The Mauritanian (Movie)

“What We Do in the Shadows” returns for a third season on FX. And PBS airs a documentary about the orchestra conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.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, Aug. 30-Sept. 5. Details and times are subject to change.Monday8:46 FILMS (2021) 8 p.m. on BET. This program — named for the amount of time that the former Minneapolis police officer, and now convicted murderer, Derek Chauvin was originally reported to have knelt on the neck of George Floyd — collects four short films that explore Black love and joy. The films, directed by Camrus Johnson, Marshall Tyler, Zoey Martinson and Gibrey Allen, include a comedy about three children who play matchmaker for their school bus driver and an animated piece about an older woman who escapes to a dream world. The running time of each film is 8 minutes and 46 seconds.TuesdayFUTURE OF WORK 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This new documentary series looks at the ways American jobs are changing as a result of cultural and technological shifts (including the increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence and digital nomads), as well as how the pandemic has accelerated such workplace trends. The three episodes are built around case studies of several individuals whose careers have been affected by these larger shifts, and include interviews with experts who talk about them.WednesdayWHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS 10 p.m. on FX. “Humans are so [expletive] stupid and boring and lazy,” the filmmaker Taika Waititi told The New York Times in 2019, “that given the gift of immortality, you’d never get around to doing anything.” He was talking about the logic that drives this proudly silly TV series, which was born of his and Jemaine Clement’s 2015 mockumentary movie of the same name. The show’s plot centers on a group of vampire roommates living on modern-day Staten Island. Its third season, which debuts Wednesday night, picks up where the second season left off: with members of the group facing the realization that one of their own is actually a vampire hunter.ThursdayCMA SUMMER JAM 8 p.m. on ABC. Over two nights in July, several country music stars — including Miranda Lambert, Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton — performed at a large outdoor theater in Nashville. This special combines footage of those large-scale performances with recordings of more intimate ones shot at other Nashville locales, including a nightclub and a pedestrian bridge.FridayYannick Nézet-Séguin, the subject of “Great Performances: Yannick – An Artist’s Journey,” conducting the Metropolitan Opera.Metropolitan OperaGREAT PERFORMANCES: YANNICK — AN ARTIST’S JOURNEY 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Audiences in the Northeast are expected to have many chances to see the star orchestra conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin in person this fall, in performances with the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra; he is the music director of both organizations. So now is a good time for PBS to air this documentary about him, which charts his background and rise through interviews, home movies and behind-the-scenes moments, like Nézet-Séguin coaching younger artists including the soprano Gabriella Reyes. Given Nézet-Séguin’s astounding number of commitments (he’s also the artistic director and principal conductor of the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal), there should be no shortage of backstage footage. “I am very busy and high energy, but I am not hyperactive,” Nézet-Séguin told The Times in 2019. “The loneliness of studying a score is one of the things that attracted me to becoming a conductor.”SaturdayTahar Rahim and Jodie Foster in “The Mauritanian.”Graham Bartholomew/STXfilmsTHE MAURITANIAN (2021) 8 p.m. on Showtime. In his 2015 memoir, “Guantánamo Diary,” Mohamedou Ould Slahi wrote about American national security operatives ripping him from his life as an electrical engineer and telecommunications specialist in Nouakchott, Mauritania, torturing him and eventually imprisoning him at Guantánamo Bay, where he remained for over a dozen years — even as the charges against him fell away. (He’d come under suspicion for having connections to Al Qaeda.) This adaptation of the memoir casts Tahar Rahim as Slahi. It focuses on a period in which a defense attorney (Jodie Foster) is working to get a hearing for Slahi.HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (2004) 10:30 p.m. on E!. Twenty years ago this summer, Alfonso Cuarón released “Y Tu Mamá También,” his film about a love triangle that forms between two teenage boys and a somewhat older woman during a road trip in Mexico. It was a landmark film for Cuarón and his stars, Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna and Maribel Verdú — and a box-office smash with a sexual openness that generated both controversy and praise. Cuarón’s next move was surprising: The boundary-pushing director helmed this third installment of the “Harry Potter” series. It was a departure, though it could be argued that the dynamic between the emotionally mature woman and two comparatively juvenile young men in “Y Tu Mamá También” also applies to Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, whose complicated friendship is as much a focus of this movie as the fight against evil wizards.Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel in a scene from “News of the World.”Bruce W. Talamon/Universal PicturesNEWS OF THE WORLD (2020) 8 p.m. on HBO. With their 2013 action movie, “Captain Phillips,” Tom Hanks and the director Paul Greengrass pulled thrills out of an actual 21st-century event: the famous 2009 hijacking of a cargo ship in the Indian Ocean. Seven years later, Hanks and Greengrass turned to a historical setting — and a fictional story — with this spare western. Based on a novel of the same name by Paulette Jiles, “News of the World” casts Hanks as a former Confederate captain who, five years after the end of the Civil War, takes it upon himself to escort a young, orphaned girl (Helena Zengel) to a faraway aunt and uncle. It’s a treacherous trip and a classic western setup. Greengrass, A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times, “honors the genre tradition rather than trying to reinvent it.”SundaySINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (1952) 6 p.m. on TCM. When this MGM musical about late-1920s Hollywood debuted in New York in March of 1952, the Times critic Bosley Crowther praised the “music, dance, color, spectacle and a riotous abundance,” which have since helped make it a classic. “All elements in this rainbow program,” Crowther wrote, “are carefully contrived and guaranteed to lift the dolors of winter and put you in a buttercup mood.” It’s still summer right now — but many of us could probably use something to put us in a “buttercup mood,” so in that sense, the timing of this broadcast is quite good. More