Saving Maya Angelou from mere respectability
Tonight’s “American Masters” (8 p.m., PBS, TV-PG) helps humanize an icon. Maya Angelou has read at a president’s inauguration and posthumously appears on postage stamps. It’s all too easy to forget the very human side of anyone who has become so revered and iconic.
Angelou has been so long enshrined as a poet that this “Masters” has to remind us of her roots in performance. Her career took her from the “dance” clubs of San Francisco, where she sang among strippers, to a minor recording and nightclub career as a calypso singer, where she performed in segregated Las Vegas Nightclubs. She was actress in an international tour of “Porgy & Bess” and had a role in Jean Genet’s “The Blacks,” a subversive 1961 off-Broadway play in which she shared the stage with a remarkable cast, including Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Brown, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge and Cicely Tyson.
Angelou’s early life, as recounted in her 1969 memoir “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” unfolds like some biblical epic, including tales of Klan violence, being raped by her mother’s boyfriend when she was only 8 and her decision to spend the following five years of her childhood entirely mute — a period of silence during which she read and committed to memory many of the books in the local libraries, both “colored” and white.
Angelou’s life in the public eye as a performer, writer, poet and activist provides this documentary with many interviews and filmed reenactments of her works, recollections from friends and colleagues as well as her son.
This “American Masters” profile does a great job of reacquainting us with its subject and reminding how she earned, and deserves, her rather exalted status.
TONIGHT’S HIGHLIGHTS
› The new series “Needles and Pins” (10 p.m., Viceland, TV-14) explores the tattoo scene in Las Vegas and reflects on shifting attitudes toward the art form, once seen as firmly located on the wrong side of the tracks.
› “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel” (10 p.m., HBO) returns with a profile of Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon.— The season finale of “The Wall” (8 p.m., NBC, TV-PG).
› Bull feels competitive on “Bull” (9 p.m., CBS, TV-14).
› A trip to Memphis proves revealing on “This Is Us” (9 p.m., NBC, TV-14).
› The family decamps for New York on the second season premiere of “The Detour” (9 p.m., TBS, TV-MA).
› A streetcar named Expire on “NCIS: New Orleans” (10 p.m., CBS, TV-14).
› Hasil adjusts to townie life on “Outsiders” (9 p.m., WGN, TV-MA).
› Drastic changes on “Chicago Fire” (10 p.m., NBC, TV-14).
› Overwhelmed by infiltrators on “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” (10 p.m., ABC, TV-PG).
› “Frontline” (10 p.m., PBS, TV-PG) interviews a former detainee, released after 14 years at Guantanamo Bay.
› A betrayal puts Delaney in a perilous state on “Taboo” (10 p.m., FX, TV-MA).
› Contestants are cast away with cash and not much else in the new reality series “”Stranded With a Million Dollars” (10 p.m.,
MTV, TV-14).
› Timbaland mentors young talent on the premiere of “The Pop Game” (10 p.m., Lifetime, TV-PG).
› Bishop seeks revenge on “NCIS” (8 p.m., CBS, TV-PG).
› Sonequa Martin-Green (“The Walking Dead”) gueststars on “New Girl” (8 p.m., Fox, TV-14).
› Tooth or consequences on “The Middle” (8 p.m., ABC, TV-PG). ›
A trip to Gorilla City on “The Flash” (8 p.m., CW, TV-PG). ›
Love’s labor’s lost on “The Mick” (8:30 p.m., Fox, TV-14). ›
An awkward alliance on “American Housewife” (8:30 p.m., ABC, TV-PG).
› Bereaved, Booth and Brennan bicker on “Bones” (9 p.m., Fox, TV-14).
› An unlikely alliance on “Fresh Off the Boat” (9 p.m., ABC, TV-PG).
› Spear and loathing on “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow” (9 p.m., CW, TV-14).
› Brett drops the L word on “The Real O’Neals” (9:30 p.m., ABC, TV-14).
Contact Kevin McDonough at kevin.tvguy@gmail.com.