‘Starfleet Academy,’ Agatha Christie’s ‘Seven Dials,’ Spying with ‘Ponies,’ Job Opening on ‘9-1-1’

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

“Why does everything have to be a full-on lesson in this place?” whines one of the literal space cadets in the latest Star Trek spinoff. Which (duh) is set at Starfleet Academy, meaning life lessons are always on the syllabus. Holly Hunter is having a merry time as the free-spirited 400-year-old Chancellor/Captain, Nahla Ake, and her scenes opposite fellow scenery-chewer Paul Giamatti (as her space-pirate nemesis) are a treat. Familiarity with Star Trek: Discovery is a plus, because this series takes place in the 32nd century, 100 years after the “Burn” that devastated the galaxy, and the new class of recruits are the Academy’s first in more than a century. Among them: a peace-loving Klingon, a holographic emissary from a photonic alien race, and a reforming rebel who shares a tangled past with Ake. Familiar faces include Star Trek: Voyager‘s hologram Doctor (Robert Picardo) and sardonic Discovery engineer Jett Reno (Tig Notaro). So this is how the Trek franchise marks its 60th anniversary: by going younger. Launches with two episodes.

Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials

Set in post-WWI England in the 1920s, this diverting loose adaptation of an Agatha Christie classic (in three parts) features an amateur sleuth: spunky socialite Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent (Mia McKenna-Bruce), in whose family’s country estate a suspicious death occurs following a lavish party. The body is found amid the clatter of seven artfully arranged alarm clocks, which Bundle suspects has something to do with a mysterious entity known only as “Seven Dials.” Bundle’s mother, Lady Caterham (a frazzled Helena Bonham Carter), warns her, “It doesn’t pay to ask too many questions,” and Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Battle (a droll Martin Freeman) also wishes she’d stay out of it. But there wouldn’t be much of a story if she listened to reason, would there?

Ponies

The misfit spies of Apple TV’s Slow Horses would probably get a kick out of this amusingly offbeat eight-episode thriller. Game of Thrones‘ Emilia Clarke and The White Lotus‘ Haley Lu Richardson are an intriguingly odd couple as the bookish Bea and the brash Twila, newly widowed wives of CIA agents in late-1970s Russia who refuse to be sidelined and left in the dark. They persuade the head of the Moscow office (Adrian Lester) that they’d make perfect secret agents, flying under the KGB radar because of their gender. And so their perilous mission begins.

9-1-1

Can this professional friendship be saved? The 118 can’t help wondering as the firehouse reels after new captain Chimney (Kenneth Choi) reluctantly fired his best friend and paramedic Hen (Aisha Hinds) for hiding her mystery illness and putting herself and others at risk. The crew also grapples with modern technology when a new AI call center creates havoc. Followed by 9-1-1: Nashville (9/8c), where the city continues to suffer from hackers who’ve now caused a power outage.

The Pitt

It’s only hour 2 of a long day’s shift, and we’re already exhausted. In the 8 am stretch of the award-winning medical drama, Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) clashes with his soon-to-be replacement (Sepideh Moafi) over her advocacy of AI methodology, while Santos (Isa Briones) expresses her suspicions about a case of possible child abuse and new nurse Emma (Laëtitia Hollard) gets the shock of her life — so far — when a cast is removed from an indigent patient. And the day’s just getting started.

INSIDE THURSDAY TV:

• Law & Order (8/7c, NBC): Lt. Brady’s (Maura Tierney) son is a prime suspect in a murder investigation, making things awkward in the precinct. Followed by Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (9/8c), where the crew follows up on an anonymous video linked to an attempt on a judge’s life.
• Animal Control (9/8c, Fox): The scruffy sitcom’s official Season 4 time-period premiere brings back series star Joel McHale‘s Community buddy Ken Jeong as K-9 trainer and influencer Roman Park, whose new annex kennel creates friction between the crew and their nemesis, Templeton Dudge (Gerry Dee). Followed by the Season 2 premiere of the military comedy Going Dutch (9:30/8:30c), where the Colonel (Denis Leary) and his troops go to war against General Davidson (Joe Morton) and his soldiers in a no-holds-barred round of laser tag.
• Thursday Night IMPACT! (9 pm/ET, AMC): Pro wrestling legend AJ Styles appears in the premiere of TNA Wrestling’s new flagship show.
• The Hunting Party (10/9c, NBC): Niecy Nash-Betts guest-stars as a New Mexico detective who joins the team in their hunt for a killer who preserves his victims in resin, a fate that befell her former partner.
• Grey’s Anatomy (10/9c, ABC): Richard (James Pickens Jr.) deals with his own medical issues while Jules (Adelaide Kane) wrestles with her attraction to Winston (Anthony Hill).

 ON THE STREAM:

• Gangs of London (streaming on AMC+): The gritty crime drama’s third season opens with a spiked shipment of cocaine causing hundreds of casualties, disrupting the underworld’s volatile gang war.
• The Upshaws (streaming on Netflix): The domestic sitcom starring Mike Epps, Kim Fields and Wanda Sykes returns for its seventh and final season.
• Stayer (streaming on Viaplay): A Norwegian drama features actor-director-songwriter Aksel Hennie (The Martian) as an aging rocker whose life is upended when he begins caring for the 16-year-old daughter he hasn’t seen for years after the death of her mother.