Amazon’s ‘Picnic’ Remake, Inside the Met Opera House, ‘Quantico’ Moves to Friday
A selective critical checklist of notable Friday TV:
Picnic at Hanging Rock (streaming on Amazon Prime Video): If you’ve never seen Peter Weir’s haunting 1975 movie, a benchmark of Down Under and 1970s cinema, this overwrought six-part remake may satisfy you in its eerie depiction of repressed female sexuality at the turn of the last century. The miniseries is based on Joan Lindsay’s unsolved-mystery novel about the search for three schoolgirls and a teacher who vanish in the wilderness during a Valentine’s Day picnic in 1990. “Secrets are like worms: greedy, greedy feeders,” declares the cruel headmistress, Hester Appleyard (Game of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer) as exotic nature collides with erotic desire, and the longings of these missing young women make for a tantalizing puzzle.
Great Performances: The Opera House (9/8c, PBS, check local listings at pbs.org): It would be impossible to count the number of great performances issuing from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York’s Lincoln Center over the last half-century. This documentary from Susan Froemke relives the Met’s history with archival footage and new interview, including with famed soprano Leontyne Price, whoh opened the Met’s present home in 1966 in Antony and Cleopatra.
Quantico (8/7c, ABC): Canceled but not yet forgotten, the spy thriller plays out its remaining episodes of the third and final season on a new night. This week’s mission sends Alex (Priyanka Chopra) and McQuigg (Alan Powell) to protect a prince from assassination.
Inside Friday TV: The CW reprises the moving documentary series My Last Days (8/7c), produced by and featuring Jane the Virgin’s Justin Baldoni, for three weeks of profiles of people who haven’t given up on life despite their terminal illnesses… Gillian Jacobs (Community) heads to beautiful Barcelona for some rom-com fun with pals Vanessa Bayer (Saturday Night Live) and Phoebe Robinson (2 Dope Queens) in the Netflix movie Ibiza… Christiane Amanpour interviews Aimen Dean, a former jihadist who became a spy for British intelligence in MI6, in CNN’s documentary special A Double Life: The Spy Inside al Qaeda (10/9c).
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