Sunday gives us the finale of E!’s “The Royals,” which matters deeply to the folks that watch it, at 10 p.m. ET/PT, and several high-profile and prestige premieres: “Billions” starts its second season on Showtime at 10 p.m. ET/PT, and 10:30 p.m. ET/PT sees the premiere of HBO’s “Crashing” (the standup-centric comedy, not to be confused with Netflix’s brilliant Phoebe Waller-Bridge story of the same name) after the premiere of star-powered miniseries “Big Little Lies.”
Over on network, Sunday also marks the first episode of excellently titled “Good Wife” spinoff, “The Good Fight,” which will air on CBS (8 p.m. ET/PT) before the second episode premieres on CBS All-Access. We’re weirded out by CBS’s strategy — spicing up their cash cow online offerings with non-procedural, innovative dramas with huge fan-bases, like this and the forthcoming “Star Trek” series — but we’ll be watching all the same. The mission statement here is endlessly fascinating: Turning the Florrick universe upside down by finally treating money like it’s real, and feminism like a good thing.
RELATED: Just hear us out: ‘The Good Fight’ may be better than ‘The Good Wife’
On Monday, NBC will give us two hours of the wildly beloved “American Ninja Warrior” at 8 p.m. ET/PT, followed by the season finale of “Timeless,” the little time-travel show — with a powerful conscience and nerd appeal rare for network TV – that could. But on cable, it’s a whole other beast: “Bates Motel” begins the final act in its five-season A&E blueprint, setting the stage at 10 p.m. ET/PT for a ten-episode return to “Psycho’s” classic suspense thriller setup at last.
On Tuesday, we’re happy to say TBS comedy gem “The Detour” — starring the always perfect Natalie Zea and Samantha Bee’s husband as hilariously neurotic parents on a neverending road trip — begins its second season with a double-episode hour at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET/PT, TNT returns to the fifth season of “Major Crimes,” which is a fascinating tale: The original Season 5 order was for only thirteen hours, making this batch essentially its own new season (as Winter seasons often are) — and then the show was renewed for a sixth! Quite a reversal of fortune for a spin-off of “The Closer” that’s flown under the radar since 2012.
RELATED: Everything’s coming together — and just awful! — in the penultimate ‘Timeless’
And speaking of: Once-megahit “The Blacklist” has been fading into the background basically since the Season 1 finale, when it killed off almost the entirety of the minorities in its cast in pursuit of shocking stakes. Next move: Dividing Season 4 with two finales, segmenting it into three mini-seasons, and handing the 10 p.m. ET/PT timeslot over to spinoff “Blacklist: Redemption” for eight weeks. Thursday, we’ll see a two-hour finale/premiere block — and decide whether the Famke Janssen-centered second show has any legs at all.
Also on Thursday: We’ve been impressed enough by the “Nashville” creative renaissance to watch CMT debut a second drama at 10 p.m. ET/PT: “Sun Records,” a historical drama based on the Tony Award-winning “Million Dollar Quartet,” telling the story of the famous record label (Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis) during the Civil Rights Era. After the wholesale reappraisal Chad Michael Murray forced us to do with his work on “Marvel’s Agent Carter,” we’re excited to see what he can do with this.
And finally, late Thursday night/Friday morning we’ll also be anxiously awaiting Netflix’s “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore,” a crime drama starring Elijah Woods and Screener favorites Melanie “Togetherness” Lynskey and Christine “Perfect Couples” Woods.
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