No more Mr. Saturday Night. Funnyman Billy Crystal plays against type in "Before" as the scraggly-bearded and bereft Eli, a longtime child psychologist heading toward retirement. In the limited series, airing Friday on AppleTV+, Eli grieves the suicide of his late wife, Lynn (Judith Light). When Noah (Jacobi Jupe) knocks on his front door, the good doctor sees in the troubled little boy his last hard case.
Eli's beloved science soon flies out the window. He spirals from being simply depressed to being deeply disturbed. It turns out that the violent Noah has an unnerving awareness of details about Lynn the kid has no way of knowing. The twisty supernatural 10-partner toys with the possibility of reincarnation, and the theory that some children have past-life memories recorded. Funny? Not so much, although Crystal's Eli leavens the proceedings with a low-key dark humor. Chilling? Definitely.
What else is on our radar this week?
1. Visit "Poppa's House," a 30-minute sitcom premiering today at 8:30 p.m. on CBS. Comedy elder Damon Wayans, who rose to prominence with his talented brothers, plays the salty title role. The divorced radio chat show host welcomes (well, accepts) his adult son (actual son Damon Wayans Jr.) back into his once-empty nest. Hilarity ensues as Poppa tries to maintain his turf at work, where he's being crowded by a younger woman cohost, and at home, where the smack-talker's thrown back into his paternal role as all his actions and words come under his son's scrutiny. Both leads carry on the Wayans family tradition, lobbing setups and smashing zingers, in an environment of warmth. The show's success will rely on how much freshness the Wayans can inject into a familiar premise.
2. Ask me my sense of humor and I'd instantly reply: "What We Do in the Shadows." The cracked brainchild of Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement (who initially developed the premise in the 2014 cult horror-comedy film) lives on in a mockumentary mash-up of MTV's "The Real World," and "The Munsters," set on the wild Island of Staten. In the sixth and (sob) final season airing tonight at 10 p.m. on Hulu, vampire roommates Nandor, Laszlo, and Nadja, as well as energy vampire Colin Robinson, return with Nandor's improbably practical former familiar Guillermo. This season, Nandor channels Richard M. Nixon after a hypnotism gone awry, Laszlo's strange experiments take a Frankensteinian twist, and Nadja hides in plain sight in corporate America. The undead gang returns to face new challenges beyond sunlight, pointed stakes, and petty feuds. The show is a notorious Emmy bridesmaid, with 29 nominations and a solitary costume design win in 2022. Fangs a lot.
3. Tomorrow, Amazon Prime adds to the prolific sports docuseries trend with "Game 7," timed to Friday's 2024 World Series opener. The five-part anthology focuses on the high-stakes seventh game of a sports finals competition. Whether baseball, basketball, or hockey, the seventh matchup is a gladiatorial fight to the finish for the championship. The do-or-die athletic confrontations include the Chicago Cubs' breakthrough win at the 2016 World Series after nearly a century of losses, and the nailbiter 1994 Stanley Cup victory of the New York Rangers. The series digs into the stressors that break a team in the clinch, or transform competitors into champions. Will the finalists choke or become champs? These professional teams face the ultimate test to win or go home.
4. True crime continues to flood TV, with Wednesday's Netflix contender about a storied California serial killer, "This is the Zodiac Speaking." Never apprehended, the unidentified murderer, known only as Zodiac, killed an estimated 37 victims in Northern California in the late '60s in the wake of the Summer of Love. The series interviews the Seawater family, children at the time, who came forward as adults to reveal never-before-seen clues to the killings, tying them to their family friend Arthur Leigh Allen. Sex offender Allen became the police's prime suspect, although the evidence remained circumstantial. He died in 1992, still a free man. Brush up your legendary killer knowledge with David Fincher's underappreciated "Zodiac," starring Mark Ruffalo and Jake Gyllenhaal.
5. Zoe Saldana, currently on a collision course with an Oscar for her supporting role in "Emilia Perez," returns to star in the second season of "Special Ops: Lioness." Dropping Sunday on Paramount+, the action-fueled espionage thriller casts the effortlessly cool Saldana as Joe, the experienced CIA handler of a female field agent code-named Lioness. Costarring Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman, and created by "Yellowstone"'s Taylor Sheridan, season 2 launches with a mission to rescue a kidnapped government VIP snatched by a cartel. Add in soldiers, guns, and lip-gloss, as Joe, a married mother and military expert, leads the charge.