‘Big Brother,’ ‘Dogs’ and ‘Cat People’
You know you’re kneedeep in summer programming when the prime-time schedule for the four major networks does not feature one scripted series. It’s the night that “Big Brother” (8 p.m., CBS, TV-PG) returns for its 23rd claustrophobic season. Julie Chen returns to host a season of what the network is calling (in all caps, no less) “BIG RISKS” and “BIG REWARDS.”
As viewers of the first 22 “Big Brother” seasons know, the emotional level is generally set to CAPS LOCK around here. CBS just announced the guest list last week, so look out for the usual gang of exhibitionists. The group sports one lawyer, a “startup” founder, a “professional dancer” and a phlebotomist. If I had a rooting interest in the outcome, I’d be all in for Britini D’Angelo, from Niagara Falls, New York. She’s a kindergarten teacher. So she’s probably used to corralling groups of self-involved folks capable of infantile outbursts. She just won’t be able to assign time-outs or nap times to her competitors.
“Big Brother” gives way to the third-season premiere of “Love Island” (9:30 p.m., CBS, TV-PG). Help yourself.
› When you release as many movies, series and “product” as Netflix, you can be forgiven for taking both sides of a crucial dispute. Tonight’s offerings indicate an attempt to build bridges between a cultural chasm.
Netflix’s “Dogs” enters its second season. Over four episodes, it will explore the special bond between canines and humans, offering insights from science as well as personal profiles of an astronaut, a priest, a military contractor and a handler of a university mascot, who all discuss their relationship with their best friends.
To even the score, Netflix also offers “Cat People,” a six-episode meditation on friends of felines, who are too often derided as quirky, eccentric or sad. We meet a rapper surrounded by his furry posse and a woman planning a birthday party for her cat, who claims that upward of 23,000 social media followers are planning to virtually attend the shindig.
Watching “Dogs” and “Cat People” back to back, (or is that tail to tail?) may not explain why there are such radically different attitudes toward these pets and their indulgence. But it might be fun to compare and contrast.
› Disney+ subscribers can stream “Monsters at Work,” a new installment in the “Monsters, Inc.” franchise. Look, or rather listen, for the voices of Bonnie Hunt, Mindy Kaling, Lucas Neff, Aisha Tyler, Henry Winkler, Ben Feldman, Billy Crystal and John Goodman. In order to enjoy the faceless anonymity of cartoon work, you have to be already famous.
› Will fans of Nordic noir embrace its Eastern European counterpart?
Imported from Poland, the five-episode series “The Mire” begins streaming on Netflix. The mystery begins when a local youth leader is found murdered along with a prostitute. It may have become a forgotten crime had two reporters not found the police’s behavior to be slightly fishy.
› Netflix also streams the Spanish-language comedy “The War Next Door,” about two extended families with over-the-top matriarchs that win chances to move into a posh development, only to discover their archrivals right over the fence.