NBC’s ‘Dateline’ to air ‘The Widower’
Given viewers’ bottomless appetite for obsessive multipart true-crime docuseries, it’s surprising that “Dateline” (10 p.m., NBC) has taken so long to get with the program.
Presented over three nights, “The Widower” follows a surprising investigation into a home-invasion murder that uncovers the story of a man married six times with at least four wives reported murdered. The series follows his story over the decades and any number of terrible hairstyle choices. Why this wasn’t called “The Mullet Murders” is beyond me.
No investigation of this duration (or series of this length) unfolds without twists and turns, and we’re promised that the hirsute subject plays a cat-andmouse game with police and “Dateline” investigators as well.
“The Widower” continues tomorrow night and concludes Sunday.
“Dateline” reigns as the longest running primetime series in NBC history. It is now in its 29th season. “Law & Order: SVU” is now in its 22nd.
› It looks like the week belongs to Eve Hewson. Who? She stars in “The Luminaries,” which began on Sunday on Starz. She’s now seen in “Behind Her Eyes,” the six-part adaptation of a Sarah Pinborough novel now streaming on Netflix.
It would be an understatement to say “Eyes” keeps you off balance. Simona Brown stars as Louise, a single mother and secretary whose devotion to her 7-year-old son has left her feeling socially isolated.
When a friend fails to meet her for a drink at a local pub, she runs into a handsome stranger (Tom Bateman) with a deep Scottish accent to rival Sean Connery’s. Sensing an immediate connection, they share a good-night kiss that seems to upset him and send him stalking home trailing strange apologies.
An awkward evening where “nothing happened” gets weirder for Louise when she arrives at work the next day to see that the stranger is now her new psychiatrist boss and that he has a posh and beautiful wife (Eve Hewson) in tow. Or at least that’s how things look.
From here on it would be unfair to reveal much more. Only that David with the accent and his “wife” share a relationship and a past that get stranger as things unfold and Louise becomes more involved with both.
Viewers may recall Simona Brown from her roles in “The Casual Vacancy,” adapted from a novel by J.K. Rowling, and the excellent adaptation of the John le Carre novel “The Night Manager.”
› Social media can be murder in the 2021 shocker “Shook,” now streaming on Shudder, the subscription platform dedicated to horror.
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
› Gordon Ramsay blows a gasket on “Hell’s Kitchen” (8 p.m., Fox, TV-14).
› “Built for Mars: The Perseverance Rover” (8 p.m., National Geographic, TV-PG) .
› A serial rapist’s attacks span two boroughs on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (9 p.m., NBC, TV-14).
› Sleep-deprived on “Call Me Kat” (9 p.m., Fox, TV-14).
› A valuable lesson imparted with hugs on “Last Man Standing” (9:30 p.m., Fox, TV-PG).