King’s Dome starts strong
Brace yourself. Under the Dome, the new 13-episode summer popcorn cruncher adapted from a 2009 novel by Stephen King, is hellzapoppin’ entertainment, based on Monday’s opening hour anyway. The tale of a small town suddenly cut off from the rest of the world by a giant, impenetrable transparent dome comes alive on the small screen, thanks to a brisk pace that hardly ever lets up and an attractive, appealing cast who manage to bring King’s stock characters to life.
Mike Vogel is both believable and interesting to watch as Dale ‘Barbie’ Barbara, the drifter with a hidden past who’s out for redemption. He’s the prototypical King anti-hero, the strong, silent, self-contained loner who’s self-reliant without being selfabsorbed.
Montreal native Rachelle Lefevre has obvious fun as muckraking journalist Julia Shumway, editor of a local, small-town newspaper who only now realizes that hardly anyone reads the paper anymore.
Sealed off from the rest of humanity and surrounded by the eccentric, conflict-riven residents of Chester’s Mill, Maine, it’s only a matter of time before Dale and Julia ‘link up,’ as it were and the mystery deepens from there. (Global — 8 p.m., CBS — 11 p.m.)
Steve Carell is Jay Leno’s guest on The Tonight Show, but the real reason to watch may be the scheduled show-closing performance by Barenaked Ladies. (NBC, CTV Two — 12:35 a.m.)
Summer soap, Mistresses, features an episode in which Savi (Alyssa Milano) learns she’s pregnant and is forced to ask herself, how did that happen? (ABC, CTV — 8 p.m., ABC — 11 p.m.)
The-long-running-fake-psychic-series Psych repeats a pair of episodes: 2011’s Shawn, Interrupted and 2012’s Heeeeere’s Lassie. (Global — 9 p.m.)