Welcome back to Tune In: our weekly newsletter offering a guide to the best of the week’s TV.
Each week, Variety‘s TV team combs through the week’s schedule, selecting our picks of what to watch and when/how to watch them. This week, “Rick & Morty” makes a long awaited return, while “Midnight, Texas” finally premieres.
“Midnight, Texas,” NBC, Monday, 10 p.m.
Based on the novels of the same name from author Charlaine Harris, who wrote the books that inspired HBO’s “True Blood,” this series is set in the remote town of Midnight, Texas, where your neighbor could be a vampire, a witch, a werewolf or even an angel. Mystery, horror and romance combine to both enthrall and frighten any outsiders who decide to venture into this unusual place. The series will star François Arnaud, Dylan Bruce, Parisa Fitz-Henley, Arielle Kebbel, Jason Lewis, Peter Mensah, Sarah Ramos, and Yul Vazquez.
“The Last Tycoon,” Amazon, Friday (CRITICS’ PICK)
Featuring Kelsey Grammer, Matt Bomer and Jennifer Beals doing some of their best work, the show wraps its most unforgiving truths in acres of expensive satin and drapes them in softly lit divamonds. At its best, the series recalls the melancholy elegance of some of the best films of the 1930s, which is when this story is set. The drama chronicles the desperation that seeps into every corner of Brady American Pictures, a film studio trying to survive the Depression as well as creative infighting, oafish bankers and dissatisfied employees. Just about everyone on the screen is either rich, famous or both.
From camera techniques to costumes to the yearning music, the show pays homage to ’30s cinema; like the ’60s-set “Mad Men,” it’s likely to make a viewer long for an era they probably didn’t live through. And yet the Amazon series doesn’t sugar coat the foundations of its story — one that Fitzgerald told over and over over again, about the glittering lives of people who appear to have it all but who feel an acute emptiness.
“Room 104,” HBO, Friday, 11:30 p.m.
“Room 104” is an anthology comedy series that is set in a single room of an average American hotel. The show is described as telling a different story of the assorted characters who pass through the room in each episode. The series hails from brothers Jay and Mark Duplass, who previously created the HBO comedy series “Togetherness” and currently serve as executive producers on the animated comedy series “Animals” for the premium cabler.
“Rick & Morty,” Adult Swim, Sunday, 11:30 p.m
Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon’s much-beloved cartoon series finally returns after a two-year hiatus. The series follows the adventures of mad/drunk scientist Rick Sanchez and his grandson Morty as they traverse space and time in a wide range of bizarre adventures. Season 1 of the cartoon premiered way back on Dec. 2, 2013. Season 2 then followed after a sizable hiatus on July 26, 2015. An after-the-credits scene in the Season 2 finale confirmed that new episodes would start airing “in like, a year and a half, or longer.” This potential joke was proven fact on April Fools’ Day this year with the surprise release of the Season 3 premiere.
