Today, Thursday, September 24
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TV Insider
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Netflix reboots A Different World with a new generation of Hillman College undergrads. American Horror Story launches its inevitable 13th season with repeat visits by many of the franchise’s most familiar faces. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and the sci-fi comedy Stuart Fails to Save the Universe wrap their fourth and first seasons, respectively.
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Series Premiere |
The setting is the same, but the tone couldn’t be more different in a single-camera reboot of the Cosby Show spinoff (1987-1993) set at the fabled HBCU Hillman College. The outspoken new kid on campus is Deborah — don’t call her “Debra” — Wayne (Maleah Joi Moon), daughter of OG couple Whitley Gilbert (Jasmine Guy) and Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison). Also from the next generation: five-star athlete and BMOC Shaquille Johnson (Cornell Young IV), son of Ron (Darryl M. Bell). This football prodigy, who has a past with Deborah, bypassed NIL riches to follow his parents’ Hillman legacy. (Yes, this dramedy has fantasy elements.) Also from the original series: Cree Summer as Freddie Brooks, who’s now a professor. Nostalgia is balanced with contemporary concerns, including a financial crisis and an awareness that their cultural heritage is under siege in this polarized new world.
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Season Premiere | 10/9c |
There’s something naggingly familiar as well about the milestone 13th season of this gruesome franchise from Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. Many members of the series’ A-list repertory company are returning, often reprising roles (or even multiple roles) from past seasons in what appears to be a ghoulish mash-up reaching back to the first season’s haunted-house scenario, which seems almost quaint considering the apocalyptic tone of more recent horrors. Among the headliners: Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Angela Bassett, Kathy Bates, Emma Roberts, Evan Peters, Gabourey Sidibe, Leslie Grossman, John Carroll Lynch, and many more. The season opens with three episodes, with three more next week, and two airing weekly until the symbolic 13th and final episode airs on Oct. 29, making way for Halloween.
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Season Finale |
“Time stuff? Are you sure?” complains newly promoted Lt. Jr. Grade Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) to security chief La’an (Christina Chong) as the adventures of the pre-Kirk Enterprise reach their Season 4 climax. Time travel is a staple of this and other sci-fi franchises, but that doesn’t mean they have to like it. (The future Capt. Kirk, played by Paul Wesley, even says it out loud: “I hate time travel!”) This trippy episode, involving a black hole and a white hole, and as the title suggests, “Tomorrow’s Enterprise,” is especially tricky when Uhura is trapped in a temporal anomaly. Photos released earlier show Uhura in the character’s classic Original Series hairstyle, providing a Back to the Future element that should tantalize fans old and new.
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Season Finale | 9/8c |
The Big Bang Theory spinoff, which has spent the wacky first season sending its misfits into a bewildering variety of strange new alternate worlds, ends on a wildly meta note. Is that a laugh track, or possibly studio-audience laughter, we’re hearing? Anything’s improbably possible as Stuart (Kevin Sussman) and his Comic Book Store gang find themselves in a cosmic void that oddly resembles a sitcom soundstage. Which puts them on more familiar ground, although not really. Good news: The show has been renewed for a second season, which means their voyage through bizarre parallel dimensions isn’t over yet.
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Season Premiere | 8/7c |
Gordon Ramsay‘s signature cooking competition, which launched a media empire, has reached a milestone 25th season. For the budding chefs participating in the latest round, hell is creating their own signature dishes under the unyielding scrutiny of the bellowing boss in the opener. Followed by the Season 5 premiere of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test (9/8c), the celebrity boot camp whose most notorious new recruit is disgraced politician George Santos. He’s joined by the likes of Great American Family staple Candace Cameron Bure, Baywatch alum David Charvet, former Batwoman Ruby Rose, the NBA’s Matt Barnes, the NFL’s LeSean McCoy, pro boxer Alycia Baumgardner, figure skater Maxim Naumov, actor Oliver Hudson, Internet comedian Hannah Stocking, and from the ever-recycling world of reality TV, Brandi Glanville, Breana Tiesi and father-daughter duo Mauricio and Alexia Umansky.
Inside Thursday TV:
- The Traitors: New Blood (8/7c, NBC): More deception and betrayals await the players in back-to-back episodes of the Emmy-winning reality competition.
- The Shining (8/7c, Turner Classic Movies): Stanley Kubrick‘s 1980 adaptation of the Stephen King classic, starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall, makes its debut on the movie channel on the final week of TCM’s “Completely Kubrick” tribute. Followed by 1987’s Full Metal Jacket (10:45/9:45c) and 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut (1 am/12c). The director is also the subject of TMC’s latest season of The Plot Thickens podcast, “Stanley,” released today.
- A Killer Story (9/8c, HBO): In the conclusion of the true-crime docuseries, a hung jury leads to a retrial of Dana Chandler for the murder of her ex-husband and his girlfriend.
On the Stream:
- Thursday Night Football (8:15 pm/ET, streaming on Prime Video): The Atlanta Falcons take on the Green Bay Packers.
- Team Moms: Baseball (streaming on Paramount+): Kim Kardashian is executive producer of a reality series that follows the drama in the benches among parents of baseball hopefuls training at the Legendary Prep Academy in Scottsdale, Arizona.
- Go Deep: The DeSean Jackson Story (streaming on Prime Video): A more inspirational sports story unfolds in this documentary about the bond between former NFL star DeSean Jackson and his older brother Byron, who left the game to pursue his passion for filmmaking, capturing DeSean’s career over 35 years of home-video footage.
- Showtrial (streaming on BritBox): The British legal-drama anthology’s second season involves the hit-and-run death of a controversial climate-change activist who named a policeman as his assailant in his final moments.
- My Sad Dead (streaming on Netflix): A newly retired doctor sees dead people in a haunting limited series from Argentina.
- Jackass: Best and Last (streaming on Paramount+): The latest, and possibly final, antics of Johnny Knoxville and his Jackass crew are captured in a 2026 movie making its streaming debut.