‘School Spirits’: high school never ends
Some series are so neatly conceived that you almost wish you were in the room when the idea was pitched: Let’s make ‘The Breakfast Club’ with ghosts!” There you have the bare bones of “School Spirits,” a new supernatural teen melodrama streaming on Paramount+. The first two episodes of this eightpart limited series can be streamed today.
Peyton List plays Maddie, the central character who wakes up in her local high school, discovers she can never leave the premises, and she’s not alone. There are other spectral students there, classmates who teach her the ways of her new “haunt.”
Maddie’s recent departure is being mourned by students who have no notion that she’s still lurking around the lockers — and is the subject of a murder mystery that she is determined to help solve.
It remains to be seen if the show’s tight little concept will prove limiting. It’s one thing to be stuck in high school for a two-hour movie, but most TV series are designed to run for an eternity. Like too many school-set series, from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” to “Wednesday,” “Spirits” sports clever and knowing dialogue that ranges from oversophisticated to brittle. Would it kill somebody to write scripts that allowed young people to sound like human beings?
› Airing four hours over two nights, “The Torso Killer Confessions” (9 p.m., A&E, TV-14) recalls the grim work of Richard Cottingham, a prolific serial killer who preyed upon women in the New York metropolitan area from the late 1960s until his arrest in 1980. Cottingham has claimed to have murdered more than 100 women.
Having dedicated much of his career to trying to solve more than a dozen cold cases that he believed were linked to the so-called “Torso Killer,” Bergen County, New Jersey detective Robert Anzilotti recalls decades of conversations with Cottingham and several major revelations that can only now come to light.
› A therapist (Bruce Willis) counsels a young boy (Haley Joel Osment) who “sees dead people” in the 1999 shocker “The Sixth Sense” (7:30 p.m., FXM, TV-14), directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who also directed “The Village” (9:50 p.m., FXM, TV-MA). Shyamalan’s series “The Servant” is streaming its fourth and final season on Apple TV+.
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
› Game night entails the preparation of elk steaks and boar chops on “Next Level Chef” (8 p.m., Fox, TV-14).
› An increased number of neighborhood fires follows a grim pattern on “Station 19” (8 p.m., ABC, TV-14).
› Competitors convene in London for the 20th season of “Top Chef” (8 p.m., Bravo, TV-PG).
› A face from the past sends Simone’s head spinning on “Grey’s Anatomy” (9 p.m., ABC, TV-14).
› A home invasion ends with a gruesome discovery on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (9 p.m., NBC, repeat, TV-14).