TV Best Bets

Monday, Aug. 8: Rio 2016: USA vs. China in Women’s Beach Volleyball

Olympic Women's Beach Volleyball Alessandra del Bene/Getty Images

All Times Eastern.

Monday, Aug. 8

2016 Rio Games
NBC, beginning at 7pm Live

NBC’s primetime Rio Olympics coverage includes the men’s synchronized diving finals, the men’s team gymnastics finals, and men’s and women’s swimming finals. Ledecky, Michael Phelps and Missy Franklin also swim in qualifying events. The USA’s Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross take on China in women’s beach volleyball.


Little League Baseball World Series
ESPN, beginning at 7pm Live
ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC share coverage of the Little League Baseball World Series through Aug. 28 beginning with a Southeast Regional Semifinal game tonight on ESPN. All 32 games of the 70th Little League Baseball World Series from South Williamsport, Pa., will be televised by ESPN networks beginning Aug. 18. The international and U.S. championship games are Aug. 27 on ABC. ESPN airs the third-place game and ABC airs the championship game on Aug. 28.

Bachelor in Paradise
ABC, 8pm
The reality hit debuts in its regular Monday night time slot.

Hitchcock/Truffaut
HBO, 9pm
In 1962, famed filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut locked themselves away for a week to talk all things cinema. Crafted from the original recordings of that epic conclave, which were used to create Truffaut’s 1966 book, Hitchcock, this film plunges viewers into the private world of the creator of Psycho, The Birds and Vertigo. Today’s leading filmmakers — including Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Schrader — also weigh in on how the book and the horror master himself influenced their own work.

Secret Eats With Adam Richman
Travel Channel, 10pm
Season Premiere!
The culinary traveler shares information about some of the world’s most amazing off-the-grid restaurants and mouthwatering off-the-menu dishes. The new season debuts tonight with back-to-back half-hour episodes.


Tuesday, Aug. 9


Bachelor in Paradise: After Paradise
ABC, 9pm
Season Premiere!
Host Chris Harrison, cast members and celebrity fans discuss and dissect the most recent episodes of Bachelor in Paradise. Harrison also takes questions and comments from viewers and reveals deleted scenes, outtakes and exclusive extra content that’s can’t-miss for Bachelor Nation.

Animal Kingdom: “What Have You Done?”
TNT, 9pm
Season Finale!
Puzzled by Catherine’s (Daniella Alonso) disappearance, Baz (Scott Speedman) hunts down all leads. With J (Finn Cole) caught in the middle, the cops close in on the Codys and threaten to take them all down.

Zoo: “Zero Sum”
CBS, 9pm
In the new episode “Zero Sum,” Jackson (James Wolk) learns that his mother is missing in Africa, but before he can look for her, he must contend with a hostile force that has overtaken their plane.

Tosh.0
Comedy Central, 10pm
Season Finale!
Daniel Tosh’s comedy series commenting on and mocking all aspects of the internet has its Season 8 finale on Comedy Central tonight.

Hard Knocks: Training Camp With the Los Angeles Rams
HBO, 10pm
Season Premiere!
Season 11 of HBO’s Hard Knocks training camp reality series follows the Rams, who’ve moved from St. Louis to Los Angeles. It’s the first time a relocating team will appear on Hard Knocks, and the first time a No. 1 overall draft pick — quarterback Jared Goff — gets documented by HBO’s cameras in his rookie season. The five-episode series airs Tuesdays through Sept. 6.

Not Safe With Nikki Glaser
Comedy Central, 10:30pm
Season Finale!
Comedian and self-described “curious perv” Nikki Glaser wraps up Season 1 of her series examining everything to do with sex and relationships.

Wednesday, Aug. 10


Fast & Furious 6
FX, 7pm
Dom (Vin Diesel) and Brian (Paul Walker) reassemble their crew to try to take down an international organization of mercenary drivers. Their reward: a full pardon for their crimes. Dwayne Johnson also stars.

Penn & Teller: Fool Us: “You Dirty Rathead!”
The CW, 8pm
Guest Star Alert!

World-famous ginger-haired comedian Carrot Top makes an appearance as talented magicians show off their best tricks in an effort to stump Penn & Teller.

Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry
E!, 8pm
Season Premiere!
Without any prior knowledge of who he will be reading, 20-year-old Tyler Henry will bring messages from beyond the grave to new celebrity clients including Kris Jenner, Tori Spelling, Linda Blair, YouTube starlet Madison Beer and Melissa Joan Hart. “Not much has changed with Season 2; however, there are more recognizable clients, for me,” Henry shares. “In going through this process, it’s been interesting being starstruck and then having to sit down and go into this person’s personal life and navigate that intuitively.”

Whose Line Is It Anyway?
The CW, 9pm
Guest Star Alert!
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star Rachel Bloom is crazy funny when she swings by as cast members Ryan Stiles, Wayne Brady and Colin Mochrie, along with guest comedian Jeff David, put their comedic skills to the test through a series of spontaneous improv games.

