Alexander Skarsgård Is ‘Murderbot,’ Daniel Dae Kim in ‘Yellow Face,’ ‘Grosse Pointe’ and ‘S.W.A.T.’ Finales, Back to ‘Chi’ Town

Murderbot

With tongue firmly in rivet, this engaging sci-fi comedy stars True Blood‘s Alexander Skarsgård as a robotic security unit with a disdain for the humans he’s programmed to protect. The twist: He has managed to hack himself free from the “governor module,” which makes him a rogue-bot, if not immediately a “murder-bot” when he’s dispatched to assist a group of hippie scientists who don’t trust The Machine assigned to them by The Corporation. “How long before they realize there’s something wrong with me?” the bot muses in a pervasively droll inner monologue. If only they knew he’d prefer watching the corny soap operas of the future — some things never change — than attend to his reckless clients as they uncover a possible conspiracy. Launches with two episodes.

Great Performances

Great Performances gives theater fans a rare opportunity to view a recent Broadway production that’s a current Tony nominee for revival, actor (Daniel Dae Kim), and supporting actor (Madam Secretary‘s Francis Jue). Yellow Face is Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang’s (M. Butterfly) witheringly funny quasi-autobiographical theatrical farce about an Asian-American playwright (Kim) modeled after Hwang, who publicly protests when a non-Asian is cast in Miss Saigon, then falls victim to his own political correctness when he mistakenly hires a non-Asian (New Amsterdam‘s Ryan Eggold, very amusing) to play the Asian lead in his troubled new play. Jue nearly steals the show as Hwang’s banker father, who glories in the American dream represented by his son’s success — and notoriety.

Grosse Pointe Garden Society

The dark comedy ends its first season in limbo, neither canceled nor renewed, with reports that a potential second season could migrate to Peacock. Whatever happens, fans will be left hanging with new twists and cliffhangers in the season finale. The horticultural metaphor of the week is “Bad Seeds,” and that’s how the Garden Club Four see themselves as they scramble to find a new way to dispose of poor dead “Quiche’s” body. The complications continue to escalate, with a policeman following leads about what happened the night of the gala and an unscrupulous private eye plotting blackmail. More secrets emerge among the Grosse Pointe elite as the show takes another leap that will either tantalize or frustrate those who’ve followed them to Friday nights.

S.W.A.T.

The end of the road has finally arrived (after several years of cancellations and surprise reversals) for the crime drama, signing off after eight seasons with a two-part series finale. In the first hour, Hondo (Shemar Moore) pursues an adversary from his past when a car thief he thought was dead hijacks an auto carrier. The final hour promises even more action when 20-Squad takes on a gang of Russian ex-pat mercenaries who’ve planted hundreds of explosives around L.A. Talk about going out with a bang.

The Chi

As the seventh season opens of Lena Waithe‘s drama set on Chicago’s South Side, Alicia (Lynn Whitfield) begins her crusade to find her son’s killer, leading a contingent of women reclaiming their power. Guest stars and recurring players this season include Phylicia Rashad, Wendy Raquel Robinson, Karrueche Tran, Kyla Pratt, and Saturday Night Live alum Punkie Johnson.

INSIDE FRIDAY TV:

• Shark Tank (8/7c, ABC): Mark Cuban bids farewell to his fellow sharks in the Season 16 finale, when the tank welcomes pitches involving gourmet deviled eggs, a mitten that removes ticks and undergarments that are seamless and invisible.
• The Greatest @AtHome Videos (8/7c, CBS): Cedric the Entertainer returns with a new selection of rib-tickling videos, and to celebrate the show’s fifth anniversary, he introduces an “#Is It Fake” segment in which viewers guess whether a video is for real or a clever fake.
• 20/20 (9/8c, ABC): Postponed from last week, the true-crime series revisits the 2004 stabbing murder of 21-year-old Johnia Berry in Knoxville, Tennessee and her mother’s years-long crusade for answers and justice.

ON THE STREAM:

• Deaf President Now! (streaming on Apple TV+): An impassioned documentary relives the 1988 protests at Washington, D.C.’s Gallaudet University after the campus for deaf and hard-of-hearing students appointed a hearing president.
• Your Friends & Neighbors (streaming on Apple TV+): The net begins to tighten around a battered Coop (Jon Hamm), who wakes from his beating to find himself on the local police’s radar.
• RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars (streaming on Paramount+): Kate Beckinsale is the guest judge when the first bracket of queens performs makeovers for college basketball players in the semifinals.
• Matteo Lane: The Al Dente Special (streaming on Hulu): The comedian with a singing range of six octaves serenades an audience with barbed humor in a stand-up comedy special.
• The Quilters (streaming on Netflix): A moving documentary short depicts the “organized chaos” within a Missouri maximum-security prison, where men design and creat elaborate quilts for the area’s foster children.
• The Brutalist (streaming on Max): Director Brady Corbet‘s intimate epic, about a Hungarian Holocaust survivor (Oscar winner Adrien Brody) who pursues his vision as an architect in post-war America, makes its streaming debut. The movie premieres on HBO Saturday at 8/7c.