Worth Watching: Jimmy Kimmel in Brooklyn, Hallmark Goes to the Dogs, Trippy ‘Prodigal Son,’ HBO’s ‘Catherine the Great’
A selective critical checklist of notable Monday TV:
Jimmy Kimmel Live (11:35/10:35c, ABC): It’s always a big deal and good time when the late-night host returns to Brooklyn, and this will be Kimmel‘s fifth weeklong stand at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s grand Howard Gilman Opera House. He’s joined by sidekick Guillermo, fresh from a cross-country bus trip, and a strong lineup of guests through the week, including Eddie Murphy, Bruce Springsteen, Alicia Keys, Sen. Bernie Sanders, John Krasinksi and Benedict Cumberbatch.
2019 American Humane Hero Dog Awards (8/7c, Hallmark Channel): Very special canines walk the red carpet in the ninth annual celebration of the bonds between humans and the dogs who’ve enriched their lives. Beth Stern and Good Witch‘s James Denton are hosts, and the wonderful Kristin Chenoweth is on hand to receive Hallmark’s 2019 Adoption Ever After Award in recognition of her efforts in pet rescue. The main event, however, is honoring devoted animals in various categories: guide/hearing hero dog, law enforcement/arson hero dog, military hero dog, search and rescue hero dog, service hero dog, shelter hero dog, and therapy hero dog. Their stories are guaranteed to warm and move you. If we had tails, we’d wag them.
Followed by The Love of Dogs Benefit Concert (10/9c), a fundraising benefit to help shelter and rescue dogs find a home. Performers from Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame CMA Theater include Lee Brice, Hunter Hayes and Easton Corbin.
Prodigal Son (9/8c, Fox): “Would you believe that homicide appears to be the only thing keeping me sane?” marvels Malcolm Bright (Tom Payne) in this unconventional and enjoyable crime drama. He hastens to add: “Solving, not doing.” But the point is made. The troubled son of an infamous serial killer (Michael Sheen), Malcolm suffers from chronic insomnia fueled by nightmares of his childhood, which makes him all too eager to assist detective Dani (Aurora Perrineau) on a murder case with a drug angle. But his trippy hallucinations, somehow connected to the “girl in a box” he may or may not have seen as a youth, could get in the way of solving the case.
Rock the Block (9/8c, HGTV): The channel’s newest competition series pits four of the network’s leading ladies in a race to outdo each other in renovating identical L.A. properties over four weeks with a $175,000 budget. Restored by the Fords‘ Leanne Ford, Good Bones‘ Mina Starsiak Hawn, Hidden Potential‘s Jasmine Roth and Windy City Rehab‘s Alison Victoria take on a different space in their house in each episode — starting with the master suites — and a judge from the HGTV family (this week, Flip or Flop‘s Tarek El Moussa) will decide a winner. Whoever adds the most value to their house by series’ end will get an actual street named in her honor. As a bonus, each week’s challenge winner gets a special “showcase” episode of her signature series that will air immediately after Rock the Block signs off.
Catherine the Great (10/9c, HBO): Helen Mirren has won an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy for playing famous queens — Elizabeth I for HBO, Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen and Broadway’s The Audience — and now she dynamically assumes the throne of Russia’s most fabled empress in an opulent four-part costume drama that suggests the greatest thing about Catherine may have been her sex drive. A boisterous Jason Clarke plays her passionate and jealous lover, military leader Grigory Potemkin, in a story that’s less concerned with matters of state than with more intimate affairs in Catherine’s very busy boudoir.
Inside Monday TV: Who thought this would be a good idea? On CBS’s The Neighborhood (8/7c), the Butlers and neighboring Johnsons decide to go on a double date to a new restaurant. Someone had better tip well… The Starz documentary The River and the Wall (9/8c) is a travelogue with a political message, as five friends travel 1,200 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, exploring the natural landscape to see how it would be affected by the construction of a physical border wall… Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) steps up for his first surgery on ABC’s The Good Doctor (10/9c), but Dr. Andrews (Hill Harper) doubts the autistic boy wonder is ready for this big leap.
