door on two of its series.
AcornTV
Recipes for Love and Murder
Some of this streamer’s light mysteries are such fluff they float away while you’re watching. This South African series is for the most part a cut above, and is guaranteed to make the mouth water as we’re introduced to Tannie “Auntie” Maria (Outlander and Orphan Black’s excellent Maria Doyle Kennedy), the Julia Child of her rural Karoo community. Her recipes are sumptuous, and yet the struggling local newspaper cancels her column, assigning her to a new gig as an advice columnist—which puts Maria in the middle of domestic intrigue that leads to murder. Her correspondents, including a wife yearning to escape an abusive marriage, speak directly to the camera as their letters are read, adding an emotional urgency to the shenanigans as Maria and ambitious reporter Jessie (Kylie Fisher) play amateur detective.
Out of Office
Former The Office showrunner and actor Paul Lieberstein tells a different sort of workplace story—this one largely unfolding on Zoom—in a comedy film about Eliza (Milana Vayntrub), a free spirit who’s seemingly unable to keep a job until she starts working for “the third largest outsourcing company for in-website help chats.” (Suddenly Dunder Mifflin doesn’t sound so bad.) As she joins the management team’s online meetings, Eliza gets drawn into the marital meltdowns of her distracted boss (Ken Jeong) and his angrily unhappy wife (Leslie Jones)-who’ve apparently never learned how to mute. Bratty Eliza’s meddling in his and other co-workers’ lives invariably backfire, leaving you wondering when work ever gets done. Office is offbeat to a fault, but there’s an amusing subplot involving coq au vin, and the strong supporting cast includes Saturday Night Live alum Jay Pharoah and, as Eliza’s parents, Jason Alexander and SNL’s Cheri Oteri.
Courtesy Justine Dupont)
Edge of the Unknown With Jimmy Chin
Oscar-winning director/producers Jimmy Chin and E. Chai Vasarhelyi (Free Solo) present a visually thrilling docuseries about the physical and mental challenges faced by extreme athletes who push the limits of climbing, freestyle skiing, kayaking, surfing and more. The opening episode reunites Chin with Free Solo’s Alex Honnold, seen preparing for his epic climb by training in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco. Followed by a second episode, featuring freestyle skier Angel Collison. (The series moves to its regular time period Tuesday at 10/9c, and all episodes will be available for streaming on Disney+ starting Wednesday.)
The CW
Roswell, New Mexico
After four seasons, this reboot of the alien sci-fi action series abruptly ends its run as part of a larger purge of low-rated CW dramas in advance of the network’s sale to Nexstar Media Group. Another casualty: the thriller In the Dark (9/8c), also wrapping after four seasons.
Inside Monday TV:
- The Bad Seed Returns (8/7c, Lifetime): A sequel to 2018’s remake of the suspense thriller jumps forward a few years, with fatherless Emma (Mckenna Grace) now 15 and in high school, turning her dark gaze on her aunt’s husband and a classmate who sense she’s not as innocent as she appears. They’re right.
- The Baby Business (9/8c, CNN): In a CNN Special Report, anchor Alisyn Camerota shares her own experiences with infertility and IVF as she explores the boom in assisted reproductive technology and the lack of oversight in the fertility industry.
- No Ordinary Life (10/9c, CNN): From CNN Films comes filmmaker Heather O’Neill’s salute to five pioneering photojournalists and camerawomen (Jane Evans, Maria Fleet, Margaret Moth, Mary Rogers and Cynde Strand) who’ve risked it all covering breaking news in war zones and natural disasters.
- Shock Docs: The Visitors (9/8c, Travel Channel, streaming on discovery+): Author Whitley Streiber (Communion) returns to the cabin where he says he was first abducted by aliens in 1985, joined by a journalist and a UFO researcher to investigate this purported portal.
- Real Girlfriends in Paris (9:15/8:15, Bravo): Meet a real-life Emily in Paris—Emily Gorelik—who with five other young female American expats chase their romantic and career dreams in the City of Lights.
- If We’re Being Honest with Laverne Cox (10/9c, E!): The dazzling Orange Is the New Black star launches a series of conversational specials with an Emmy edition featuring interviews with nominees Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets), Sheryl Lee Ralph (Abbott Elementary) and Nicole Byer (a double nominee as host of Nailed It! and writer of her Netflix stand-up special BBW: Big Beautiful Weirdo).
- The Murders Before the Marathon (streaming on Hulu): From ABC News, a three-part true-crime docuseries follows journalist/producer Susan Zalkind’s crusade to get to the truth of a 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts-one of the victims was a close friend of Zalkind—that is now thought to be the work of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.