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‘Saturday Night Live’ Returns, ‘Interview with the Vampire’ and Final Leg of ‘Walking Dead,’ ‘East New York,’ ‘Dragon’ Doings

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The 48th season of Saturday Night Live returns with a considerably smaller cast. AMC doubles down on horror with the premiere of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire and the beginning of the final leg of The Walking Dead. CBS adds the gritty drama East New York to its Sunday lineup. Family conflict intensifies on HBO’s House of the Dragon. A curated critical checklist of notable weekend TV:

Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC

Saturday Night Live

SATURDAY: Live from New York, it’s … no longer the home for Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Pete Davidson, Kyle Mooney, Alex Moffat, Melissa Villeseñor, Chris Redd and Aristotle Athari, who’ve all departed the famed ensemble. A transitional 48th season opens with first-time guest host Miles Teller (Top Gun: Maverick) and musical guest Kendrick Lamar (his third visit) joining a smaller, but still robust, cast of regulars. Hoping to make an impression this year are four new featured players: Marcello Hernandez, Molly Kearney, Michael Longfellow and Devon Walker.

Alfonso Bresciani/AMC

Interview with the Vampire

SUNDAY: Atmospheric and erotically charged, Anne Rice’s masterpiece of lust and bloodlust is adapted into a contemporary series presented as a do-over interview between Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) and a jaded journalist (Eric Bogosian) he’s spirited to Dubai to shed more light on his immortal condition. The story then travels back to early 1900s New Orleans, where Black and closeted Louis operates a brothel in Storyville, where he captures the attention of ancient vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid). The rest is supernatural literary history. AMC has already renewed the series for a second season, with a series version of Rice’s “Mayfair Witches” novels coming in 2023. (See the full review.)

Jace Downs/AMC

The Walking Dead

SUNDAY: Remember when they used to mostly fight zombies? The hit horror franchise enters the third and last leg of its extended 24-episode final season with Maggie (Lauren Cohan), Daryl (Norman Reedus), Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and the gang rising up against the Commonwealth’s murderously craven Director of Operations, Lance Hornsby (Josh Hamilton). While our heroes try to keep this creep from retaliating against their families, back in the Commonwealth there’s a people’s rebellion forming in reaction to the newly exposed crimes of governor’s son Sebastian Milton (Teo Rapp-Olsson), such a villain he makes Lance look like Lancelot.

Peter Kramer/CBS

East New York

SUNDAY: One of the fall season’s stronger new dramas, from former producers of NYPD Blue, stars Amanda Warren as reform-minded Deputy Inspector Regina Haywood, newly installed commanding officer of the 74th Precinct on the mean streets of East New York. Just how mean becomes clear in the action-packed opening sequence, when she gives chase to a shooter who’s just taken down a tourist and security guard. Settling into her new job, Regina juggles city politics with her own revolutionary policies on community policing. The unusually strong supporting cast includes NYPD Blue alum Jimmy Smits as her Chief, Richard Kind lightening the tone as her executive officer, Orange Is the New Black’s Elizabeth Rodriguez and Kevin Rankin as the squad’s top detectives and Ruben Santiago-Hudson as a veteran training officer who knows how the neighborhood operates. While at times sanctimonious, this rises above the procedural tide with its issue-oriented take on a city besieged by violence.

Ollie Upton / HBO

House of the Dragon

SUNDAY: Mourning has broken over Westeros, and as the royal family gathers to put poor Laena to rest after her immolation, it doesn’t take long for resentments and rivalries to surface. “Each of us is capable of depravity … more than you would believe,” muses Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) to her not-exactly-grieving uncle Daemon (Matt Smith). Believe me, we believe. And by the end of this episode, the depravity these Targaryens exhibit would make a dragon blush. Speaking of which, an illicit dragon ride provides the hour’s exhilarating high point.

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