FRIDAY’S BEST PICKS
8 PM ( MAX) MOVIE Inheritance After the death of its patriarch (Patrick Warburton), a powerful New York political family gathers to learn how his estate will be divided among them in Vaughn Stein’s 2020 thriller. Privately, however, the family’s attorney (Michael Beach) gives grieving daughter Lauren (Lily Collins), a Manhattan district attorney, a message from her late father that leads her to a secret bunker where she meets a stranger (Simon Pegg) who claims he has been held prisoner for 30 years. Connie Nielsen and Chace Crawford also star.
9 PM ^ Great Performances Celebrated violinist and conductor Scott Yoo returns with more secret stories behind some of the greatest classical musical ever composed as “Now Hear This” opens its sophomore season with “Haydn: The King of Strings.” The hour explores how composer Joseph Haydn found England’s “God Save the Queen” so stirring that he immediately wanted to write a similar anthem for Austria’s monarch. Haydn drew on folk music from Scotland, Hungary and Austria for his “Emperor Quartet,” but he also created the string quartet format as we know it today.
9 PM G World’s Funniest Animals Host Elizabeth Stanton (“Popstar This Week”) welcomes a fresh panel of guests each week to this new series, which looks at animals doing some of the most comical things ever caught on video. The featured clips include viral videos from the web, moments from TV shows and motion pictures, videos of celebrities with their pets and other surprising animal outtakes. Tom Arnold and Natalie Lander are special guests for the series premiere, joined by panelists Mikalah Gordon, Noah Matthews, Brian Cooper and Carmen Hodson. Another episode follows.
9 PM ( HGTV) Selling the Big Easy In the new episode “Paradise Park vs. Italian Villa,” host Brittany Picolo-Ramos works with a New Orleans couple who are hunting for a bigger home to accommodate their growing family. The husband is trying to be flexible to find the most affordable property they can, even if it means moving outside the city limits.
His wife, however, is reluctant to stray too far from the heart of the Crescent City, so Brittany has her work cut out for her. Another episode immediately follows.
10 PM ^ Art in the Twenty-First Century Returning for its 10th season, this Peabody Award-winning program allows viewers to observe contemporary visual artists at work, transforming inspiration into art, and hear how they struggle with both the physical and visual challenges of achieving their visions. The season premiere, “London,” explores how the work of artists in England’s capital city rethinks the rich past of the country yet subverts tired traditions in favor of fresh and diverse perspectives. 10 PM ( TRAV) Paranormal Nightshift
A hapless museum director unwittingly unleashes a trunk-full of angry spirits in the new episode “Scent of a Woman, The Resident and Curtain Call.” In other segments, a care support worker desperately fights to protect his sleeping charges from a dark paranormal presence, and a high school custodian is taunted by a whistling entity while cleaning up an auditorium reputed to be haunted.