What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Princess’ and ‘Password’
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. 8 — 14. Details and times are subject to change.
Monday
MOULIN ROUGE (2001) 5:49 p.m. on Starz. Over twenty years before Baz Luhrmann was focused on “Elvis,” he directed this whimsical, pop-music filled love story. Set in Paris in 1899 Christian (Ewan McGregor), a writer, meets Satine (Nicole Kidman), a cabaret dancer, at Moulin Rouge and tries to impress her in order to be able to perform his play at the now-iconic venue in the outskirts of Montmartre. They end up falling in love despite the relationship Satine is faking with a Duke (Richard Roxburgh) who is helping fund the club. “‘Moulin Rouge’ will be accused of having no heart,” Elvis Mitchell wrote in his review for The New York Times. “But the truth is just the opposite. The movie has so much heart that the poor overworked organ explodes in every scene.”
Tuesday
PASSWORD 10 p.m. on NBC. In 1961, CBS aired its first episode of this game show. After a 14-year run, the show ended and instead became an occasional segment on Jimmy Fallon’s “The Tonight Show.” This Tuesday, the show is coming back with Fallon as an executive producer and Keke Palmer as the host. Each episode will feature Fallon teaming up with a celebrity guest (to name a few: Chelsea Handler, Heidi Klum and Martin Short), and they will be playing against two contestants to guess a secret password using one-word codes. The first episode of the show will honor Betty White, who originally played the game on the show in 1961 — which is also where she met her husband, Allen Ludden, who hosted the show.
HARD KNOCKS: THE DETROIT LIONS 10 p.m. on HBO. With a new team and new season, football fans are getting another inside look into what goes on at training camp — this season follows the Detroit Lions. Each season of this long-running show follows a different NFL team’s players and coaches in their personal and professional lives. This year, cameras followed the Lions at their training camp in Allen Park, Mi. Later this fall, there will be another new season featuring the Arizona Cardinals.
Wednesday
RESIDENT ALIEN 10 p.m. on SYFY. After a midseason break, this show is back on Wednesday to tie up loose ends from the first half of the second season. In the series, which is based on a comic book of the same name, Alan Tudyk plays Harry Vanderspeigle, an alien who was dropped to earth on a mission to destroy all life but cannot do that until he fixes his spaceship. In the meantime, he pretends to be a small town doctor. The show has already been renewed for a third season.
Thursday
BUMP 8 p.m. on the CW. Coming all the way from Australia, this show about an unexpected teen pregnancy is airing in the U.S. for the first time this week. The series begins when a 17-year-old girl named Olympia (Nathalie Morris) is rushed to the hospital for intense cramps and finds out she is actually in labor. She then has to reassess her ten-year plan when she realizes the baby’s father is not her boyfriend. The original run on Stan in Australia finished after two seasons.
Friday
CHILDREN OF THE UNDERGROUND 8 p.m. on FX. In the late 1980s into the early 1990s, Faye Yager was creating a secret network of women and children who she was helping protect from alleged abuse at the hands of their husbands or fathers when the criminal justice system did not step in. In 1992, she went to trial herself, for kidnapping and emotional cruelty of the children she was claiming to help. Though she was acquitted of all charges, public opinion has not decided whether she was hurting or helping the families she worked with. This original documentary is diving deep into who Yager was and what she was trying to accomplish in this five-part original series.
Saturday
THE PRINCESS (2022) 8 p.m. on HBO. Aug. 31 will mark the 25th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Though there has been no shortage of details surrounding her untimely death in the years that followed, this documentary uses archival interviews and footage to highlight key moments in the princess’s public life and lay out the details as if they were happening in real time. The film focuses on the public adoration of the princess as well as the intense media scrutiny she faced.
Sunday
WESTWORLD 9 p.m. on HBO. This show, which was first set in a futuristic park meant for wealthy people looking for a vacation, is wrapping up its fourth season this week. The show first premiered in 2016, and viewers experienced a seven-year time jump in the show between season three and the current season. This season consisted of eight episodes, and there is no word from HBO yet about whether it will be renewed.
WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? 7 p.m. on NBC. It turns out that Zachary Quinto, who played Commander Spock in “Star Trek Beyond,” wasn’t the first person in his family to say the iconic greeting “live long and prosper” — his great-grandfather, P.J. McArdle, wrote a letter to the editor in a newspaper published in 1899 that ends with the phrase: “May it live long and prosper.” This is just one of the things that Quinto finds out about his history on this show, executive produced by Ancestry, which is finishing up its eighth season this week. This season comprised six episodes featuring Billy Porter, Nick Offerman, Allison Janney, Zachary Levi and Bradley Whitford.
GRANTCHESTER 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The seventh season of this series is set in the summer of 1959. There are lots of murders happening in the city of Grantchester, which gives the detective inspector Geordie Keating (Robson Green) and his friend, the Reverend Will Davenport (Tom Brittney) a lot of crime solving to do. The show, which originally aired on ITV in Britain, has not yet confirmed whether there will be an eighth season.
