Worth Watching: A New Holmes, ‘Masked Singer’ and a New ‘Voice,’ ‘Agents of Chaos’
A selective critical checklist of notable Wednesday TV:
Enola Holmes (streaming on Netflix): Who knew Sherlock Holmes had a younger and equally irrepressible sister? Readers of Nancy Springer’s young-adult books, that’s who — and those books are the inspiration for a fun family-friendly adventure starring Stranger Things‘ breakout star Millie Bobby Brown in the title role. Henry Cavill is her more famous sleuth brother, with Sam Claflin as stuffy sibling Mycroft, but this story belongs to Enola, who goes her own way in search of their missing mum (The Crown‘s Helena Bonham Carter) in 19th-century England. During her quest, she’ll save a young aristocrat and even change the course of history. That’s how those Holmes roll.
The Masked Singer (8/7c, Fox): One of TV’s guiltiest guilty pleasures is back for a fourth season, as a witless panel tries to figure out who’s singing (sometimes badly) beneath those elaborate costumes, which are indubitably the stars of this show. In a first, two contestants will appear as one, as the double-headed Snow Owls, and will sing together and, should it come to that, be unmasked together. Other new characters include a Sun, Crocodile, Jellyfish, Dragon, Broccoli (floret, not entire stalk) and Popcorn — which sounds about right, because this is Popcorn TV at its corniest.
I Can See Your Voice (9/8c, Fox): Not to be outdone, the network keeps the musical vibe going with another comedic competition, hosted by Masked panelist Ken Jeong. Based on a South Korean format, Voice uses celebrity panelists (including regulars Cheryl Hines and Adrienne Bailon-Houghton) to help a contestant figure out which of six “Secret Voices” is a good or bad singer, based solely on clues, interrogations and lip-synch challenges. Whoever’s left standing gets to sing a duet — in the opener, with Nick Lachey — when we learn if he or she is the genuine article, or a tone-deaf disaster.
Agents of Chaos (9/8c, HBO): In an unfortunately still-timely two-part documentary, concluding Thursday, award-winning director Alex Gibney takes a deep dive into the manifold conspiracies of Russian interference in the 2016 election, including a study of the Russian “troll factory” and its owner which targeted social media platforms including Facebook with disinformation. As fears prevail that similar efforts could influence the upcoming election, Gibney’s film is both cautionary tale and four-alarm warning.
Inside Wednesday TV: CBS All Access gets into the feature-documentary game with Console Wars, a nostalgic look back at the battle for video-game dominance in the 1990s between Sega and Nintendo… ABC revives its Wonderful World of Disney movie franchise with the broadcast debut of Marvel Studios’ 2014 hit Guardians of the Galaxy (8/7c)… An eventful first-season finale of The CW’s Coroner (9/8) includes a murder investigation that is very personal for the team, while Jenny’s (Serinda Swan) world is rocked when she learns truths about the childhood death of her sister, just as Liam (Éric Bruneau) decides to let her know just how he feels about her. Like that was a mystery… The Good Place‘s Emmy-nominated D’Arcy Carden is a guest voice in another fun outing of FXX’s Archer (10/9c), in which the team makes another fine mess as they try to steal experimental technology from an inventor.
