Home / Arts & Life / What’s on TV Monday: ‘Will’ and ‘Last Men in Aleppo’

What’s on TV Monday: ‘Will’ and ‘Last Men in Aleppo’

Photo

Laurie Davidson and Olivia DeJonge in “Will.”

Credit
Alex Bailey/TNT

Shakespeare goes steampunk in an imagining of his youth. And “POV” presents an urgent and mournful documentary about the Syrian crisis.

What’s on TV

WILL 9 p.m. on TNT. A young William Shakespeare (Laurie Davidson) is transported from sleepy Stratford-upon-Avon into a punk-rock theater scene in 16th-century London, where he falls in with the Burbage family — father James (Colm Meaney), daughter Alice (Olivia DeJonge) and son Richard (Mattias Inwood) — in this creation from Craig Pearce, Baz Luhrmann’s longtime writing partner. “He stumbles into a world that, at least as depicted in this excess-prone series, is rife with bacchanalia and back-stabbing, accompanied by a jarring rock ’n’ roll soundtrack,” Neil Genzlinger wrote in The New York Times. “If you’re a theater lover who was hoping for an intelligent treatment of the great man’s formative years, it will all seem a bit silly. If you like overstuffed costume dramas with a veneer of literacy layered over debauchery, latch on.”

Photo

A scene from “Last Men in Aleppo.”

Credit
AMC

POV: LAST MEN IN ALEPPO (2017) 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Opening in this Syrian city after a barrel bomb attack by Russian aircraft, this documentary — a grand jury prize winner at Sundance — follows members of the search-and-rescue team known as the White Helmets as they comb through ruins for survivors. Each scene of hope yields another of horror. “This is an essential film, but it is also a terribly dispiriting one,” Glenn Kenny wrote in The Times, “likely to make you almost ashamed of your comforts and leave you with a feeling of impotence.” He added that it “doesn’t offer hope; its aim is to compel us to create some.”

PEOPLE TALKING SPORTS* (*AND OTHER STUFF) 11 p.m. on MSG (check local listings). The comedian Sam Morrill combines his fanaticism for New York teams with his joke-writing talent to dissect sports from a fan’s perspective in this new show.

What’s Streaming

Photo

Greta Gerwig in “Frances Ha.”

Credit
IFC Films

FRANCES HA (2013) on Sundance Now. Greta Gerwig stars as a 27-year-old aspiring dancer, rolling with the punches as she navigates New York in a state of arrested development — before slamming into reality. Ms. Gerwig wrote this film with Noah Baumbach, who directed, and the result, “with its swift, jaunty rhythms and sharp, off-kilter jokes,” is “frequently delightful,” A. O. Scott wrote in The Times, “less a satire or a cautionary tale than a bedtime story for young adults.”

Photo

Alakina Mann, left, and Nicole Kidman in “The Others.”

Credit
Teresa Isasi/Dimension Films

THE OTHERS (2001) on Sho.com; also 8:05 p.m. on Showtime 2. In this ghost story from Alejandro Amenábar, a woman (Nicole Kidman) lives an almost ascetic existence with her two ailing children (James Bentley and Alakina Mann) on an island in the English Channel toward the end of World War II. Then a group of servants arrives and breaks all her rules. “Ms. Kidman embodies this unstable amalgam with a conviction that is in itself terrifying,” A. O. Scott wrote in The Times.

Continue reading the main story

About admin

Check Also

Hear the Best Albums and Songs of 2023

Dear listeners, In the spirit of holiday excess and end-of-the-year summation, we’re about to make …