Worth Watching: A Moonstruck ‘One Day,’ PBS Revisits Notre Dame, ‘Real Sports’ and the Pandemic
A selective critical checklist of notable Tuesday TV:
One Day at a Time (9:30/8:30c, Pop TV, simulcast on TV Land): In a lovely, romantic and ultimately touching episode, now confirmed to be the midseason finale (production was suspended because of the pandemic), each member of the Alvarez family finds their way to the rooftop on the night of a supermoon, where an elaborate display suggests someone’s going to make a grand gesture. But to whom?
Secrets of the Dead: Building Notre Dame (8/7c, PBS, check local listings at pbs.org): A year after the fabled Paris cathedral suffered a terrible fire, Secrets presents a historical and scientific study of Notre Dame’s construction, which began in the 12th century and took centuries to complete. Architectural and cultural historians weigh in, and novelist Ken Follett (The Pillars of the Earth) is also interviewed.
Followed by a two-hour look Inside the Vatican (9/8c, PBS, check local listings at pbs.org), a rare all-access tour of Vatican City, with security officers, nuns, the papal gardener and even Pope Francis sharing details of what happens within the Catholic Church’s headquarters, a mini-country within Rome’s borders. Filmed during the fifth year of Pope Francis’s tenure, the special looks at how the reformer pontiff has affected life within the Vatican walls.
Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel (10/9c, HBO): Now in its 25th season, the sports newsmagazine devotes much of the hour to the impact of COVID-19 on the world of athletics. Correspondent David Scott looks at how sports leagues and organizations responded to the global threat in the early days and weeks of the virus spread. In another segment, Jon Frankel interviews workers from Cascade Lacrosse, a company that typically produces lacrosse helmets but is now making protective gear for health-care workers. For uplift, Real Sports replays a 2004 segment going behind the scenes of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
Inside Tuesday TV: Usher guests on NBC’s Ellen’s Game of Games (9/8c) to help emcee the game “Knockin’ Boots,” a round of good clean fun in which contestants have to name a song or sing lyrics with a specific word, or a giant boot will knock them into a vat of suds… ABC’s socially conscious mixed-ish (9/8c) confronts the homeless crisis when Paul (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) and Rainbow (Arica Himmel) start a soup kitchen at her school… Raven-Symoné returns to ABC’s black-ish (9:30/8:30c) as Dre’s (Anthony Anderson) sister Rhonda, as the Johnsons prepare to throw a baby shower for the soon-to-be adoptive mother… History’s Lost Gold of World War II (10/9c) returns for a second season, with a new team scouring the Philippines in search of billions rumored to have been hidden by a Japanese general during the conflict.
