THURSDAY’S BEST PICKS
7 PM ( NGEO) City So Real Oscar- and Emmy-nominated filmmaker Steve James (“Abacus: Small Enough to Jail,” “Minding the Gap”) paints a fascinating portrait of modern-day Chicago that reveals a multifaceted examination into the soul of the quintessentially American midwestern city. The fivepart docuseries unfolds against the backdrop of its historic 2019 mayoral election and the turbulent summer of 2020, marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and widespread social unrest in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd.
8 PM & Superstore Leading lady America Ferrera announced she was leaving this hit sitcom at the end of last season, with her character, Amy Sosa, accepting a big promotion California. The COVID-19 crisis shut down production last spring before Amy’s farewell storyline had finished, however, so Ferrera appears as a guest star in the first two episodes of Season 6. Meanwhile, look for ex-boyfriend Jonah (Ben Feldman) and his Cloud 9 associates to struggle with their new roles as essential workers during this pandemic. Mark McKinney and Lauren Ash also star.
8 PM * Celebrity Family Feud Host Steve Harvey closes out Season 6 of this game show reboot with the finale double bill “Boxers (WBC) vs. UFC and Team Sebastian vs. Jenifer Lewis.”
The first match finds boxers Evander Holyfield, Ryan Garcia, Shawn “Showtime” Porter, Riddick Bowe and WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman vying with UFC fighters Forrest Griffin, Henry Cejudo, Michelle Waterson, Holly Holm and Stephen Thompson. Next, comic and actor Sebastian Maniscalco leads a team of relatives against “black-ish” star Lewis and four of her siblings.
9 PM G The Outpost Yavalla (Jaye Griffiths) recruits Gwynn (Imogen Waterhouse) to join her cause as Talon (Jessica Green) presses to get some answers in the new episode “The Key to Paradise.” Meanwhile, Tobin (Aaron Fontaine) faces a difficult choice as he is reunited with a past love. Elsewhere, Zed’s (Reece Ritchie) loyalty is called into question. Izuka Hoyle, Jake Stormoen, Adam Johnson, Georgia May Foote and Anand Desai-Barochia also star.
9 PM ( BRV) Southern Charm The coronavirus pandemic and a culture shift in Charleston, S.C., collide as this hit reality series returns for Season 7. Craig Conover, Kathryn Dennis, Austen Kroll and Shep Rose are back, joined by three new series regulars: Madison LeCroy, newly promoted to full-time status and at a crossroads in her relationship with Austen; Leva Bonaparte, part of a biracial couple with a son who is Black and Persian; and John Pringle, a single dad who has moved back from Los Angeles to reclaim his own deep Charleston roots.
9 PM ( TRAV) Ghost Adventures In the
new two-hour special episode “Horror at Joe Exotic Zoo,” host Zak Bagans and his team prepare for the first-ever paranormal exploration of the facility at the heart of the breakout Netflix docuseries “Tiger King”: Joe Exotic’s Greater Wynnewood Animal Park in Oklahoma. For years, staff at the park have claimed the zoo is haunted, so the “Ghost Adventures” team will be looking for evidence of any sinister activity and/or tortured spirits lurking in the shadows of a facility that has been the scene of multiple tragedies.
11 PM (TRAV) The Holzer Files This engrossing paranormal series returns for its sophomore season, with such investigations as following the trail of the fugitive Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth in Maryland to pursuing a serial killer in Ohio. Investigator Dave Schrader leads a team that also includes psychic medium Cindy Kaza and equipment technician Shane Pittman. Together, this trio digs into the recently discovered case files of Hans Holzer, widely acknowledged as America’s first ghost hunter. Alexandra Holzer, the late paranormal master’s daughter, helps as the series pores over her father’s copious documents.
11 PM (SUND) Deutschland 89 When
the Berlin Wall falls on Nov. 9, 1989, ace spy Martin Rauch (Jonas Nay) and his fellow agents at East German Foreign Intelligence are sent reeling as the third season of this political thriller begins. While it’s been a peaceful revolution that ultimately triggers widespread turmoil, Martin and his associates must face a new world order in which their government has collapsed, their own organization is in total chaos and their futures are uncertain at best.