TV Guide Magazine April 25, 2022

STRONGLY SUITED Thank you for featuring Alan Ritchson, aka Reacher, on the cover [April 11 issue]. As a person who has read several books in the Lee Child series, I was happy Prime Video’s Reacher fit so closely to the one I imagined. Don’t get me wrong, though—Tom Cruise did an excellent job too, if you hadn’t read the books.—Kim HILARIOUS HOSTS Kudos to hosts Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel for their April Fools’ Day surprise. It is nice to see two competitors work together to create clever entertainment as they hosted each other’s shows.—Charles FALLING FLAT What a disappointment NBC’s American Song Contest was! Almost all of the numbers were overproduced, leaving viewers distracted by gaggles of unnecessary background dancers. Only two songs appealed to me—Connecticut’s and Rhode Island’s. They were sung and performed…

25 TOP SHOWS Sugar Rush Is it the pastry? Sure, we still miss Gibbs (Mark Harmon), but we’re loving his doughnut-buying replacement, agent Alden Parker (Gary Cole). So are viewers: The procedural won the night on Monday. Disguise the Limit The secret celebrity singing competition hit a season high in an episode that saw Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” muse Christie Brinkley (above) sent home. Out of Tune The annual music fete, hosted by Trevor Noah, increased slightly over last year’s broadcast but was still down nearly half from January 2020’s viewership (18.8 million). Us vs. Them An episode focusing on Big Three sibling Randall Pearson (Sterling K. Brown) landed strong with the 18–49 demo, where it was the second-highest scripted series for the week. Source: Nielsen Media Research, week of March 28–April 3, 2022, in millions. Broadcast networks only. Smart…

@TVGMMattRoush Sundays, 9/8c, Showtime DON’T EVEN TRY to put these ladies in an East Wing corner. “I am going to be myself,” Betty Ford insists. “I am going to do and say things that I believe in.” Michelle Obama’s attitude is more explosive: “They want to turn me into a Black Martha Stewart?” As for ahead-of-her-time Eleanor Roosevelt, “I’m not thrilled about the fact that my title refers to my sex rather than my skills.” Three remarkable women portrayed by three astonishing actresses in their prime: The First Lady is like a trio of fascinating biopics in one. Even when the jumping between decades gets dizzying—tackling pre-WWII segregation one minute, ERA ratification the next, then on to racial profiling—the intertwining of the personal with the political makes this the most irresistible historical spectacle…

Submit questions to Matt Roush at askmatt@tvgm.com @TVGMMattRoush Two of the biggest breakout network comedies are Ghosts on CBS and ABC’s Abbott Elementary. Network TV shows are unfortunately rarely nominated for Emmy Awards anymore, but do you think there’s a chance that these two critically lauded shows could be nominated this year? They’re brilliantly written and hilarious!—Paul MATT ROUSH: I would love to see these shows break through, but the bias toward streaming and premium cable series is hard to overcome, so I’m prepared to be let down. In recent years, only ABC’s blackish and NBC’s The Good Place made the cut from the broadcast networks, but the ensemble work on both Ghosts and Abbott is so strong—and the latter is so relevant—that it will be a travesty if both are overlooked. Though…

Available now, Netflix WORDS THAT SHOULD give any wife pause: “It was just… sex.” When has that ever been true in the history of TV? In this slick but shallow six-part adaptation of Sarah Vaughan’s novel, cocreator David E. Kelley spins a less murderous version of his HBO hit The Undoing. In Scandal, another glamorous spouse slowly begins to regret standing by her very handsome disgraced man. Sophie Whitehouse’s (Sienna Miller) world of privilege begins to unravel when her powerful Parliament politician husband, James (a sheepish Rupert Friend), confesses to a five-month affair. Soon another polished shoe drops, after his aide/lover accuses him of violent rape. “The road is paved in #MeToo landmines,” warns an adviser to the prime minister, James’ college buddy, who shares lurid secrets and sins of the…

LIMITED SERIES PREMIERE Friday, April 22, Prime Video NOTICE A SCANDALOUS trend here? No one dishes the dirt with quite the savage glee of the Brits, and I’ve rarely seen a more corrosive display of mutual cruelty than in A Very British Scandal, a taut and tawdry three-part docudrama about the infamous divorce of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll in the early 1960s. Tabloids had a field day. So might you, though some moral disinfectant may come in handy afterward. A world removed from her restrained portrayal of the Queen in The Crown, Claire Foy is terrifyingly frosty as Margaret, an entitled party-girl celebutante who woos and weds louche Duke Ian (a reptilian Paul Bettany). She lusts for his ancestral castle, whose renovation she bankrolls before learning she won’t be welcome there…