Celebrating Martin Scorsese and Stiller & Meara, Spinoff Mania (‘Boston Blue,’ ‘Sheriff Country’), ‘Rainmaker’ Finale

Mr. Scorsese

That’s Marty to his many friends, and Martin Scorsese to his legion of admirers. The legendary filmmaker is the subject of director Rebecca Miller’s exhaustive five-part biographical docuseries. Charting the visionary’s journey from NYU student filmmaker through his early breakthroughs (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) his 1990 triumph with Goodfellas, his Oscar win for The Departed and up to his recent Oscar-nominated ventures for streaming services (Netflix’s The Irishman, Apple TV’s Killers of the Flower Moon), the documentary explores the themes that continue to drive him into his early 80s. Among the friends and colleagues sharing stories: Steven Spielberg, Robert De Niro, Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sharon Stone, Jodie Foster, and Mick Jagger.

Grey’s Anatomy

Grey’s Anatomy returns to ABC on Thursday, October 9 and and streaming next day on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+, for its 22nd season. After last year’s incendiary finale, we’ll find out who lives and who dies when an explosion rocks Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. The doctors were left reeling after a distraught mother threatened to detonate a bomb unless her daughter received a dangerous surgery. In the final moments of the season, the device went off on the surgical floor, leaving the fates of many in question. Viewers will have to tune in to see the aftermath unfold.

Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost

“I wanted to understand how they did it,” actor/director Ben Stiller (Severance) says of the “incredible marriage” of his parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, known to the world for decades as the comedy team of Stiller & Meara. This deeply personal documentary explores the couple’s professional and personal relationship, of which Meara once said, “I don’t know where the act ends and the marriage begins.” Ben also reflects on his own family and the impact his parents’ enduring love story has had on them.

Boston Blue

I’m looking forward to the day when Danny Reagan (Donnie Wahlberg) attends his first Yankees-Red Sox game in Fenway Park. The Blue Bloods veteran is now an outsider in Beantown, transferring from the NYPD to the BPD courtesy of the law of spinoffs. He arrives to be with his son Sean (now played by Mika Amonsen), a Boston officer injured in the pilot episode when he responds off duty to a suspicious office fire. Danny partners up with seasoned Boston detective Lena Silver (Star Trek: Discovery‘s Sonequa Martin-Green), who, like Danny, is part of an extended law-enforcement family that gathers weekly for family dinners — although they observe Friday Shabbat, with a grandpa who’s a Baptist pastor (Ernie Hudson). The multiracial Silvers include the city’s DA, Mae (Gloria Reuben), detective daughter Lena, and police superintendent stepdaughter Sarah (Maggie Lawson), and officer son Jonah (Marcus Scribner, black-ish), who met and befriended Sean Reagan at the police academy.

Sheriff Country

The network likes to say that its spinoffs are all about “expanding the universe,” which is what Fire Country is doing with this companion drama set in Edgewater, California. The small town’s compassionate and capable sheriff is Mickey Fox (Homeland alum Morena Baccarin), first introduced on Fire as the stepsister of Sharon Leone and aunt of Bode (Max Thieriot), who appears in the pilot episode. Her first case brings out Mickey’s protective side, involving child abuse within the foster system, and introduces a supporting cast including her deputy Nathan Boone (CSI: Vegas alum Matt Lauria), her newly sober daughter Skye (Amanda Arcuri), her weed-dealing father Wes (Deadwood‘s W. Earl Brown), and ex-husband Travis (Christopher Gorham), a lawyer.

The Rainmaker

It’s not easy keeping order in the court of high melodrama as the legal drama based on John Grisham’s bestseller reaches its season finale. Expect explosive confrontations on the stand and surprises behind the scenes of the trial pitting young lawyer Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan) against the deep-pocketed and seasoned shark Leo Drummond (John Slattery). The courtroom soon becomes a circus, with the FBI taking an unusually keen interest in the outcome.

The Chosen Adventures

For all those who remember singing “Jesus loves the little children” in Sunday school, this animated children’s TV companion to the global hit series about the life of Jesus will feel familiar. Adventures depicts the antics of 9-year-old Abby (Romy Fay) in the ancient city of Capernaum as she and her entourage (including a talking sheep voiced by Emmy winner Paul Walter Hauser) encounter the wise teacher Jesus of Nazareth (The Chosen star Jonathan Roumie), who reminds Abby, “With faith, we each receive the miracles we need.” The season consists of 14 11-minute episodes.

INSIDE FRIDAY TV:

• Fire Country (8/7c, CBS): Season 4 opens with Station 42 dealing with the tragic fallout from the Zabel Ridge fire.
• On Brand With Jimmy Fallon (8/7c, NBC): The marketers collaborate with the Pillsbury Doughboy on a new brand campaign.
• Andrew Young: The Dirty Work (8/7c, MSNBC): Rachel Maddow is executive producer of a documentary profiling activist and politician Andrew Young, an associate of Martin Luther King Jr. who served as Georgia’s first Black congressman since Reconstruction, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., and Atlanta’s mayor.
• Mistletoe Murders (8/7, Hallmark Channel): The light mystery starring Grey’s Anatomy alum Sarah Drew makes its linear debut after streaming on Hallmark+ last year.
• An Intimate Evening With Adam Pally (9/8c, HBO): The comedian and actor (Happy Endings) regales an audience with an act that’s part stand-up comedy special and rock concert. Followed by Real Time With Bill Maher (10/9c), featuring an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger and guest panelists Andrew Ross Sorkin (recently interviewed on 60 Minutes) and Mark Cuban.
• The Couple Next Door (9/8c, Starz): Mia’s (Aggy K. Adams) past finally surfaces, causing plenty of emotional turmoil in the psychosexual drama’s penultimate episode.
• True Crime Watch: On Dateline NBC (9/8c), forensic genetic genealogy testing helps solve the 2001 murder of Maryland mom Leslie Preer two decades later. ABC‘s 20/20 (9/8c) reports on the 2020 murder of father of four Greg Rice of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, implicating his ex-girlfriend, who worked as a body transporter to funeral homes, and her married lover, the town’s deputy coroner. 

ON THE STREAM:

• The 52nd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards (7 pm/ET): Mario Lopez hosts the ceremony honoring daytime drama, talk, and game shows, and more from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, streaming live on watch.theemmys.tv and on the Emmys app.
• Downey Wrote That (streaming on Peacock): David Letterman calls him “the funniest human I know.” Saturday Night Live impresario Lorne Michaels says he “became the voice of the show.” A documentary profiles Jim Downey, SNL‘s longest-tenured writer, who once shared an office with Bill Murray and went on to write some of the best-remembered sketches in the show’s history.
• R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead (streaming on Tubi): In a YA horror movie inspired by Stine’s The Haunting Hour, a teenager’s brother disappears, and no one but him remembers he ever existed. Time to take on the local harvest curse.
• The Twits (streaming on Netflix): Margo Martindale and Johnny Vegas provide the voices of the misanthropic Twits, Jim and Credenza, in a raucous animated comedy based on Roald Dahl’s celebrated novel.
• Hollywood Hustler: Glitz, Glam, Scam (streaming on Prime Video): A three-part true-crime docuseries unravels the frauds perpetrated by would-be actor Zach Horwitz, who duped investors into believing he was a well-connected Hollywood player.