‘Blue Bloods’ at 13 and a Fiery Neighbor, Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes, Return of ‘The Mole’

Blue Bloods

The family police drama and Friday night touchstone returns for a 13th season, with NYPD Commissioner Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck) taking a walk not so much on the wild side but through the venues where his officers work and live. He’s joined by his buddy Archbishop Kearns (Stacy Keach) on a mission to learn what’s behind the department’s problems with morale and resignations. Meanwhile, the rest of his law-enforcement family stays busy. Erin (Bridget Moynahan) meets with her ex, Jack (Peter Hermann), regarding her run for District Attorney, and younger brother Jamie (Will Estes) gets caught up in a domestic violence situation linked to an investigation involving detective brother Danny (Donnie Wahlberg) and undercover agent/nephew Joe Hill (Will Hochman).

Fire Country

SEAL Team’s Max Theriot stars in TV’s latest first-responder series, but with a twist. He’s Bode Donovan, a remorseful convict serving time for armed robbery who joins a program in Northern California in which inmates work alongside professional firefighters to reduce prison time. What he didn’t count on was being assigned to a camp adjacent to the hometown he left under a cloud. The risks are high with blazes that turn deadly in an instant in the mountains and woods, but Bode sees this as his best path toward redemption.

Conversations With a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes

The timing couldn’t be more appropriate for the third installment in director Joe Berlinger’s Conversations docuseries, which previously focused on serial killers Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. With the streamer’s Dahmer docudrama an instant hit, the three-part Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes gives new insights into the killer’s psyche through never-before-heard audio interviews between Dahmer and his defense team. The series will also address issues of police accountability and how Dahmer was able to continue his grisly murder spree for years.

The Mole

Over three weeks, the streaming giant revives one of the most fondly regarded competitions from reality TV’s early glory days. MSNBC’s Alex Wagner (formerly of Showtime’s The Circus) replaces Anderson Cooper as host for a season set in Australia, where 12 players engage in challenges designed to add money to an ever-growing prize pot, while knowing that one among them is a saboteur. Each episode ends with the remaining contestants taking a quiz, and the one knowing the least about the mole’s identity is sent packing until just one is left to expose the culprit and win. The season plays out over three weeks, with the first five episodes immediately available, three more next Friday and the final two episodes streaming Oct. 21.

On the Stream:

• Also new to Netflix on a very busy Friday: the third and final season of the beloved Irish comedy Derry Girls, the documentary The Redeem Team, about the triumphant U.S. Olympics Men’s Basketball Team at the 2008 Beijing games, and the Halloween-ready creepshow The Midnight Club, in which ailing teens in a hospice tell scary stories each midnight, making a pact that the first among them to die will haunt the others.
• Hellraiser (streaming on Hulu): A reimagining of Clive Barker’s 1987 iconic fright show resurrects those sadistic Cenobites.
• Werewolf by Night (streaming on Disney+): Marvel presents an homage to classic horror films from the 1930s and ’40s in a mostly black-and-white movie about a bizarre group of monster hunters seeking a magical Bloodstone. Stars include Gael Garcia Bernal, Outlander’s Laura Donnelly and the always hilarious Harriet Sansom Harris. How this fits into the MCU is anyone’s (and everyone’s) guess.
• The Problem with Jon Stewart (streaming on Apple TV+): The former Daily Show host returns for a second season of weekly deep dives into hot-button material including elections, gender, taxes and globalization. Stop, you’re killing me!
• Bad Sisters (streaming on Apple TV+): The Garvey sisters’ crusade to take down their rotten brother-in-law J.P. (Claes Bang) takes its darkest turn yet in the next-to-last chapter of the mordant Irish comedy.
• Catherine Called Birdy (streaming on Prime Video): Lena Dunham (Girls) writes and directs a subversive period comedy about a willful teen (Game of Thrones’ Bella Ramsey) in medieval 1290 England who refuses to be married off to settle her wayward father’s (Andrew Scott) debts.
• Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (streaming on Prime Video): Things are looking pretty bleak for the elven and Númenor heroes after last week’s explosive cliffhanger leaves the Southlands covered in fiery ash. Back in the dwarf kingdom of Khazad-dum, things get just as heated when Prince Durin IV (Owain Arthur) clashes with his father the King (Peter Mullan) over Elrond’s (Robert Aramayo) request to access the precious Mithril mines.

Inside Friday TV:

• S.W.A.T. (8/7c, CBS): The crime drama travels to Thailand for the opening of its sixth season, with Hondo (Shemar Moore) on a training exercise with his military pal Joe (Sean Maguire) when they run afoul of a heroin kingpin.
• iHeartRadio Music Festival (8/7c, The CW): Continuing on Saturday, a two-night recap of the annual Las Vegas concert is hosted by Ryan Seacrest and features performances by the likes of Avril Lavigne, Black Eyes Peas, Halsey, Lionel Richie, LL Cool J, Maren Morris, Megan Thee Stallion, Pat Benatar & Neil Geraldo, Pitbull, and Sam Smith.
• True Crime Watch: ABC’s 20/20 (9/8c) revisits the 2016 murder of Baton Rouge “teacher of the year” Lyntell Washington, and how her 3-year-old daughter’s insistence that “Mr. Robbie” hurt her mother led to the arrest of assistant principal Dr. Robert Marks. On Dateline NBC (9/8c), Josh Mankiewicz reports on the seven-year crusade by the family of Nevada lawyer Susan Winters to get justice after her death was initially ruled a suicide. 
• The Lincoln Project (8/7c, Showtime): A five-part docuseries goes inside the rise and fall of the provocative super PAC comprised of former GOP consultants and strategists who fought against the rising tide of extremism during the last election.
• The Graham Norton Show (11/10, BBC America): The puckish host opens his 30th (!) season with guests including Halloween queen Jamie Lee Curtis and former Doctor Who David Tennant.