American Gothic: “Kindred Spirits”
CBS, 10pm
While Cam (Justin Chatwin) is in rehab, Jack (Gabriel Bateman) is lured into a dangerous adventure by a new friend, Sadie (guest star Aviv Cohen). Also, Garrett (Antony Starr) and Alison (Juliet Rylance) work to silence a local reporter who is harassing the Hawthornes in the new episode “Kindred Spirits.”

Thursday, Aug. 11


Rio Olympics: Men’s Golf, First Round
Golf Channel, 6:30am Live
Golf returns to Olympic competition for the first time in 112 years as the men’s tournament tees off today in Rio de Janeiro. A field of 60 men qualify for the 72-hole stroke play tournament, which concludes Aug. 14. Golf Channel airs all four rounds live. The women’s Olympic tournament takes place Aug. 17-20.

Golf: U.S. Senior Open, First Round
FS1, 1pm Live
FS1 and FOX combine to televise all four rounds of the 2016 U.S. Senior Open golf tournament from Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio. FS1 airs Thursday and Friday rounds with FOX airing rounds on Saturday and Sunday.

LandLeader
RFD-TV, 2:30pm
Last month, RFD-TV introduced this afternoon series (which repeats on Tuesdays at 9:30pm), in which viewers get to explore some of the most exclusive properties in North America and meet American landowners who share the history of the property and their strong commitment to conservation. “Land is important to all of us. It’s in our heritage and offers humanity a place to thrive. Within the fences of these properties are the stories and adventures that create lasting memories of the landowner and provide a glimpse of what might be in store for the next owners of these exclusive properties,” said Dax Hayden, national director for LandLeader, a network of exclusive real estate professionals in North America.

The Simpsons
FXX, beginning at 8pm
FXX airs eight episodes of The Simpsons tonight, all featuring some ill-advised or ill-fated romances. Country singer Lurleen Lumpkin tries to seduce Homer in 1992’s “Colonel Homer,” Homer must think unsexy thoughts about coworker Mindy (voice of Michelle Pfeiffer) in 1993’s “The Last Temptation of Homer,” and Marge is paranoid that houseguest Becky (voice of Parker Posey) is trying to usurp her place in the family in 2000’s “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge.”

AXS TV Concerts Hosted by Mark Cuban
AXS TV, 9pm
New Series!
This five-week concert series hosted by AXS TV founder Mark Cuban is filmed live in Dallas, and kicks off tonight with The Monkees.

Friday, Aug. 12

The Get Down
Netflix
New Series!
Baz Luhrmann’s (Moulin Rouge!) first series for television is set in 1970s New York City, where a ragtag crew of South Bronx teenagers shelter each other amid their violent, run-down surroundings, armed only with verbal games, improvised dance steps, magic markers and spray cans. From Bronx tenements to the SoHo art scene, and from CBGB to Studio 54 and even the glass towers of the just-built World Trade Center, The Get Down is a mythic saga of how New York at the brink of bankruptcy gave birth to hip-hop.

The Simpsons
FXX, beginning at 6pm
Highlights of tonight’s 12-episode stunt of The Simpsons include 1995’s “King-Size Homer,” in which Homer puts on weight in order to qualify for disability at work, and 1997’s “El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Our Homer),” in which Homer is guided by a “Space Coyote” (voice of Johnny Cash) on a hallucinatory quest.

R.I.P.D.
FX, 8pm
This mix of Men in Black and Ghostbusters follows a recently slain cop who finds that even death could not get him off the force. He joins a team of undead police officers working for the Rest In Peace Department and searches for the man who killed him. Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Bacon star.

The Real Housewives of Melbourne: “Here Come the Brides”
Bravo, 9pm
In a super-sized 75-minute episode, Pettifleur rejects Gamble’s wedding invite, and when Chyka organizes a shower for the bride-to-be, it comes with a dress-code twist.

Saturday, Aug. 13


Rio Olympics: Tennis: Women’s Singles Final
Bravo, 11am Live
The Olympic women’s singles tennis tournament in Rio de Janeiro comes to a conclusion with final-round action today.

Major League Baseball
FS1, beginning at 4pm Live
A Saturday MLB doubleheader on FS1 has the Pittsburgh Pirates at the L.A. Dodgers, followed by the L.A. Angels visiting the Cleveland Indians.

Rush Hour: “The Dark Knight”
CBS, 8pm
In the new episode “The Dark Knight,” when seemingly upstanding members of society are being publicly humiliated by a mystery man, Detectives Carter (Justin Hires) and Lee (Jon Foo) search for someone targeting powerful people with something to hide.

NFL Preseason: Dallas at Los Angeles
ESPN, 8pm Live
The NFL returns to Los Angeles for the first time since the 1994 season as the Dallas Cowboys visit the newly relocated Rams in this preseason game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Summer in the City
Hallmark Channel, 9pm
Original Film!
A charming, small-town woman (Julianna Guill) is given a big promotion managing a flagship store in the Big Apple. When she tries to adopt a big-city personality, it leads to disastrous results. She realizes that it’s better to be true to herself, and when she lets her personality shine, it becomes the secret to her success — in work and in love. Also stars Vivica A. Fox, Natasha Henstridge and Marla Sokoloff.