TV picks: ‘King Charles III,’ ‘Downward Dog,’ ‘Kimmy Schmidt’ and more
A blank-verse “Masterpiece,” a talking dog on ABC, and the return of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” are among the coming week’s TV highlights.
Ultimate Mother's Day Marathon. Personally, I'd prefer to sleep in, but if your mother happens to be an early riser, this event begins at 6 a.m. with six hours of back-to-back episodes of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, followed by four movies: Stepmom (noon), Monster-in-Law (3 p.m.), Sweet Home Alabama (5:30 p.m.), and local favorite Silver Linings Playbook, with Jenkintown's Bradley Cooper (8 p.m.). Sunday, SundanceTV.
Masterpiece: King Charles III. Tim Pigott-Smith stars as the title character in an adaptation of the Tony-winning Broadway play, set in a future where Prince Charles has ascended the throne (and where, playwright Mike Bartlett has apparently decided, everyone speaks in blank verse — unrhymed iambic pentameter — for that Shakespearean feel). 9 p.m. Sunday, WHYY12.
Supergirl. Calista Flockhart returns as Cat Grant for the two-part season finale, which begins this week. Flockhart, who was a regular in the show's first season, reduced her role to recurring guest star after filming moved to Vancouver. She's been missed. 8 p.m. Monday, CW.
Decline and Fall. The Brit-centric streaming service's latest offering is a three-episode, 1920s-set miniseries, based on a comic novel by Evelyn Waugh, whose stars include David Suchet (Poirot) and, a tad unexpectedly, Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria. Monday, Acorn.
Born This Way. Emmy-winning "reality" show featuring young adults with Down syndrome enters its third season with cast members continuing their journeys toward independence (and romance). The genre may be contrived — they all go on a cruise together in two-hour season premiere — but the people, and the emotions, still come across as genuine. 9 p.m. Tuesday, A&E.
Downward Dog. Allison Tolman follows her breakout role in FX's Fargo by starring opposite a talking dog (or at least a dog with very loud thoughts) in a comedy that's much better than that sounds. Really. 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, ABC. Moves to 8 p.m. Tuesdays the following week.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Season 3 of the comedy co-created by Upper Darby's Tina Fey opens with Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) dealing with a new demand from her former abductor, the Reverend (Jon Hamm), and Titus (Tituss Burgess) looking for work on Sesame Street. Friday, Netflix.
The Keepers. Is this seven-episode docu-series that looks at the unsolved 1969 murder of a Baltimore nun the next Making a Murderer? That's the buzz, although this turns out to be a very different kind of whodunit. Friday, Netflix.
The Wizard of Lies. Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer star as Bernie and Ruth Madoff in a Barry Levinson-directed movie based on Diana B. Henriques' bestseller. Henriques, the first reporter to interview Madoff in prison, plays herself. 8 p.m. Saturday, May 20, HBO.