What’s on today
HBO airs the profoundly weird and disturbing 2016 film “Beware the Slenderman” at 9 p.m., examining the case of two young girls who stabbed a third girl because they were motivated to do so by a fictional monster known as the Slenderman. The victim survived, but the case remains shocking on many levels. Director Irene Taylor Brodsky filmed the documentary, which premiered at Sundance last year, over 18 months.
If you haven’t yet tripped over it, Freeform’s new sci-fi drama “Beyond” is definitely worth a look. Freeform, of course, used to be ABC Family, but even under that antiquated name, it made valid attempts to add sophistication to its offerings. Its current roster, for example, includes the sitcom “Baby Daddy,” starring Jean-Luc Bilodeau as, you guessed it, a single dad.
When he was still a kid, though, Bilodeau was the wise-ass younger brother on“Kyle XY,” an ABC Family drama about a teenage boy (Matt Dallas) who awakens in the forest one day with no clothes, no knowledge of where he came from and no navel, either.
Freeform’s “Beyond” has a conceptual similarity to “Kyle.” A boy is beaten up by a bunch of thugs and falls into a coma for seven years. Never expected to awaken, he defies the prognosis and his eyes pop open. The last thing he remembers is that he was a kid on a bike. Now he’s a young man with
only fleeting images that suggest perhaps he was mentally somewhere else in the past seven years.
Burkely Duffield stars as Holden, and let me say what you might be thinking: A searching young male character should never be called Holden unless someone is directly adapting “A Catcher in the Rye.”
Anyway, Duffield is good, and Holden is good and confused. His younger brother, Luke (Jonathan
Whitesell), is now a college kid and clearly more familiar with the ways of the post-high-school social world than his older brother. Holden’s best friend, Kevin (Jordan Calloway), is all grown up too, and even married. And then there’s Dilan Gwyn (Willa Frost ),a young woman who rescues Holden from a challenging situation and insists she knows where he has been for the past seven years.
Did I mention he also seems to have superpowers?
“Beyond” is a step beyond a lot of TV fare. It’s a thoroughly entertaining, well-crafted show, and episode five airs tonight on Freeform at 9. New episodes of “Supergirl,” at 8 p.m., and
“Jane the Virgin,” at 9, air on the CW. Viceland ’s“Hate Thy Neighbor” premieres at 10 p.m.
Investigation Discovery’s new show “Murder Calls” moves to its regular time slot at 10 p.m. Each episode begins with a 911 call and then traces the work of detectives as they follow the clues to solving the crime.