‘Millionaire’ in Jeopardy, Tom Hiddleston in Pompeii, All in the Manson Family, Feeling ‘Lucky’

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

“What’s the record for the fastest elimination?” Larry David barks when he takes the hot seat alongside his daughter Cazzie as the first celebrity guests of the venerable quiz show’s new season. The Curb Your Enthusiasm icon, currently starring in HBO‘s Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, cracks up the audience and host Jimmy Kimmel as he obsesses about staying in the game long enough to cross the “embarrassment threshold.” When their time is finished, Jeopardy! super champ Jamie Ding, who won 31 consecutive games this season, steps in, with a sheepish Ben Affleck as his partner admitting he’s “riding this guy’s coattails.” The pairing echoes Ken Jennings‘ appearance last summer with Kimmel’s nemesis (and Affleck’s bestie) Matt Damon, which reaped the $1 million grand prize. Can Jamie and Ben duplicate that triumph?

Pompeii: Out of Time

Mixing elaborate dramatic reenactment with documentary-style historical investigation, Loki star Tom Hiddleston reunites with his executive producer Kevin R. Wright for an unusually cinematic hybrid docuseries that depicts the final days of Pompeii as the ancient Italian city trembles before the mighty erupting volcano of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Over three episodes airing consecutively (streaming Thursday on Disney+ and Hulu), movie magic inserts Hiddleston into scripted sequences focusing on the fate of several Pompeii citizens, including a teenage blacksmith’s apprentice who’s desperate to rescue his mother, a local businesswoman protecting her family, and a member of the Praetorian Guard. As in any disaster epic, not everyone will survive.

My Grandfather Charles Manson

Filmmaker Sophia Maddox got the shock of her young life when the results of her father’s DNA test, intended to discover the identity of the biological father he never knew, revealed that the notorious cult leader Charles Manson of Helter Skelter infamy was her grandfather. “How could my blood do something so atrocious?” Maddox wonders in horror as she investigates her lineage in a deeply personal true-crime documentary for which she serves as executive producer and co-director. Submitting her own DNA to gain access to Manson’s sealed records, including audio recordings, Maddox embarks on a journey of self-discovery that creates tension with her own father as she explores the likelihood of inheriting any traits from this legendary fiend.

Lucky

The quality of a chase thriller often relies on the resourcefulness of the person being chased. Lucky is lucky to have Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen’s Gambit) playing the title character, a con woman wronged by her husband, Cary (Drew Starkey), when he absconded with $10 million in ill-gotten cash, putting a target on his and her back. Last seen hiding in the bed of a truck driven by the henchmen trying to kill her, Lucky shows her pluckiness in the series’ third episode, dodging villains (including an icy Annette Bening) while finding novel ways to change her looks and circumstances as she gets closer to finding her duplicitous partner in crime.

Trying

Should we be worried about the state of the union of Jason (Rafe Spall) and Nikki (Esther Smith), the adoptive parents at the heart of this wry domestic comedy? With their adolescent kids elsewhere for the night, Nikki stays late at her new office, getting awfully close to her dreamboat work crush Kerry (Merlin‘s Colin Morgan) — who Jason still believes is female. Jason’s also out on the town, joining his new and much younger college classmates (who insist on calling him “Mr. Ross”) for a mixer that he finds too boring and suggests they loosen up and learn how to have fun.

INSIDE WEDNESDAY TV:

• MasterChef (8/7c, Fox): The Top 14 home cooks play a round of “Wheel of Fusion,” spinning a wheel to find which global cuisine they’ll need to blend with their own traditional culinary heritage and impress the judges. Followed by a new episode of Nation’s Dumbest (9/8c).
• A Toxic Love Story (streaming on Netflix): A true-crime documentary unpacks a twisted case in which a deputy U.S. Marshal and his new wife accuse his ex of cyberstalking and threatening them, but the facts are even more disturbing.
• A Shop for Killers (streaming on Hulu): The South Korean action thriller returns for a second season, with Ji-an (Kim Hye-jun) and her back-from-the-dead uncle Jin-man (Lee Dong-wook) reunited as they take on a new batch of deadly assassins dispatched by the nefarious Babylon.