What’s On: Doctor vs. doctor on ‘Good Doctor,’ Premieres of ‘Mosaic’ and ‘Alienist,’ ‘Pawn Stars’ hits 500
A critical checklist of notable Monday TV:
The Good Doctor (10/9c, ABC): The season’s top new drama pits its unfiltered title character, Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore), against his hot-shot supervisor Dr. Neil Melendez (Nicholas Gonzales), when the latter’s personal woes begin to affect his operating room procedure. (And yet, if anyone should know about being cut some slack for unusual job performance …)
Mosaic (8/7c, HBO): Maybe you’re better off getting the mobile app and choosing your own path in this plodding murder mystery from Steven Soderbergh. The linear version airing through Friday on HBO starts strong, thanks to Sharon Stone’s full-bodied performance as a prickly children’s-book author who’s her own worst enemy. But when she disappears after two episodes, presumably murdered, the air and life go out of the story, and there are few interesting paths or characters to follow.
The Alienist (9/8c, TNT): Disappointment #2: Stylist to look at, this baroque limited-series adaptation of Caleb Carr’s best-seller is overemphatic in its period melodrama yet dramatically undernourished. A stiffly brooding Daniel Brühl is the title character, an ahead-of-his-time criminal psychologist working with a hostile police department in 1896 New York City when a series of ghastly murders of boy prostitutes rocks the burgeoning metropolis.
Pawn Stars (History, 10/9c): Seems like more than 500, if you’ve ever endured those seemingly week-long marathons of non-stop episodes of the ubiquitous reality show set at The Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas. For the landmark 500th episode, proprietor Rick Harrison goes on the road to explore national treasures in Washington, D.C., while deals get make back home. Followed by a second episode, because they never stop coming.
Inside Monday TV: Speaking of shows that air ad infinitum, in case you were worried that the transition from Spike TV to the Paramount Network would mean the end of Cops altogether on the new channel, seven hours of the durable reality crime show begin airing at 9/8c, with a new episode at 10/9c. … NBC’s The Brave (10/9c) begins the first of a two-part season finale focusing on boss lady Patricia (Anne Heche), who leaves her HQ for Turkey to confront her demons following the hack of a U.S. submarine that exposes a part of her secretive past. … Executive producer Viola Davis narrates TV One’s docu-series Two Sides (10/9c), which examines four recent cases of fatal police encounters involving African-Americans and the social justice movements that resulted. First up: the 2014 arrest and choking death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y.
