Worth Watching: Meghan and Harry Vent, ‘Castle Rock’ Returns, See ‘Life From Above’

Lizzy Caplan as Annie in Castle Rock - 'Let The River Run'
Dana Starbard/Hulu

A selective critical checklist of notable Wednesday TV:

Harry & Meghan: An African Journey (10/9c, ABC): Surely you don’t need to be told Harry-and-Meghan Markle who. The royal couple, officially known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have commanded headlines in recent days after a newsy interview with Britain’s ITN, which followed the pair on a 10-day humanitarian tour of Africa. The special, which aired in the U.K. on Sunday, has been repackaged by ABC News, with Good Morning America‘s Robin Roberts hosting. Beyond reflecting on their royal duties, Harry and Meghan unload on how they are coping amid the unsparing coverage of their private lives by British tabloids.

Castle Rock (streaming on Hulu): The Stephen King mashup anthology is back for a second season, once again borrowing characters and settings from King’s rich library to spin a strange new tale. The good news: Lizzy Caplan takes on the role of Misery lunatic Annie Wilkes, and she’s perfectly intense as the emotionally unstable addict on the run with her overprotected daughter Joy (Elsie Fisher) when her car flips — a reversal of the original novel — stranding her in the fabled Maine burg. Unfortunately, her compelling character study of obsessive psychosis overlaps with a muddled supernatural yarn involving doings in neighboring Jerusalem’s Lot. The first three episodes drop this week, with new episodes every Wednesday.

Life from Above (10/9c, PBS, check local listings at pbs.org): Sometimes to get past the madness all around us on our planet Earth, it helps to rise above. And in the latest visually enthralling spectacle from BBC Studios’ Natural History Unit, we get to do just that. With the help of satellite imaging, the four-part Life from Above series offers fresh new perspectives on the planet’s movements, colors, patterns and evolution. A highlight of the first chapter, “Moving Planet,” features both macro and micro views of thousands of thrillingly synchronized Shaolin Kung-Fu students in training. And animals naturally get their moment, including African hippos creating tributaries of water with their movements and herds of wildebeest migrating across the Serengeti.

Earlier in the evening, the perennial Nature series (8/7c, check local listings at pbs.org) begins a three-part series, “Okavango: River of Dreams,” from celebrated nature filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert, capturing the natural wonders and wildlife of the African oasis.

Inside Wednesday TV: The castaways are already dropping their buffs on CBS’s Survivor (8/7c), with an early tribe swap forcing the players to change up what has already been a pretty twisty game… Rocker Bret Michaels opens up about his career and life as a diabetic to Dan Rather in AXS’s The Big Interview (8/7c)… The tireless Tyler Perry delivers two new soap operas to BET: The Oval (9/8c) focuses on a combative interracial First Couple — Ed Quinn as President Hunter Franklin, and Kron Moore as First Lady Victoria — moving into the fishbowl of the White House; and steamy Sistas (10/9c) deals with a tightly bonded group of single black females… Jenna Coleman (Victoria) stars in SundanceTV’s wrenching four-part psychological thriller The Cry (11/10c) as Joanna, a new mother whose infant son mysteriously vanishes from their car during a trip to Australia. Her already overwhelmed mental state further unravels when she and partner Alistair (Ewen Leslie) come under scrutiny by authorities and the media.