TV highlights
SUNDAY 8 p.m. on WQED Prince Albert: A Victorian Hero Revealed
This one-hour special sheds new light on one of British history’s most significant royal figures who deserves fame for being far more than Queen Victoria’s German husband who died before his time. Granted access to more than 20,000 of Prince Albert’s private papers and photos, professor Saul David points out how Albert played a genuinely profound role as a forward-thinking reformer whose ideas helped transform the fortunes of Great Britain.
MONDAY 10 p.m. on WQED Independent Lens
In “Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project,” filmmaker Matt Wolf profiles a fiery activist and intellectual who gradually became an eccentric recluse in her later years. While working in television in the late 1960s, Philadelphia-based Marion Stokes believed in the medium’s power to inform — or misinform — the public. Convinced that a comprehensive archive of national media would be invaluable, she started recording news broadcasts of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, a practice she continued up to her death in 2012.
TUESDAY 8 p.m. on WQED American Masters
The new 90-minute episode “Mae West: Dirty Blonde” explores how this provocative and subversive performer may have created an aura of “sex symbol” around herself, but a closer examination of her work reveals how she shrewdly and perceptively invested her saucy story lines with astute commentary about some of the most complicated social issues of the 20th century. Over the course of an eight-decade career, West broke one boundary after another, in the process earning creative and economic power that was unheard-of for a female entertainer in the 1930s.
WEDNESDAY 10 p.m. on TRAV Bigfoot is Real
In the new episode “Demon Monkeys,” the GCBRO team responds to reports of what might be a dead Bigfoot, as well as terrifying creatures dubbed devil-monkeys. At a Bigfoot-centric gathering, a heated debate erupts over the ethics of killing one of the creatures if the opportunity presents itself.
THURSDAY 9 p.m. on WPCW In the Dark
Murphy and Felix (Perry Mattfeld, Morgan Krantz) really swing for the fences as they make a long-shot attempt to pull off their plan that could end their arrangement with Nia (guest star Nicki Micheaux) in the new episode “The Last Dance.” Elsewhere, Dean (Rich Sommer) finds himself in truly dire circumstances, so he turns to a former colleague for help.
FRIDAY 8 p.m. on HBO Movie: Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn
Ivy Meeropol’s unflinching documentary looks back at the infamous attorney who prosecuted the filmmaker’s grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and later argued successfully for their execution, events that playwright Tony Kushner incorporated into his epic drama “Angels in America.” The film chronicles the life of Cohn from his work as chief counsel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the late 1950s through the 1980s, when he became a darling of the Reagan White House, eventually becoming a political mentor to future President Donald J. Trump.
SATURDAY 8 p.m. on LIFE Movie: Birthmother’s Betrayal
At 16, Tara discovers the name of her birth mother, Grace, on a DNA website and reaches out to the older woman. In short order, Grace comes crashing into the life of the daughter she gave up years ago, much to the consternation of Amy, who subsequently adopted Tara and gave her a stable home. “Stable,” however, is the last word to describe Grace, who has both a needy love for Tara and a poisonous resentment toward Amy.