Netflix showcases Ted Bundy musings
Next to amnesia and the death of Naval petty officers on “NCIS,” life on death row ranks among television’s go-to storylines. While real executions remain relatively rare, they happen with extraordinary frequency on television. Where would we be without 11th-hour exonerations, pardons, confessions and other ticking-clock nail-biters?
A real death-row interview unfolds on the fourpart “Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes” (TV-MA), streaming on Netflix today.
A casual glance at most people imprisoned for violent murders reveals a freakshow gallery of disturbed misfits and doomed killers. They look the part. In contrast, Bundy beguiled his victims and shocked most people with good looks, blue eyes and preppy demeanor.
Perhaps the creepiest thing about this film is that Bundy’s confessions and observations are often delivered in the third person. Like a therapist or forensics expert, Bundy describes the motivations and unfulfilled desires that drive a man to kill again and again, hoping that the next fix might slake a thirst unsatisfied by the last.
It’s believed Bundy killed more than 30 women in at least seven states. He was executed in 1989.
› “Broad City” (10 p.m., Comedy Central, TV-14), created by and starring Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, enters its fifth and final season. Audacious, raunchy and silly at the same time, “Broad” often seems like the Abbott and Costello of the post-post-feminist era.
The series is one of the more successful comedy franchises to move from the web to episodic television. But at times, its frank and frantic nature seems better suited to the brevity of webisodes.
› TCM unspools five “Hercules” movies, cheap European imports that delighted film fans with violent action scenes combined with plenty of moments featuring curvaceous women wearing flimsy togas. The action starts with “Hercules, Samson & Ulysses” (8 p.m.), from 1963, and wraps up with the 1960 shocker “Hercules Against the Barbarians” (3:15 a.m.).
During his stint on “Saturday Night Live,” a paunchy Bill Murray starred in badly dubbed send-ups of this shortlived but memorable genre.
Arguably, the most significant cultural contribution to the throwaway “Hercules” movie fad was the low-budget 1969 comedy “Hercules in New York,” starring a muscle-bound actor named Arnold Strong as the Greek hero sent from Mt. Olympus to modern-day Manhattan. Strong would later perform under his real name, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s film career began.
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
› The mermaid mystery “Siren” (8 p.m., Freeform, TV-14) enters its second soggy season.
Contact Kevin McDonough at kevin .tvguy@gmail.com.