Flying High with ‘Masters of the Air,’ Nicole Kidman in ‘Expats,’ ‘Hightown’ Final Season, U.S. Figure Skating Championships

Series Premiere

In the tradition of HBO’s landmark WWII limited series Band of Brothers and The Pacific, a harrowing nine-part World War II drama (also executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks) follows the brave bomber pilots and their crews flying over Europe, dodging explosive flak (not always successfully). We watch in awe and terror as aircrafts shred like confetti, and we wait with the officers on the ground as they nervously count the planes lucky enough to be staggering home. Elvis Oscar nominee Austin Butler leads a cast of up-and-comers, including Anthony Boyle (of the upcoming historical drama Manhunt) as an airsick navigator who acts as narrator and troubled conscience of a series that rarely lags in tension, with fallen pilots trying to survive behind enemy lines or in German POW camps. Launches with two episodes. (See the full review.)

Series Premiere

“Do you ever imagine yourself living a completely different life, being a completely different person?” muses Nicole Kidman as Margaret, the most restless and tragedy-scarred member of an expatriate community living abroad in 2014 Hong Kong in an adaptation of Janice Y.K. Lee’s novel. The circumstances of her trauma become clear in the limited series’ first two episodes (the rest follow weekly), also tracking the unsettled lives of her friend Hilary (Sarayu Blue), whose marriage may be on the rocks over her husband’s (Jack Huston) alcoholism, and young Mercy (Ji-young Yoo), a gig worker on the outskirts of this privileged world.

Season Premiere

9/8c

Jackie Quiñones (Chicago Fire’s Monica Raymund) may be the most self-destructive crime-fighter to come along since NYPD Blue’s Andy Sipowicz. As the third and final season of the gritty crime drama opens in the scuzzy margins of Provincetown, Massachusetts, Jackie is so strung out she’s mistaken on the beach for a corpse. No surprise when she’s late to a critical briefing on his first day back from desk duty, and if she can’t find a way to fake her urine test, no way will she be allowed to stay connected to the Cape Cod Interagency Narcotics Unit. Her supervisor, Det. Ray Abruzzo (James Badge Dale), is also a piece of work, raising a baby with former stripper and gangster moll Renee (Riley Voelkel), whose jailbird ex (Amaury Nolasco) survived a murder attempt and is thirsting for payback. These flawed cops have a new target in Boston-based crime boss Shane Frawley (Garret Dillahunt, trying on another accent), and if Jackie can ever curb her debauched partying, justice might someday be served.

As anticipation builds for this summer’s Olympics in Paris, the nation’s top figure skaters converge at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio. That’s where teenage sensation Ilia Malinin, the first skater ever to land a quadruple Axel, is defending his 2023 national title, while top-ranked female skater Isabeau Levito is also hoping to repeat last year’s national win. The men skate the short program in the afternoon, with the women’s free skate at night.

Special

10/9c

Revisiting a sensational case previously dramatized on Hulu (The Act) and featured earlier this month in a three-part Lifetime docuseries, co-anchor Deborah Roberts conducts an exclusive post-prison interview with Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who served eight years of a 10-year sentence for second-degree murder in the 2015 death of her mother, DeeDee. The murder, conducted by Gypsy Rose’s boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn, was the end result of an extreme case of Munchausen by proxy, in which DeeDee forced Gypsy Rose to pretend to be suffering from fabricated illnesses. In the interview, Gypsy-Rose addresses her time in prison, the crime for which she was convicted, and her subsequent media fame.

INSIDE FRIDAY TV:

• RuPaul’s Drag Race (8/7c, MTV): Comedy is the name of the game as the queens perform sketch comedy in the latest edition of “RDR Live,” with Buffy the Vampire Slayer icon Sarah Michelle Gellar, a three-time SNL host, as guest judge.
• CMT Campfire Sessions (10/9c, CMT): Singer-songwriter Riley Green performs stripped-down versions of his hits, including platinum chart-toppers “There Was This Girl” and “I Wish Grandpas Never Died.”
• Suitable Flesh (streaming on Shudder): Heather Graham stars in a gruesome body-swap thriller as a psychiatrist whose obsession with a young patient (Judah Lewis) and his extreme personality disorder leads to much mayhem. Co-starring scream queen Barbara Crampton and inspired by an H.P. Lovecraft short story.