Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is huge. Here are some of the shows, specials, and movies that will hit TV this week from June 28th to July 4th. Details and times are subject to change.
Monday
INDEPENDENT LENS: THE PEOPLE VS. INTERMEDIATOR ORANGE (2021) 10pm on PBS (check local entries). This documentary by filmmakers Kate Taverna and Alan Adelson (“In Bed With Ulysses”) explores the enduring effects of the defoliant known as Agent Orange, notoriously used by the US military during the Vietnam War and causing health problems and suffering for generations . Taverna and Adelson focus their documentary on two activists – Tran To Nga and Carol Van Strum – who operate in different parts of the world but share the common goal of holding chemical companies accountable for the effects of Agent Orange.
PARAGRAPH 175 (2000) 11:30 p.m. on TCM. Documentary filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (“Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice”) examine the imprisonment and murder of gays by the Nazis during World War II – and the decades of psychological trauma that followed. Epstein and Friedman interview a number of survivors whose memories are shown along with archive films, family photos, and stories from actor Rupert Everett. The result, wrote Lawrence Van Gelder in his review for the New York Times, is a film that is “admirable and deeply disturbing.”
Tuesday
FRONTLINE 10pm on PBS (check local entries). The Tuesday night issue of PBS’s investigative documentary program looks at the resurgence of neo-Nazis and extreme right-wing extremism in Germany today and the efforts of the authorities to resolve this issue.
Wednesday
DOGS WITH EXCEPTIONAL JOBS 8 p.m. on the Smithsonian Channel. As the title suggests, this new documentary series sheds light on a wide variety of tasks performed by dogs, from heroic rescue missions – like finding survivors after a deadly mudslide – to supporting mental health. Viewers with their own dogs may want to move them to another room so that they don’t develop inferiority complexes.
Thursday
RESERVOIR DOGS (1992) 8:15 p.m. on HBO. Harvey Keitel, who is back on the screens in “Lansky” this month, where he plays the elderly Meyer Lansky, the mafia figure, was cast as a sprightly criminal in “Reservoir Dogs”. The film, Quentin Tarantino’s first feature film, focuses on a group of unfortunate bank thieves. Keitel stars alongside a few other actors known for criminal roles: Steve Buscemi, Michael Madsen, and Tim Roth. The film, Vincent Canby wrote in his review for The Times in 1992, “is moving rapidly and with full confidence to a climax corresponding to that of ‘Hamlet’.”
Join The Times theater reporter Michael Paulson in conversation with Lin-Manuel Miranda, see a performance of Shakespeare in the Park, and more as we explore the signs of hope in a transformed city. For a year now, the “Offstage” series has accompanied the theater through a shutdown. Now let’s look at his recovery.
Friday
CRISIS (2021) 6 p.m. on Showtime. Gary Oldman, Michelle Rodriguez, Armie Hammer, Lily-Rose Depp and Evangeline Lilly star in this crime drama from writer and director Nicholas Jarecki. The story is split into three separate threads and follows a range of characters – including an undercover DEA agent, a professor, and an addict in recovery – whose lives are linked to the opioid epidemic.
LET HIM GO (2020) 5 p.m. on HBO. Kevin Costner and Diane Lane play a couple who shift from grief to revenge in this adaptation of a Larry Watson novel. In the 1960s, the film plays Costner as George Blackledge, a sheriff who became a farmer and tends horses next to his wife Margaret (Lane). After the couple’s son is killed in an accident, their daughter-in-law (Kayli Carter) marries a new partner (Will Brittain) and brings George and Margaret’s grandson with them. When George and Margaret learn that their daughter-in-law’s new partner is a domestic abuser, they take it upon themselves to intervene – a task that turns out to be more dangerous than the couple expected. “Let Him Go” transforms from a drama about loss and grief into a terrifying thriller with unusual stealth, “wrote Glenn Kenny in his review for The Times. But even then, according to Kenny, the film “never loses sight of its character dynamics, beautifully played by Costner and Lane”.
THE MISFITS (1961) 8 p.m. on TCM. If you’re looking for a mid-20th century dream team, you can’t do much better than The Misfits. Directed by John Huston and based on a screenplay by Arthur Miller, the film casts Marilyn Monroe alongside Clark Gable. Monroe plays Roslyn, a recently divorced 30-year-old in Reno, Nevada who falls in love with an aging, gambling cowboy (Gable). They move in together with a friend (Eli Wallach), whose half-built desert house they want to finish. “They’re amusing to be with for a short time anyway,” wrote Bosley Crowther in his 1961 review for The Times. “But they’re superficial and irrelevant, and that’s the fucking problem with this movie.” In retrospect, the film has some historical significance: it was the last film for both Gable, who died weeks after filming was completed, and Monroe, who died a year after its release. TCM shows it alongside another 1960s western, the classic BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969), which airs at 6 p.m.
Sunday
MACY’S JULY 4TH FIREWORKS SPECTACULAR 8 p.m. on NBC. After the coronavirus pandemic required a revised, curtailed series of celebrations last year, the annual fireworks display is set to return in full force for Macy’s Independence Day on July 4th, the post-vaccine country reopening. Among those many people is New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio: “This is part of the summer of New York City,” said de Blasio this month, “the rebirth of New York City.”
