Marvel Goes Hollywood in ‘Wonder Man,’ ‘High Potential’ Ex Factor, Colbert Visits ‘Late Night’

Wonder Man

Not sure why, but my favorite Marvel series are those that don’t feel like Marvel series. (Earlier case in point: WandaVision, which ranked high on my 2021 best-of-year list.) With an eight-episode season (30 minutes each) dropping as a binge, Wonder Man is basically a Hollywood fable couched in superhero lore, both real and metafictional. Emmy winner Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Watchmen) stars as Simon Williams, a struggling actor whose Method technique verges on madness — his obsessive script notes get him fired from American Horror Story — and who gets an opportunity of a lifetime when he auditions for the title role in a movie version of Marvel’s Wonder Man (a remake of a fictional ’80s hit). Serving as career coach and cheerleader: veteran actor Trevor Slattery (Oscar winner Ben Kingsley, terrific), whose notorious gig impersonating the Mandarin (in Iron Man 3 and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) landed him in prison. Trevor has a secret agenda, but Simon’s secret is more dangerous: He has superpowers, which he must keep hidden from studio execs and suspicious agents of the Department of Damage Control. (It’s a nifty metaphor for the closeted private lives of Hollywood celebrities.) The insecurities and anxieties of the acting life threaten to trigger Simon’s latent powers, adding a suspenseful layer to Wonder Man’s cautionary tale of the price of fame. It’s pretty wonderful — as long as you’re not expecting a typical Marvel action romp.

High Potential

Separating the personal from the professional has never been one of Morgan Gillory’s (Kaitlin Olson) great strengths. So when her partner in crime-solving, Detective Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata), is suddenly distracted from their latest case (a murdered esports champion) after bumping into his ex-fiancée (This Is Us star Susan Kelechi Watson), she wants to know more. So do we, to be honest. Karadec is not amused, but when is he ever?

Late Night With Seth Meyers

In these troubled times, it’s always nice to see solidarity among the practitioners of late-night humor. In the latest case of crossing the network aisle, the host of CBS’s Late Show With Stephen Colbert heads over to 30 Rock to visit NBC’s Late Night, his first appearance with Seth Meyers since 2014 (when he was still doing The Colbert Report). It’s a friendly gesture of returning the favor, because Meyers was among the late-night talent (including Jimmy Fallon, Jon Stewart, and Andy Cohen) who appeared on Colbert’s show last July in a show of support following the announcement of CBS’s Late Show cancellation.

Pole to Pole

This guy gets around more than Carmen Sandiego. In the latest installments of this wide-ranging travel/nature series, Oscar winner Will Smith explores the islands of the South Pacific, then, in the second and penultimate episode (10/9c), he’s off to the Kalahari Desert. There, he joins a San tribe of hunter-gatherers as they forage through the unforgiving terrain. Next week: His journey ends at the North Pole.

American Masters

TV acknowledges Holocaust Remembrance Day with an impassioned biographical profile of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning author and humanitarian who chronicled his experience as a Holocaust survivor in the 1960 memoir Night. Narrated in Wiesel’s own voice, Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire features material from historical and personal archives and hand-painted animation.

33 Photos from the Ghetto

This documentary depicts the discovery after 80 years of the only known photographs preserved from the April 1943 uprising against occupying Nazi forces in the Warsaw Ghetto. These images were taken secretly by a 23-year-old Polish firefighter and recently unearthed by his son, who enlists a team of researchers to put these valuable snapshots of history in context.

INSIDE TUESDAY TV:

• Best Medicine (8/7c, Fox): Parker Young guests as a hunky off-the-grid wilderness guide lusted after by the women of Port Wenn, but Doc Best (Josh Charles) sees someone who needs a doctor’s care. And once again, he gets the town riled when his meddling causes the local eatery, The Salty Breeze, to be shut down.
• Will Trent (8/7c, ABC): Will (Ramón Rodríguez) and Faith (Iantha Richardson) are dancing with the suspects after a murder at the Atlanta World Salsa Championships.
• Doc (8/7c, Fox): Joan (Felicity Huffman) ramps up the competition for Chief Resident, assigning Amy (Molly Parker) and Sonja (Anya Banerjee) to evaluate each other’s work.
• Moonshiners: Master Distiller (9/8c, Discovery Channel): The backwoods competition for legal and not-so-legal distillers returns for an eighth season.

ON THE STREAM:

• Mike Epps: Delusional (streaming on Netflix): The comedian whose sitcom The Upshaws recently dropped its fifth and final season returns to the stand-up stage for his fifth Netflix special.
• Hamish Macbeth (streaming on BritBox): All three seasons of the delightful Scottish mystery series (1995-97) starring Robert Carlyle are now available on the global streaming service.