Behold ‘Beauty,’ ‘Percy Jackson’ Finale, Queer Eye’s Capital Season, Sophie Turner for the ‘Steal’

The Beauty

Beautiful people across the world are blowing up, and we’re not talking social media. That’s the nightmare starting point of Ryan Murphy’s freaky, fascinating sci-fi/body-horror thriller. The series satirizes the “attention culture” of instant gratification and (echoing Murphy’s earlier hit Nip/Tuck) the desire to achieve bodily perfection — embodied in a mysterious miracle drug known as The Beauty. This pharmaceutical fountain of youth, which can be sexually transmitted, is also a Frankenstein pathogen with the most alarming side effects. Murphy regular Evan Peters plays an FBI agent investigating deaths from Rome and Venice to New York, with Ashton Kutcher the ruthless billionaire developing The Beauty while dispatching a quirky assassin (Anthony Ramos) to clean up infected loose ends. Graphic and grotesque, sleek and sick and very dark, The Beauty is about as subtle as a root canal without Novocain, but a lot more fun. Launches with three episodes.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Fleece, fleece, who’s got the Golden Fleece? And why does it look like a ratty shag rug? The Season 2 finale of the myth-driven fantasy pits young demigod Percy (Walker Scobell) and his crew against the forces of Kronos, led by turncoat Luke (Charlie Bushnell). With giants breaking through Camp Half-Blood’s borders, the battle is on, with plenty of swordplay and fisticuffs — and the fate of Thalia Grace (Tamara Smart), the daughter of Zeus who’s long been transformed into a tree, in the balance.

Queer Eye

With their gospel of love, support, and community, the Fab Five — Jeremiah Brent, Tan France, Karamo Brown, Antoni Porowski, and Jonathan Van Ness — descend on the nation’s capital of Washington D.C., for the 10th and final season of emotional makeovers. Hugs abound as these merry, life-affirming gentlemen work their magic. No wonder one of their subjects responds with a heartfelt “Will y’all marry me?”

Steal

Game of Thrones heroine Sophie Turner is embroiled in a deadly game of high finance and deception in a six-part thriller (all available for binge-watching) that opens with a daring robbery and only gets more complicated from there. She’s Zara, a low-rung employee at a London investment firm who becomes complicit as a key witness when armed thieves force her to transfer billions in pension funds during the largest heist in British history. After DCI Rhys Covaci (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) loops her into the investigation, Zara not only has criminals on her trail but also government agents. Conspiracy theorists will likely eat this up.

Dirty Talk: When Daytime Talk Shows Ruled TV

In the docuseries’ second and middle installment, titled “Talked to Death,” the rise of so-called “trash TV” keeps audiences riveted and critics appalled as producers and hosts keep pushing the messy envelope, encouraging guests to air and even flaunt the dirtiest of laundries. Then came the watershed incident on The Jenny Jones Show in 1995, when one guest murdered another after an embarrassing reveal staged for public titillation. The backlash after this tragedy had people wondering if the genre had finally gone too far and when the pendulum would swing back toward civility.

INSIDE WEDNESDAY TV:

• Chicago Med (8/7, NBC): Archer (Steven Weber) and Frost (Darren Barnet) puzzle over the treatment of a college basketball star. Followed by new episodes of Chicago Fire (9/8c) and Chicago P.D. (10/9c).
• Shifting Gears (8/7c, ABC): Riley’s (Kat Dennings) new relationship with single dad Andy (Grey’s Anatomy‘s Jesse Williams) is going great — until her dad, Matt (Tim Allen), butts in. Who’d have seen that coming?
• The Masked Singer (8/7c, Fox): The season’s first Wild Card appears during Clueless Night, celebrating the iconic movie’s 30th anniversary while unmasking two celebrities. Followed by a new episode of Fear Factor: House of Fears.
• Police 24/7 (8/7c, The CW): The true-crime series moves to a new night. Followed by Katie Pavlich: Trump Exclusive (9/8c), featuring the host’s exclusive interview with the president from the White House.
• Abbott Elementary (8:30/7:30c, ABC): The staff has spent the last four weeks teaching in an abandoned mall, and while the District applauds their flexibility, the Abbott crew believes they’re being taken for granted. Khandi Alexander (CSI: Miami) guest-stars as a rival janitor who clashes memorably with Mr. Johnson (William Stanford Davis) as they work together to clean up the joint.
• Chasing Speed (9/8c, Vice TV): A six-part docuseries goes inside the world of National Hot Rod Association drag racing, following teams through the 2025 season.
• Nova (9/8c, PBS): In “Asteroids: Spark of Life?”, scientists examine lunar rocks and ancient impact craters to explore whether asteroids helped ignite life on Earth rather than destroy it.

ON THE STREAM:

• Hijack (streaming on Apple TV): Did we hear right when heroic Sam Nelson (Idris Elba) announced, “I’m hijacking this train” at the end of last week’s episode? As police, intelligence, and military convene in Berlin to confront this crisis, Sam makes his demands and motivations known. Also on Apple TV: the Season 2 premiere of the savory French/Japanese drama Drops of God, about the search for the origin of the world’s greatest wine.
• Beast Games (streaming on Prime Video): Forget “heads or tails.” It’s time to flip that $10,000,000 coin!
• Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart (streaming on Netflix): A true-crime documentary revisits the often-told ordeal of Elizabeth Smart, whose abduction at 14 in 2002 became a national obsession. The special celebrates her resilience and public profile decades later as a survivor and inspirational speaker.