What’s on TV This Week: ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ and ‘Queens’
Season 11 of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” begins on HBO. And a new musical drama series debuts on ABC.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Oct. 18-24. Details and times are subject to change.MondayPOV: LA CASA DE MAMA ICHA 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Decades after emigrating to the United States, a 93-year-old woman returns to Colombia in this new documentary. It’s a bittersweet journey chronicled with intimacy by the Colombian filmmaker Óscar Molina, in his feature debut.TuesdayAMERICAN MASTERS: BECOMING HELEN KELLER 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This new documentary, which revisits Keller’s life and legacy, has a secret weapon in the actress Cherry Jones, who reads written work by Helen Keller. Jones’s readings are paired with archival film and photographs, plus contemporary interviews with historians, scholars and disability rights advocates.Eve in “Queens,” a new musical drama.Kim Simms/ABCQUEENS 10 p.m. on ABC. Zahir McGhee, a producer of “Scandal,” is behind this new musical drama. The plot kicks off with the reunion of four women who were part of a hip-hop group in the 1990s, and who hope to stage a present-day comeback. (It has no relation to the Peacock series “Girls5Eva,” also about a musical reunion.) Naturi Naughton, Nadine Velazquez and the performers Eve and Brandy star. Tuesday’s debut episode was directed by the filmmaker Tim Story (“Barbershop”), who is an executive producer of the series.WednesdayFOUR HOURS AT THE CAPITOL (2021) 9 p.m. on HBO. This feature-length documentary, a presentation of HBO and the BBC, looks at the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. It uses footage from the actual event to chart out how the violence escalated, and includes interviews with lawmakers, members of law enforcement and others who were at the Capitol that day.ThursdayZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP (2019) 5:30 p.m. on FX. There are plenty of straightforward horror movies to choose from on TV this month. But if you prefer that your monsters be sacrificed in service of comedy, consider turning to this goofy “Zombieland” sequel. The movie reunites the quartet from the original “Zombieland” — Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Abigail Breslin and Emma Stone — for another riff on post-apocalyptic horror. If you actually want to be scared, you can stick around for HALLOWEEN (2018), which FX is showing afterward, at 7:30 p.m.FridayFrancesca Annis and Kyle MacLachlan in “Dune.”Universal PicturesDUNE (1984) 9:30 p.m. on HBO 2. Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” hits theaters this weekend. Any new sci-fi movie from Villeneuve, the director of “Arrival” and “Blade Runner 2049,” would be eagerly anticipated, but “Dune” brings an added layer of suspense in the form of a question: Could Villeneuve finally — finally — have made a successful movie out of Frank Herbert’s novel? That question is in part a product of this 1984 attempt. Directed by David Lynch (who has since called the experience “a nightmare”), the 1984 movie gilds Herbert’s novel, originally published in 1965, with Hollywood money, an enormous ensemble (Kyle MacLachlan; Patrick Stewart and Sting are among the supporting players), and a soundtrack composed primarily by Toto. The “ornate affair,” Janet Maslin wrote in her 1984 review for The New York Times, is “awash in the kind of marble, mosaics, wood paneling, leather tufting and gilt trim more suitable to moguls’ offices than to far-flung planets in the year 10191.” Several characters, Maslin noted, “are psychic, which puts them in the unique position of being able to understand what goes on in the movie.”HARLAN COUNTY, USA (1976) 10 p.m. on TCM. The documentarian Barbara Kopple won an Academy Award for this chronicle of a coal miners’ strike in eastern Kentucky. In his 1976 review for The New York Times, Richard Eder called the film “a fascinating and moving work.” Just don’t expect neutrality: The documentary is “forthrightly an effort to see the struggle through the miners’ own eyes,” Eder wrote.SaturdayYeri Han and Steven Yeun in “Minari.”Josh Ethan Johnson/A24MINARI (2020) 9 p.m. on Showtime. The filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung tells a semi-autobiographical American immigrant story in this warm heartland drama. The actors Steven Yeun and Yeri Han play young parents who move to rural Arkansas with the idea of opening a vegetable farm. The challenges that spring from that pursuit — interpersonal and irrigational — put a strain on the household, and provide much of the drama. But there are a lot of laughs, too, thanks in no small part to a standout performance from the veteran Korean star Yuh-Jung Youn, who plays a nervy grandmother. “The chronicle of an immigrant family, often told through the eyes of a child, is a staple of American literature and popular culture,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “But every family — every family member, for that matter — has a distinct set of experiences and memories, and the fidelity to those is what makes ‘Minari,’ in its circumspect, gentle way, moving and downright revelatory.”SundayCURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM 10:40 p.m. on HBO. “I’m not an Everyman,” Larry David says in the new season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” That may be true, but David’s idiosyncrasies — a more fitting label for him might be Easily Irritated Man — are much of what sets this show apart, so it’s probably good that he’s no Charlie Brown (at least as far as ratings are concerned). The show’s new, 11th season includes appearances from Jon Hamm, Lucy Liu, Seth Rogen, Vince Vaughn and Patton Oswalt. It’s slated to debut on Sunday night, after INSECURE, another Los Angeles comedy with a writer-producer-performer (Issa Rae also plays a fictional version of herself). That show will air the debut episode of its fifth and final season at 10 p.m. More
