What’s on TV
LEGO MASTERS 9 p.m. on Fox. Pop quiz: What’s the plural of Lego? That question is addressed at the start of this competition series, which has aired in different forms overseas but is now coming to United States audiences. Will Arnett (known in certain circles as the voice of Lego Batman) hosts the United States version of the show, alongside a pair of Lego designers. The competition pits teams from around the country against one another in a variety of brick-building challenges. The contestants’ first assignment: to create a model theme park. Their time limit? 15 hours. The prize for winning the competition at large is $100,000 — though surely any contestants who make it through without stepping on a brick can be considered successful.
MONEYBALL (2011) 6:47 p.m. on Starz. The New York Times’s co-chief film critic Manohla Dargis recently wrote an article arguing that Brad Pitt has been undervalued as a performer. Pitt was nominated for an acting Oscar this year, but that’s a relatively rare thing — the last time he was up for one was toward the beginning of the 2010s, when he was recognized for his performance in this baseball drama. In it, Pitt plays Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics manager whose innovative methods helped the A’s compete against teams with far higher budgets in the early 2000s.
FENCES (2016) 10 p.m. on BET. Baseball also plays a role in “Fences,” August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about love and contention in a 1950s Pittsburgh household. This film adaptation stars Denzel Washington as the protagonist, Troy Maxson, a former Negro Leagues player who might have been a Major League star if he’d been born in a different decade. The plot hinges on Troy’s struggles to accept the athletic potential of his teenage son, Cory (Jovan Adepo), and the sometimes strained relationship between Troy and his wife, Rose (Viola Davis). “If the sound were to suddenly fail — or if the dialogue were dubbed into Martian — the impact of the performances would still be palpable,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times.
EXPEDITION UNKNOWN 8 p.m. on Discovery Channel. Josh Gates has explored many exciting places as the host of this travel series: He’s visited an archaeological dig site in Egypt, a sinkhole in Siberia and Australia’s Shipwreck Coast in his mission to investigate historical mysteries. In the first episode of the new season, debuting Wednesday, he’ll be in Normandy, where he follows historians studying D-Day and tours a newly discovered World War II bunker. Don’t expect him to stay there long, though: By the end of the season, he’ll be in the Bermuda Triangle.
What’s Streaming
McMILLIONS Stream on HBO platforms. The life and death of a scam in six parts, this new documentary series revisits an elaborate real-life scheme that involved a former police officer defrauding McDonald’s out of $24 million. The first episode aired on HBO on Monday; it’s available to stream for those who want to catch up before next week’s episode.
Source: Television - nytimes.com
