Marilyn Monroe at 100, ‘Lethally Blonde,’ ‘Battle on the Beach,’ War & War Machines on History Channel

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Born 100 years ago on this day, Marilyn Monroe remains one of Hollywood’s most fascinating, electrifying yet tragically elusive movie goddesses. TCM’s weekly tribute on Mondays in June opens with the 1953 musical comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which saw her teamed with Jane Russell playing showgirls aboard a cruise ship. As blithely gold-digging Lorelei Lee, Monroe’s rendition of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” is one for the ages, inspiring Madonna‘s “Material Girl” video three decades later. The lineup continues with 1953’s How to Marry a Millionaire (9:45/8:45c) opposite Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall, and a smaller supporting role in the 1952 Cary Grant comedy Monkey Business (11:30/10:30c).

Lethally Blonde

In this true-crime anthology, hosted by executive producer Holly Madison (a former girlfriend of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner), blondes most certainly do not have more fun. But these cautionary tales of the dark side of beauty extend beyond the travails of the golden-haired. The season 2 opener, “Killing King Cobra,” explores the gruesome 2007 near-decapitation murder of porn director Bryan Kocis, whose sordid story became the inspiration for the 2016 film King Cobra starring Christian Slater.

Battle on the Beach

Network stars Mika Kleinschmidt (100 Day Dream Home), Rock the Block‘s Ty Pennington, and Renovation Island‘s Sarah Baeumler are the mentors in Season 5 of the beachfront home-renovation competition. They guide teams, including two married couples and a mother-daughter duo, who are given seven weeks and $100,000 to transform rundown seaside homes in South Carolina’s Grand Strand into waterfront showstoppers. The two-hour opener takes on an Amazing Race vibe as the teams traverse Garden City following clues to the pier, and whoever gets there first gets the pick of the homes and assigns the others to their competition. The first design challenge involves the all-important living room, framing the ocean views that make these properties so valuable.

World War II with Tom Hanks

The 20-part chronicle of the global conflict continues in its second week with an episode revisiting the devastating Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the conditions that led to this tragic event, a “day of infamy” (as FDR described it) which ushered the United States from neutrality into an active combat participant. A second episode (9/8c) focuses on America’s war at sea, taking on Germany’s notorious U-boats in the Atlantic and Japan’s Navy in the Pacific.

Followed by the series premiere of History’s Greatest Machines with Dolph Lundgren (10/9c), hosted by the Swedish Rocky IV action star, who studied chemical engineering before getting the acting bug. The wide-ranging premiere reaches back to World War II with the development of the B-17 bomber and examines the cutting-edge technology of the F-35 stealth fighter jet. These machines, explains Lundgren, “didn’t just change our world, they expanded it.”

90 Day: The Last Resort

The 90 Day formula, like so much of made-for-TV matchmaking, doesn’t always end in a happily ever after. In the third season of the 90 Day Fiancé spinoff, six couples from the franchise try to get their relationships back on track by spending three weeks in the English countryside, focusing on their issues while reveling in the splendor of the 16th-century Thornbury Castle, a Tudor estate associated with the turbulent reign of Henry VIII and his marriage to Anne Boleyn. However these couples’ love stories turn out, it’s unlikely anyone’s going to lose their head.

INSIDE MONDAY TV:

• Andy Griffith’s 100th Birthday (11:30 am/10:30c, Turner Classic Movies): Who’d have guessed down-home comedian Andy Griffith and sex siren Marilyn Monroe were born on the very same day in 1926? It’s true, and TCM’s daytime centennial tribute to Griffith begins with the military comedies Onionhead (11:30 am/10:30c) and No Time for Sergeants (1:30 pm/12:30c), followed by 1957’s provocative drama A Face in the Crowd (3:45 pm/2:45c) and the 1975 showbiz comedy Hearts of the West (6/5c).
• Bring Me the Beauties: A Model Cult (9/8c, HBO): A three-part docuseries, airing weekly, reveals how 1980s male supermodel Hoyt Richards and other lookers of the era fell under the spell of beauty-obsessed Manhattan socialite Frederick von Mierers and his cult-like “spiritual group” Eternal Values.
• The Quiz with Balls (9/8, Fox): The watery game show gets patriotic with a team of Marine Men vs. Winged Women of the Air Force.

ON THE STREAM:

• You’re Killing Me (streaming on Acorn TV): Allie (Brooke Shields), Andi (Amalia Williamson), and Jack (Tom Cavanagh) are on the case when Allie’s best-selling murder mysteries inspire a copycat killer in Founders Cove.
• The Joke’s on Me (streaming on Fox Nation): Comedian Jeff Foxworthy‘s new stand-up special, filmed at the Gas South Theatre in Duluth, Georgia, includes reflections on his career and reveals how he refines his relatable material in behind-the-scenes footage.
• Vicious (streaming on BritBox): The Anglophile streamer acquires both seasons of the biting comedy (2013-16) starring British acting royalty Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen as a gay couple who have stayed together 50 years in a caustic love-hate relationship.