‘The Big Conn’: stranger than fiction

What’s in a name? Now streaming on Apple TV+, “The Big Conn” recalls the infamous Eric C. Conn, who stole a half-billion dollars from the government before going on the lam.

The docuseries is both detailed and whimsical, as befits its subject, a larger-than-life rogue who fancied himself a James Bond by way of Robin Hood. The show unfolds like “Better Call Saul” set in “Justified” country.

A lawyer whose taste for billboards, infomercials and other tacky forms of self-promotion made him a local celebrity, Conn specialized in Social Security cases — specifically, disability benefits. Practicing in the economically depressed hills of eastern Kentucky, he all but guaranteed his clientele a quick payout from the government, regardless of physical condition.

To do this, he worked with a crooked West Virginia

federal judge. While roughly half of disability applications are rejected in a process that can take some 18 months, Conn’s collaborator approved some 97% of his cases, often within weeks.

“Big Conn” also follows a Wall Street Journal reporter and two Social Security whistleblowers who eventually exposed the scheme — but not before being subject to threats of mob violence.

Conn may have been delusional and goofy enough to have commissioned a giant mural of himself painted in the image of Luke Skywalker, but he protected his Appalachian fiefdom like a killer.

Also streaming on Apple TV+, the Emmy-winning Israeli spy thriller “Tehran” enters its second season.

Apple also streams the Peanuts animated special “To Mom (and Dad), With Love.”

› “The Wilds,” a paranoid thriller about a gaggle of teen stereotypes stranded on a desert island and subject to surveillance, enters its second season on Amazon Prime. This time, it’s the boys’ turn.

› After seven seasons, Titus Welliver returns

in “Bosch: Legacy,” a continuing adaptation of Michael Connelly’s detective novels. “Legacy” marks a rebranding of the old IMDB network as Amazon Freevee, an ad-supported aggregator of programming not requiring a subscription.

If you don’t mind an onslaught of ads for Progressive Insurance and random pharmaceutical products you never knew you needed, you can cobble together quite a menu of programming without spending a dime,

using free services like Pluto, the Roku Channel, the free tier of Peacock and now Amazon Freevee.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

› Undercover in a correctional facility on the season finale of “Magnum P.I.” (9 p.m., CBS, TV-14).

› A suspect in a 24-yearold homicide, accused of murder when he was only 12, speaks out on “20/20” (9 p.m., ABC).