What’s on TV
BETTER CALL SAUL 9 p.m. on AMC. The fifth season of this series saw Jimmy McGill’s transformation into the Saul Goodman character we know from “Breaking Bad” accelerate in earnest. At the end of Season 4, he announced his intention to start a criminal law practice using the Goodman alias but it wasn’t until this season that Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) began to fully embrace his relationship with the underworld. He was quickly drawn into a conflict between the Salamanca family, members of the Juárez Cartel, and Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), who is affiliated with the cartel but working to establish his own empire. The die may have been cast, but Jimmy’s relationship with his wife, Kim (Rhea Seehorn), has kept him from falling too far too fast.
THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA 9 p.m. on HBO. In the first episode of this adaptation of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel, Charles Lindbergh was an obnoxious voice on the radio whose isolationist and anti-Semitic sentiments were disturbing to Herman Levin (Morgan Spector) and his wife, Bess (Zoe Kazan), but not a clear and present threat to their well-being. Unfortunately, in this alternative history, Lindbergh didn’t remain an ineffectual agitator. He defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election, signed a neutrality pact with Nazi Germany and began his own persecution of American Jews. These political developments have devastated the Levins, who were upwardly mobile before Lindbergh’s ascension. Their son Sandy is being turned against them by anti-Semitic propaganda and Alvin, their nephew, is being shadowed by the F.B.I. Even if the country manages to reverse its direction in the final episode of the mini-series, serious damage has already been done to the family.
What’s Streaming
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 (2011) Stream on Amazon, Hulu and Tubi. Rent on Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. This installment of the found-footage horror franchise is a prequel to the 2009 low-budget hit. It explains how Katie, the main character of the original movie, and her sister Kristi, the star of the sequel, came to be connected to the demonic force that terrorizes the women and their partners in the first two movies. The trouble begins when Kristi started conversing with an imaginary friend, Tobi. It’s clear from the beginning that he’s no figment of the imagination, but even once Julie, the girl’s mother, recognizes the threat, it’s far too late. It turns out that the family’s connection to Tobi runs deep.
BALTHAZAR Stream on Acorn TV. In the second season of this French crime series, Tomer Sisley returns as the gifted but eccentric forensic pathologist Raphaël Balthazar. His ability to coax answers from the dead is unparalleled but one case continues to stymie him even after more than 13 years: the killing of his wife. Balthazar pursues new clues in her case while working with the taciturn police commander Hélène Bach (Hélène de Fougerolles) on others.
Source: Television - nytimes.com
