MOVIES!, 8:00 p.m. ET
I recommend this 1944 comedy a lot. That’s because I watch it a lot, almost every time it’s televised, even though I own a copy on DVD. There’s something about it: Cary Grant’s cartoonishly broad performance in the leading role, and the craziness of every character around him, from his doting but homicidal elderly aunts to another relative who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt. All this, and Peter Lorre, too – but maybe I love it so much because Grant plays a critic. He’s a drama critic, not a TV critic, I Grant you… but still, I identify.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
This first movie in the Tarzan series, starring Johnny Weissmuller as the Ape Man hero of the Edgar Rice Burroughs stories, was released in 1932. That was just before the censorious Hollywood Production Code slapped filmmakers with very conservative rules – and because this Tarzan movie is pre-Code, it affords its audience a look at Maureen O’Sullivan, as Tarzan’s civilized jungle companion Jane, that only one other pre-Code film in the series would permit.
ABC, 10:00 p.m. ET
So far in this final season, this ABC series has spent its time on Earth, but in the past – specifically, the pre-WWII 1930s. The climax of last week’s episode had the team making a time jump back to the future – but they didn’t just far enough. As tonight’s episode begins, the S.H.I.E.L.D. crew finds itself visiting the mid-1950s – an excuse to film and frame tonight’s program in black-and-white film noir. Or, at least, the black-and-white monochrome of Pleasantville. Or, for that matter, The Twilight Zone. And how weird is it that, by total coincidence, every recommended Best Bet tonight is in black and white?