A tense Season 3 finale of the space-race drama For All Mankind leads a busy Friday for Apple TV+, including the season finale of the Maya Rudolph comedy Loot and the premiere of the harrowing Hurricane Katrina docudrama Five Days at Memorial. Prime Video revisits the beloved ’90s movie A League of Their Own with a series that delves deeper into gender and race prejudice. Country quartet Little Big Town performs for CMT’s Summer Camp. And campiness reigns when nine celebrities don drag to compete in Season 2 of RuPaul’s Secret Celebrity Drag Race.
For All Mankind
The crises mount in an intense supersized Season 3 finale of the absorbing alt-history space-race drama. The Mars settlers have discovered they’re not alone, and a problem pregnancy leads to some tough decisions and sacrifice. Back on Earth, talk of impeachment, espionage and a terrorist threat occupy the attention of the White House and NASA officials who’d just like to get their astronauts home safely. Can’t wait for Season 4 to blast off.
Apple TV+
Loot
Also wrapping its season, with a second already green-lighted, the Maya Rudolph satire heads to Corsica, where a ridiculously lavish conference for philanthropists like Molly (Rudolph) leads to a potentially life-changing epiphany. On the personal front, her mild-mannered and totally smitten accountant Arthur (Nat Faxon) considers making his feelings known. Has he waited too long to make his move?
Apple TV+
Five Days at Memorial
This emotionally harrowing docudrama, launching with the first three of eight episodes, relives the horrific conditions at the New Orleans hospital that flooded during the devastation of Hurricane Katrina 17 years ago this month. Vera Farmiga and Cherry Jones head the formidable cast, playing caregivers and administrators working against the odds to tend to their stranded patients when power fails in the searing heat as they wait over a series of fateful days for relief.
Prime Video
A League of Their Own
Baseball becomes more than a game for the ladies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in the 1940s. It’s a lifeline for self-discovery in an eight-episode seriocomic twist on the beloved 1992 movie. Abbi Jacobson (who co-created the series with Will Graham) stars as the initially insecure Carson Shaw, who reluctantly leads the team while coming to terms with her sexual identity. While the Rockford Peaches face skepticism and gender discrimination, they have it easy compared to Max (Chanté Adams), who’s female and Black and despite her wicked pitching arm, isn’t welcome on the Peaches or even on the local factory team. The times are a-changing as a strong cast of colorful personalities (including the fabulous D’Arcy Carden as Carson’s seductively sophisticated teammate) take big swings. By the end, you’ll be root-root-rooting for them all. (See the full review.)
Netflix
13: The Musical
Tony-winning composer Jason Robert Brown adapts his peppy 2008 Broadway musical for the screen (with veteran musical producer Neil Meron on board, and Tony winner Robert Horn as writer). Newcomer Eli Golden stars as Evan Goldman, uprooted from Manhattan and transplanted to small-town Indiana after his parents’ divorce—just in time for him to plan the best bar mitzvah ever with his new circle of friends.
CMT Summer Camp: Little Big Town
More music—and fireworks—when Little Big Town performs a summer concert from Sandy Creek Barn Amphitheater at Reynolds Lake Oconee in Greensboro, GA. The superstar country quartet performs old and new hits in a scenic setting.
RuPaul’s Secret Celebrity Drag Race
Speaking of camp: Nine celebrities get their drag on in a second season of the Emmy-winning reality competition’s spinoff. The identity of the celebs is kept hush-hush until it’s their time to sashay away, and until then, they flourish under the queenly mentorship of Brooke Lynn Heights, Jujubee and Monét X Change. Judges Michelle Visage, Carson Kressley and Ross Mathews help determine who stays or goes, with the ultimate winner crowned “America’s Next Celeb Drag Superstar,” with $100,000 going to their designated charity
Inside Weekend TV:
- On Patrol: First Shift (8/7c, 5/PT, Reelz): The hit real-time series On Patrol: Live now has a pre-show, with Dan Abrams, Sean “Sticks” Larkin and Curtis Wilson previewing what’s to come while playing back highlights from previous episodes.
- Children of the Underground (8/7c, FX): A five-part docuseries, airing in its entirety, explores the legacy and actions of controversial vigilante Faye Yager, who in the 1980s created an underground network for hundreds of women and children from allegedly abusive homes. Was she a hero or a zealot who hindered the legal system?
- Evil by Design: Exposing Peter Nygård (9/8c, Starz): Over three weeks, a true-crime docuseries features testimony from those alleging that the famed fashion designer spent decades preying on women in Canada, the U.S. and the Bahamas.
- The Great American Recipe (9/8c, PBS, check local listings at pbs.org): In the season finale, it’s down to three home chefs, who get unexpected help in preparing meals closest to their heart, and heritage, for the judges and host Alejandra Ramos.
On the Stream:
- Never Have I Ever (streaming on Netflix): Mindy Kaling’s refreshingly diverse high-school romcom is back for its third and next-to-last season, taking Devi (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), her friends and family through a whirlwind junior year.
- Lucy’s School (streaming on Apple TV+): The streamer’s Peanuts connection continues with a new special celebrating teachers. When the gang becomes anxious about starting at a new school, Lucy decides to open her own, which will probably go about as well as her psychiatrist’s booth. New episodes of The Snoopy Show are also available.
- Day Shift (streaming on Netflix): Jamie Foxx stars in a high-octane comedic thriller as a pool cleaner in L.A. whose side gig includes hunting vampires for profit. Snoop Dogg co-stars, with Dave Franco as the nervous sidekick.
- Secret Headquarters (streaming on Paramount+): Owen Wilson (Loki) is the headliner in a family-oriented action romp as an undercover superhero whose tech-laden basement lair comes under attack after his son and his friends discover dad’s secret.
- Post Malone: Runaway (streaming on Amazon Freevee): An hourlong documentary goes behind the scenes of the rock star’s 2019 Runaway Tour.
- This Fool (streaming on Hulu): Stand-up comedian Chris Estrada stars and is co-creator of a quasi-autobiographical half-hour comedy about Julio Lopez, who lives with his parents in South Central L.A. while working at a non-profit gang-rehab center. His latest client: his cousin Luis (Frankie Quinones), an ex-gang member and ex-con who moves into the Lopez home.
