NBC, 8:00 p.m. ET
Let’s make this easy: Just give this series a shot, if you haven’t already. It’s that good, and I like it that much. It’s musical, it’s dramatic, it’s funny – and it’s got characters with whom you can empathize, which a lot of TV series don’t.
MOVIES!, 8:00 p.m. ET
Made in 1967, this movie is based on Truman Capote’s nonfiction novel, a pioneer exhibit in what came to be known as New Journalism. It was adapted for the screen by Richard Brooks, who also directed, and who gave this film an urgency comparable to a documentary treatment. It tells the awful story of a farmhouse Kansas family in 1959, invaded and eventually murdered by a pair of ex-con drifters. The killers in this ferociously grim black-and-white movie are played by Scott Wilson, who many decades later would play the much more sympathetic Hershel Greene on The Walking Dead, and Robert Blake, who a decade later would star as Baretta.
ABC, 10:00 p.m. ET
After a relatively long dormant period, this mystery abduction series returns with a fresh episode tonight. The last time there was a fresh episode of Big Sky? Last December.