Hamming It Up With ‘Friends & Neighbors,’ ‘Sheriff’ and ‘Fire Country’ Crossover, ‘Company Retreat’ Finale, ‘Blue’s Latest Visitor

Your Friends & Neighbors

Star and executive producer Jon Hamm (Mad Men) returns for a second season of the dark suburban satire as Andrew “Coop” Cooper, a former financier whose lucrative new career as the neighborhood cat burglar allows him to maintain his spoiled family’s lavish lifestyle. Having escaped a trumped-up murder charge in the first season, Coop is walking tall again, despite a bad back and shrinking bladder exposing his middle-age malaise. But his composure is shaken when an even slicker dude, the enigmatic import/exporter Owen Ashe (charismatic Paradise star James Marsden), arrives in a flashy McLaren 750S, taking possession of a local mansion and welcoming his posh neighbors with a Gatsby-like shindig described as “an F. Scott Fitzgerald fever dream.” Is Ashe a kindred spirit, or a threat to Coop’s secret criminal life? Time will tell.

Sheriff Country

Edgewater makes room for the Fire Country (9/8c) crew when the two series cross over in a seamless two-part adventure that begins when a school bus explodes and nine students go missing. Familial tensions between stepsisters Sheriff Mickey Fox (Morena Baccarin) and Cal Fire Division Chief Sharon Leone (Diane Farr) take a back seat to the desperate search, which also forges a temporary partnership between firefighter Bode (Max Thieriot) and Edgewater Deputy Boone (Matt Lauria).

Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat

The Jury Duty spinoff, a hidden-camera reality hybrid that plunges an unsuspecting nice guy (Anthony) into an entirely scripted scenario in which he’s the only person who isn’t an actor, finishes its run with three exhilarating episodes culminating in the emotional reveal. Anthony, hired as a temp at the fictional Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce company, believes he’s participating in a documentary about small businesses when he helps run the company’s annual weeklong retreat, getting much more than he bargained for. With Rockin’ Grandma’s in danger of being swallowed up by a soulless (also fictional) hedge-fund giant, it’s somehow up to Anthony to expose the fraud and save the day. Tears and laughter freely flow when he learns that it was all a hoax and a test of his noble character.

Boston Blue

The Blue Bloods spinoff gets a little Big Apple flavor when Len Cariou, as Reagan patriarch Henry, pays an emotional visit to Beantown to see his great-grandson Sean (Mika Amonsen) in uniform and check in with Danny (Donnie Wahlberg), for whom he has a special gift. He’s the first New York Reagan to appear in the show since Erin (Bridget Moynahan), Danny’s sister, guest-starred in the pilot. This episode, filmed in Cariou’s hometown of Toronto, also introduces Holly Robinson Peete as Mae’s (Gloria Reuben) sister Jill in a storyline involving a drive-by shooting at Rev. Peters’ (Ernie Hudson) church. Cariou, a Tony-winning (Sweeney Todd) stage veteran, can also be seen these days in the delightful MGM+ comedy American Classic as a member of a small-town theatrical family.

Outlander

Though peaceable by nature, man of the cloth Roger (Richard Rankin) is swept into battle, sword in hand, during 1779’s Siege of Savannah. But will it be enough to convince the Continental Army to give him the arms they need to defend the home front in North Carolina? Meanwhile, his wife Brianna (Sophie Skelton) nervously awaits the fate of her mate from within the Georgia city’s walls. And back at Fraser’s Ridge, Jamie (Sam Heughan) confronts the political divisions roiling his community during a Lodge Night meeting.

INSIDE FRIDAY TV:

· NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship (7 pm/ET, ESPN): All four No. 1 seeds have advanced to the Final Four, with UConn facing South Carolina in Phoenix, then Texas going head-to-head with UCLA at 9:30 pm/ET. The winners will play for the championship Sunday afternoon on ABC. An alt-cast on ESPN2, Courtside at the Women’s Final Four, features commentary from WNBA stars Natisha Heideman and Courtney Williams, Olympian Ilona Maher, and content creator Katie Feeney, with Jess Sims as host.

· RuPaul’s Drag Race (8/7c, MTV): Oscar nominee Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another) is the guest judge when the queens test their interviewing and banter skills as hosts of a mock morning show.

· Happy’s Place (8/7c, NBC): Saturday Night Live alum Cheri Oteri returns to the tavern as health inspector Monica, whom Bobbie (Reba McEntire) and Isabella (Belissa Escobedo) are determined to keep from checking Emmett (Rex Linn) out.

· Roger Corman: The Pope of Pop Cinema (8/7c, Turner Classic Movies): A documentary profiling the low-budget filmmaking legend kicks off a weekly tribute on Fridays through April. Highlights the first night include horror comedies A Bucket of Blood (9/8c) and the 1960 cult favorite The Little Shop of Horrors (10:15 pm/9:15c), which became a hit musical.

· True Crime Watch (9/8c, NBC): On Dateline NBC (9/8c), a report on the 2023 murder of Christine Banfield, victim of a plot between her husband Brendan and their Brazilian au pair Juliana Peres Magalhaes, features new footage of a police interview with Magalhaes. ABC‘s 20/20 (9/8c) reports on a feud between neighbors in Ocala, Florida, that turned deadly in 2023 when Susan Lorincz shot and killed mother-of-four Ajike Owens through her locked front door.

ON THE STREAM:

· For All Mankind (streaming on Apple TV): The arrest of “first man on Mars” Lee Jung-Gil (C.S. Lee) prompts astronaut legend Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) to go rogue to prevent his friend from being transported from Mars back to Earth.

· Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (streaming on Apple TV): Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell) reunites with a scientist friend to test a new device that could summon Godzilla to take on the new Titan X. But don’t they know opening the rift always has unintended consequences? Also new on Apple TV: the penultimate Season 2 episode of The Last Thing He Told Me, where the action shifts to Paris for a confrontation with the Compano crime family patriarch.

· Pizza Movie (streaming on Hulu): Stranger Things‘ Gaten Matarazzo and The Goldbergs‘ Sean Giambrone star in a raucous college farce as roomies in desperate need of pizza after ingesting a hallucinatory drug.

· The Truth and Tragedy of Moriah Wilson (streaming on Netflix): Director Marina Zenovich’s documentary profiles professional cyclist Moriah Wilson, whose life was cut short in 2022 when she was shot and killed by a jealous romantic rival.

· My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 — Last Air in Moscow (streaming on Mubi): An award-winning documentary follows independent journalists in Russia who risk imprisonment or worse from Putin’s regime that brands them “foreign agents.” And then the Ukraine war breaks out, escalating the danger.

· Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (streaming on Peacock): The evil animatronics from a deadly Chuck E. Cheese-like pizza joint are on the loose again in a sequel to the hit horror movie, making its streaming debut.