Apple’s ‘Chemistry’ Lesson, Friday the 13th Thrills with John Carpenter, ‘Creepshow’ and ‘Goosebumps,’ ‘Cage’ Match on CBS

Series Premiere

Brie Larson is in fine form as Elizabeth Zott, a combination of Julia Child and Marie Curie with the 1950s movie-star glow of a Kim Novak. The scintillating adaptation of Bonnie Garmus’ bestseller tracks Elizabeth’s tragicomic journey from a college laboratory that stifles her with sexism through her unexpected fame as an unsmiling TV star who preaches, “Cooking is not fun. It is vital work.” It’s also a love story, a fable of female empowerment and a Dickensian yarn of damaged souls finding connection while fighting the system. Simply put, Chemistry is delicious entertainment. Opens with two episodes. (See the full review.)

Season Premiere

The spirit of lurid pre-graphic-novel comics lives on in the horror anthology that often fuses gallows humor into its macabre vignettes. That’s very much the case in the droll opening story, “Twenty Minutes with Cassandra,” starring The Fall of the House of Usher’s Samantha Sloyan and Ruth Codd as women hiding out from a relentless yet quirky monster. The second tale, “Smile,” is more reminiscent of a Tales from the Crypt-style morality tale, involving a photographer (Matthew James Dowden) whose most famous news photo comes back to haunt him.

Series Premiere

John Carpenter immortalized the image of the psychopath next door in his 1978 classic Halloween, and he now turns to real-life versions of Haddonfield in a six-part series exploring the terrors lurking in suburbia. The episodes, one directed by Carpenter (who provides the eerie theme music), feature commentary by first-hand witnesses and survivors, narrating dramatic recreations of their purported hauntings, murderous stalkings and whatever else goes bump in the night.

Series Premiere

R.L. Stine’s shivery books for tweens inspire a new series, launching with five episodes, about a group of high schoolers whose Halloween party at the reputedly haunted Biddle House unleashes all manner of supernatural shenanigans. Justin Long (Barbarian) stars as new English teacher Nathan Bratt, who has a close encounter with the spirit of Harold Biddle, a teen who died a generation ago and who appears to be seeking payback from his peers’ offspring. (The first two episodes get a special airing on Freeform starting at 9/8c.)

Series Premiere

9/8c

Prime-time network lineups continue to swell with game shows, and among the noisier arrivals is this high-energy take on an international format. Damon Wayans Jr. is the wisecracking host, and Jeannie Mai the hyper cheerleader, as teams of two answer ridiculously unchallenging questions to gain extra seconds for one player to grab as many prizes as they can from a see-through cage before it closes. If they’re trapped, they get nothing. Whoever has the most after three rounds gets to go back in the cage for a frantic free-for-all.

INSIDE WEEKEND TV:

• Ready to Love: Make a Move (8/7c, OWN): A spinoff of the dating show sends four fan favorites to New Orleans to find a soulmate with the help of matchmaker Tamica Lee.
• War in the Holy Land: A PBS News Special Report (8:30/7:30c, PBS): NewsHour anchors Amna Nawaz (from Israel) and Geoff Bennett (from Washington, D.C.) provide the latest news and analysis of the conflict in Israel and Gaza in an hourlong report.
• Shining Vale (9/8c, Starz): The second season of the supernatural spoof picks up four months after Pat Phelps (Courteney Cox) was sent to a psychiatric hospital. She returns home once her insurance runs out and finds the family as dysfunctional as ever. Husband Terry (Greg Kinnear), recovering from a brain injury, doesn’t remember her, and her new neighbor looks an awful lot like her persistent demon Rosemary (current Dancing with the Stars contestant Mira Sorvino).
• True Crime Watch: On Dateline NBC (9/8c), Andrea Canning reports on the 2019 murder of Texas teacher Manuela Allen, who went missing from her home and was found stabbed by a local lake. ABC’s 20/20 (9/8c) features co-anchor Deborah Roberts’ new look at the 1989 abduction and murder of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling in Minnesota, a crime that inspired a law instituting a state sex-offender registry.
• Next at the Kennedy Center: Robert Glasper’s Black Radio (9:30/8:30c, PBS): A new installment of the concert series marks the 10th anniversary of pianist-composer Robert Glasper’s Grammy-winning breakthrough album.

ON THE STREAM:

• The Burial (streaming on Prime Video): Oscar winners Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones star in a spirited courtroom drama as, respectively, a flashy lawyer hired to help an independent Mississippi funeral-home owner take on a mega-corporation. Jurnee Smollett co-stars as their formidable courtroom opponent.
• The Puppetman (streaming on Shudder): Alyson Gorske is Michal, daughter of a convicted murderer who claims an evil spirit, the “Puppetman,” was responsible. Now the fiend is going after Michal’s friends in a supernatural thriller.
• The Changeling (streaming on Apple TV+): The bizarre fantasy reaches its finale, with William/Kinder Garten (Samuel T. Herring) unleashing his fury on the mysterious island.