TV Guide Magazine September 27, 2021

GREAT RETURNS Cheers to PBS for having a second season of All Creatures Great and Small [slated for 2022]. Yes, it is a good family show, but I am a single adult who did read the books, and I enjoy this show. —Doreen LOGGING ON Dead Pixels on The CW is the funniest show I’ve seen in a long time. The actors are phenomenal. Their timing is amazing. It’s laugh-out-loud enjoyment. —Marlene WATERWORKS FAIL Am I crazy, or is this season of CBS’s Big Brother the worst ever? Never have there been so many weepy men and women in the house, and the “side games” make no sense. I understand that emotions run high and there’s a lot at stake here, but come on, folks, does everyone have to cry in every episode? —Gary HORROR-FUL How could…

@TVGMMattRoush Another major female character has decided she no longer wants to continue on a network series. I’m referring to Emily VanCamp leaving The Resident and its fans high and dry. This follows Megan Boone’s departure from The Blacklist a few months ago, also sprung on viewers like a last-minute surprise. My point being: Why not bring in another person to assume the role? This has been done before, most famously on Bewitched in the 1960s when Dick Sargent took over from Dick York as Darrin. I think that should be given another try. —JV MATT ROUSH: We just have to accept that some actors choose to move on during the course of a long-running series. (McDreamy, we still miss you.) The subject of recasting is interesting. It’s more common in sitcoms—Roseanne’s…

Smart Watch If you have a half hour, check out this series There’s an otherworldly lightness to Ghosts, about a writer (Rose McIver) whose plan to turn her inherited Victorian home into a B&B is upended by the title characters that live there. Thursday, Oct. 7, 9/8c, CBS If you have an hour, watch this docuseries It’ll be hard to take bridges or rails for granted again after The Engineering That Built the World deconstructs the visions, rivalries and politics behind some of the planet’s epic builds. Sunday, Oct. 10, 9/8c, History If you have a free evening, begin this documentary Today’s news sensationalism was invented by media tycoon (and Citizen Kane inspiration) William Randolph Hearst, and Citizen Hearst reworks his large life. Premieres Monday, Sept. 27, 9/8c, PBS (check local listings at pbs.org) If you have…

@TVGMMattRoush Fridays, Apple TV+ YOU’VE GOT TO appreciate the moxie of a high-profile streaming series where a character blurts, “Another streaming service? It should be illegal.” That’s The Morning Show’s second season in a nutshell: having its cake while choking on it. Slickly entertaining even when it’s so full of itself that you’re tempted to stuff a sock in these ego-driven media monsters’ motormouths, this is a sincere satire about insincerity. Divas forever blather on about becoming better versions of themselves while sticking knives in the first available back. It’s set behind the scenes of an embattled network’s morning show, where there’s a new scandal for every news cycle and the bad blood comes up to their knees. When the cameras go dark, the real show begins. Center stage, as in Season 1, are…

SERIES PREMIERE Wednesday, Oct. 6, 10/9c, CBS SOMETIMES THE SIMPLEST formulas are the best. As someone who self-diagnoses as suffering from procedural crime-show fatigue, I am glad to welcome back Gil Grissom (William Petersen)—though his delayed entrance is unnecessary—and his beloved Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox) to CBS, whose rating fortunes were revived 21 years ago by CSI’s explosive instant success. With its science-nerd, high-tech aesthetic and grisly visual flourishes, CSI always stood out and does again with a clever reboot that introduces strong new players (Paula Newsome as a flinty boss, Matt Lauria as a quietly wry investigator) and an intriguing storyline about a conspiracy that could imperil the original team’s integrity. Gil refuses to be shaken, not even by sentiment when a former colleague is on the ropes. “Science will tell us…

Sundays, 10/9c, Showtime JUNKED CARS RUST at a more dramatic pace than this ultra-slow-burning slice of dead-end life in a Pennsylvania steel town that has known better days. So downbeat it makes HBO’s grim Mare of East-town look like a Hallmark Channel rom-com, American Rust has rural authenticity to spare, and admirably lived-in lead performances from Jeff Daniels as stoically haunted police chief Del Harris and Maura Tierney as Grace Poe, his stressed seamstress lover. Even they and such talented character actors as Bill Camp and Supernatural’s Mark Pellegrino (as Tierney’s sheepish schnook of an estranged husband, bringing some welcome humor) can’t do much to enliven the familiar story of a murder that implicates Grace’s gloomy son, Billy (Alex Neustaedter), a former high school athlete who opted out of a football scholarship…