Worth Watching: RIP ‘iZombie,’ TCM’s Summer Under the Stars, Sherlock’s Dad Returns to ‘Elementary’
A selective critical checklist of notable Thursday TV:
iZombie (8/7c, The CW): Mmm, brains. Wow, so many ends of eras lately on The CW. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend signed off this spring, and this week we’re saying fare-thee-well to Jane the Virgin and now this quirky horror comedy. It reaches a climax in the human-vs.-zombie war, as Liv (Rose McIver) reunites with Major (Robert Buckley) once she flies back to Seattle with Ravi (Rahul Kohli) and Clive (Malcolm Goodwin), bearing a possible cure for zombies that could bring all of this mess to a close.
Summer Under the Stars (begins at 6 am/5c, TCM): Forget dog days. Turner Classic Movies makes summer bearable with the annual August extravaganza devoting each 24-hour period to a cinema legend’s body of work. First up: an all-time favorite, Henry Fonda, whose prime time showcase features his work in comedy — Preston Sturges’ uproarious 1941 The Lady Eve (8/7c), in which con woman Barbara Stanwyck sets her sights on a nerdy scientist — and drama, with Sidney Lumet’s indelible 1957 version of 12 Angry Men (10/9c), where Fonda sweats it out trying to convince the other 11 members in a jury room not to rush to judgment. For contrast, he’s on the other side of the law as The Wrong Man (6/5C), asserting his innocence in Alfred Hitchcock’s stark 1956 drama.
Elementary (10/9c, CBS): A father-son reunion sparks this chapter of the crime drama’s final season when Morland Holmes (John Noble) returns, this time to give aid to his son, Sherlock (Jonny Lee Miller). Good old bad old Morland puts his criminal network to good use to help Sherlock and Watson (Lucy Liu, who directs the episode) in their mission to take down billionaire Odin Reichenbach’s (James Frain) crime-prevention system.
Inside Thursday TV: In advance of a revival later this year, Spectrum Originals has made all seven seasons of the beloved sitcom Mad About You available for screening on demand… Another binge opportunity, when TV One celebrates National Girlfriends Day with a 12-hour marathon of the popular sitcom Girlfriends (starting at 6 am/5c), starring a pre-black-ish Tracee Ellis Ross… The NFL preseason kicks off with NBC’s Hall of Fame Game (8/7c) from Canton, Ohio, where the Denver Broncos take on the Atlanta Falcons. Let the games begin… Though divorced, Christina Anstead and Tarek El Moussa are back in business with a new season of HGTV hit Flip or Flop (9/8c), transforming a rundown four-bedroom home in the premiere… True-crime fans may be fascinated by SundanceTV’s No One Saw a Thing (11/10c), recounting a 1981 incident in Skidmore, Missouri, where the town bully is shot and killed on Main Street with 60 people in attendance — and yet no one admits to having any memory of witnessing the actual event.
