Today, Friday, September 4
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TV Insider
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Apple TV‘s sci-fi thriller Silo presents its game-changing Season 3 finale. Ryan Reynolds is a Navy pilot trapped in enemy territory in the Cold War action-comedy Mayday, co-starring Kenneth Branagh. TikTok star Alix Earle puts her family on display in a new reality show. USA Network‘s Anna Pigeon places its park-ranger heroine in yet more peril.
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Season Finale |
After a season split between two timelines, the dystopian sci-fi thriller takes another startling narrative leap in its Season 3 finale. Last week’s episode ended with an apocalyptic bang, as a nuclear explosion triggered the beginning of the “Silo” era with people forced underground for the foreseeable future. In that future, the rebels of Silo 18, led by Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson), risk annihilation with an explosive gambit to stop Silo 1’s “Safeguard” program. Who’s calling the shots behind that chilling Algorithm’s disembodied voice? As is often promised, all will be revealed.
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Movie Premiere |
An unusually warm-hearted Cold War action-comedy stars Ryan Reynolds as Troy Kelly, a cocky Navy pilot — codenamed “Assassin,” but not why you’d think — who has the bad luck of his spy plane being shot down over Soviet enemy territory while executing a covert mission for the CIA. But in a stroke of good luck, he’s rescued by Nikolai “Call me Nick” Ustinov (a heavily bearded Kenneth Branagh), a disillusioned former KGB agent who has a secret crush on all things American, especially Top Gun. Their bromance blossoms on a madcap slapstick chase through 1987 Russia that involves planes, trains, automobiles, and even a massive rocket launcher.
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Series Premiere |
“My family is full of chaos,” humblebrags Alix Earle, the TikTok influencer and Dancing With the Stars runner-up who’s the latest social media sensation aiming for Kardashian-level fame (or infamy) by putting her family in front of reality-TV cameras. There’s no shortage of real-life drama, including her mother’s cancer battle and a high-profile breakup. But her father, TJ, nails it when he nonchalantly notes amid the chaos, “Alix is crying again.”
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10/9c |
In the strongest episode to date of the crime drama based on Nevada Barr’s book series, park ranger and law enforcer Anna (Tracy Spiridakos) finds herself alone, injured, and without supplies, including water, trapped in a deep cave with no apparent way out. While she combs her muddled memory to figure out how she got there and who might be responsible, her fellow rangers and bartender boyfriend, Jesse (Cooper Levy), become increasingly concerned by her absence.
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9/8c |
How do people from Casablanca feel about the 1942 film classic Casablanca? That’s one of Conan O’Brien‘s obsessions during his jokey visit to Morocco, the latest stop for his comical travelogue. He brings along his assistant and podcast sidekick, Sona Movsesian, who’s addicted to the hair product derived from the country’s argan oil. But before they harass a bemused self-care shopkeeper, Conan gets a crash course in camel riding, breaks bread inside a nomad’s tent, sports a leather tuxedo, and forces a fan’s family to sit through Casablanca when they’d rather be watching Avengers: Endgame.
INSIDE FRIDAY TV:
- Charles Grodin: Rebel with a Cause (8/7c, Turner Classic Movies): A weekly “Films on Film” series kicks off with a 2025 documentary profiling the late actor’s career and activism for social justice. Followed by what’s arguably his best-known film, 1988’s Midnight Run (10/9c), co-starring Robert De Niro, and the TCM premiere of the 1974 caper 11 Harrowhouse (12:15 am/11:15c).
- Jeopardy! Masters (8/7c, ABC): Victoria Groce, Yogesh Raut, Paolo Pasco, and Andrew He battle it out in the last two semifinal games for a spot in Tuesday’s finals, playing for $500,000.
- Made in the West (9/8c, PBS): Tanya Tucker narrates a celebration of functional handmade art created in the American West.
- Austin City Limits (10/9c, PBS): The music series returns for a 52nd season with Grammy-winning Colombian star Carlos Vives making his Austin City Limits debut with his band La Provincia on the Moody Theater stage.
ON THE STREAM:
- Instadocs: The Decoy Plane (streaming on Netflix): A documentary special investigates last month’s incident when President Trump secretly left Air Force One after a NATO summit in Turkey to fly home on a different plane, with no one (including reporters) the wiser until later.
- On Campus: Game of the Week (streaming on Netflix): A new series visits a different campus each week, embedding with a student in anticipation of that week’s college football game, with a follow-up episode on Sunday.
- The Program: Texas Tech (streaming on Paramount+): A four-part docuseries follows Texas Tech’s football program through the 2026 off-season, rocked by former star quarterback Brendan Sorsby’s expulsion for gambling.
- Teenage Wasteland (streaming on Netflix): A documentary follows a high-school teacher and his students as they embark on an ambitious film project in 1991 that exposed a toxic waste dump in their upstate New York town.
- Dark Matter (streaming on Apple TV): We learn more about the creation of “the Box” in this dense sci-fi drama as Jason (Joel Edgerton) and his family seek a safe harbor in one of many alternate realities, with Amanda (Alice Braga) and Ryan (Jimmi Simpson) on a similar quest.
- Fuze (streaming on HBO Max): The British heist movie makes its streaming debut, starring The Gentlemen‘s Theo James as a master criminal planning a bank robbery while London is shut down after the discovery of an unexploded bomb. The movie premieres on HBO Saturday at 8/7c.