Worth Watching: ‘Elementary’ in London, ‘Red Nose Day,’ Remembering Farrah Fawcett
A selective critical checklist of notable Thursday TV:
Elementary (10/9c, CBS): Now it’s Joan Watson’s (Lucy Liu) turn to be the deductive fish out of water, as the seventh and final season of the contemporary Sherlock Holmes procedural kicks off with Sherlock (Jonny Lee Miller) and his detective sidekick exiled to London. Back story: Sherlock confessed to a murder he didn’t commit and was extradited. He did it for his former boss, NYPD Capt. Gregson (Aidan Quinn), and both Gregson and Detective Bell (Jon Michael Hill) feel really bad about it. Joan’s not doing so great, either, as she acclimates to London and a snarky new boss at Scotland Yard (Episodes’s wonderful Tamsin Grieg as DCI Jones). But instead of tearing her hair out, Watson’s gone blonde. (Note: Don’t call her “Doc,” she doesn’t like it.) A case involving an acid attack on a newspaper-tabloid model brings the team back in touch with Sherlock’s former protégé Kitty (Ophelia Lovibond), but soon enough, circumstances in New York will make them yearn to go back across the pond.
Red Nose Day (8/7c, NBC): The annual all-star celebrity charity event blends comedy sketches with earnest appeals to raise money for children in need in the U.S. and abroad. Among the highlights: a mini-sequel to Four Weddings and a Funeral (to be adapted this summer into a Hulu series), featuring original stars Hugh Grant, Andie McDowell, Kristin Scott Thomas, Rowan Atkinson, with Lily James, Alicia Vikander and Sam Smith joining in the fun. Saturday Night Live‘s Emmy-winning Kate McKinnon will perform in sketches, along with new late-night host Lilly Singh, and a parody video of Hall and Oates’ “You Make My Dreams” will include new America’s Got Talent judge Julianne Hough, This Is Us star Chrissy Metz and the NFL’s Rob Gronkowski. Hit or miss, it’s all for a good cause.
The Red Nose Day theme continues with a new edition of Hollywood Game Night (10/9c), where host Jane Lynch welcomes A-listers including Kelly Clarkson, Kenan Thompson, Kristen Bell, Jennifer Garner, Sean Hayes, Jeff Goldblum, Leslie Mann and Thandie Newton.
This Is Farrah Fawcett (8/7c, ABC): The network that launched TV’s golden girl into stardom as one of the original Charlie’s Angels remembers Fawcett’s career, life as a celebrity and her public battle with cancer, ending in her death 10 years ago this June, in a two-hour ABC News special. (A&E’s Biography has a tribute planned for July.) Among those interviewed: Angels co-star Jaclyn Smith, close friend Alana Stewart, her doctors and the photographer who shot her fabled swimsuit poster. And from the archives, the special replays excerpts from Barbara Walters‘ interviews with Fawcett and her longtime partner, Ryan O’Neal.
Inside Thursday TV: Flip or Flop‘s Christina Anstead has a new husband and a new gig, starring in HGTV’s docu-series Christina on the Coast (9/8c), which follows her as she expands her design business in Southern California… Bravo’s Project Runway (9/8c) gets real when the designers visit mentor (and former winner) Christian Siriano‘s store, where city workers from the Post Office, Department of Sanitation, NYPD and FDNY become their latest clients… Highbrow literary intrigue of the Masterpiece variety awaits viewers of SundanceTV’s eight-part adaptation of Umberto Eco’s best-seller The Name of the Rose (10/9c). John Turturro stars as a 14th-century Franciscan monk investigating a series of gruesome murders at a monastery in the Alps. Co-stars include Person of Interest‘s Michael Emerson and Rupert Everett as a ruthless inquisitor.
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