Icahn and other billionaires on HBO
I know that too much is never enough for some, but HBO’s fixation on the super-rich has gotten out of hand.
Subscribers still reeling from the conclusion of the third season of “Succession” can enjoy “The Gilded Age,” where cutthroat business buccaneer George Russell (Morgan Spector) has railroaded the New York City Council into submission. His tactics have resulted in (spoiler alert) at least one suicide.
At least Russell’s brand of 19th-century robber barons built things and ushered the United States from Civil War to world economic colossus.
Carl Icahn, the subject of tonight’s “Icahn: The Restless Billionaire” (9 p.m., HBO, TV-P14) is best known as a Wall Street raider, a man whose machinations have challenged rich CEOs and questioned the value (and valuations) of corporations where a managerial class has grown fat at the expense of investors.
A name synonymous with corporate takeovers for the past several decades, “Icahn” offers many surprising criticisms of the financier class and the impact of wealth inequality. ›
“American Experience: American Diplomat” (9 p.m., PBS, TV-PG, check local listings) recalls the stories of three little-known Black men appointed to diplomatic positions in the middle of the 20th century. At the time, America’s State Department and diplomatic corps were bastions of 19th-century thinking about race, gender, ethnicity and society.
Edward R. Dudley, Terence Todman and Carl Rowan all became notable diplomats, appointed by presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy, effectively “integrating” a service that had a reputation for being “pale, male and Yale,” for most of the first two centuries of America’s existence.
Their rise to prominence not only reflected their persistence and abilities, but the government’s slow realization that the Cold War required new approaches.
During World War II and thereafter during the rivalry with the USSR, American rhetoric about freedom and liberty was undercut by segregation, Jim Crow, lynchings and the violent suppression of efforts by Black citizens to cast their votes. Nazi and Soviet propaganda both made much of this double standard.
PBS explored a similar theme in the 2018 documentary “The Jazz Ambassadors,” about the use of concerts by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and others to showcase American culture and tolerance abroad in the 1950s, even when civil rights were not extended at home. “Jazz” can be streamed on Prime Video. ›
The ability to stream a gazillion series for free and on demand has reacquainted me with the addictive nature of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” the 1955-65 anthology series available on the Roku and Peacock services. “Good evening.”
I recently caught a 1957 episode (“The Night the World Ended”), featuring a teenaged Harry Shearer as a “street tough.” He’s gone on to “Spinal Tap” and “SNL” fame and voices Burns, Smithers, Flanders and others on “The Simpsons.”
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
› 2022 Winter Olympics events include bobsled, figure skating, alpine skiing and speed skating (8 p.m., NBC), women’s curling (8 p.m., CNBC), and biathlon (9 p.m., USA).
› “Jeopardy! National College Championship” (8 p.m., ABC, TV-PG).