RIC BURNS PROFILES OLIVER SACKS

Can a scientist be a poet? “American Masters” (9 p.m., PBS, TV-MA, check local listings) presents “Oliver Sacks: His Own Life,” an intimate look at a neurologist who used the 19th-century practice of writing anecdotal patient case studies to create an impressive and highly readable body of literature plumbing the nature of the human brain, consciousness, memory, identity and self.

Born in England in the 1930s, Sacks joined millions of children who were evacuated to the countryside during the Blitz. Educated in Los Angeles, he moved to the Bronx to work at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he worked for decades.

While in the Bronx, he documented the treatment of patients who had been afflicted with a sleeping sickness in the 1920s and who had been comatose for decades. Administered an experimental drug, they regained consciousness and spoke as if a day had passed since the 1920s. This haunting experiment and their subsequent relapses became the subject of his 1973 book “Awakenings,” adapted for the screen some two decades later. Sacks was portrayed by Robin Williams.

Sacks’ own life could be the stuff of a novel or film. Aware since his youth that he was gay, he never married, was intensely shy and did not form an intimate relationship until late in life. During medical school and thereafter he was given to drug abuse and dangerous, near-suicidal motorcycle adventures, riding alone hundreds of miles at a stretch simply to catch the sunset over the Grand Canyon.

Sacks wrote for both medical journals and general readers, appearing frequently in the New York Review of Books. His 1985 collection of anecdotal profiles, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” made him a household name. He wrote with both professional authority and a sense of remarkable empathy, owing perhaps to his awareness of his own singular nature.

“His Own Life” is directed by Ric Burns, the younger brother and frequent collaborator with Ken Burns, whose “Hemingway” series aired this week. Ric Burns directed the epic PBS documentary series on New York some decades back as well as “Driving While Black,” broadcast on PBS in 2020. His first credited film — “Coney Island,” from 1991 — remains a haunting masterpiece that recalls a lost world of popular escapism captured during the earliest days of motion pictures.

— Amazon Prime begins streaming “Them,” an anthology horror series. Not unlike FX’s “American Horror Story,” it’s set to follow a different story every season. The first explores the world of the early 1950s, when a Black engineer, Henry (Ashley Thomas), and his wife, Livia (Deborah Ayorinde), leave North Carolina to work in Los Angeles’ booming defense industry.

Convinced they’ve left the Jim Crow South behind, they arrive in L.A.’s Compton neighborhood, where segregation is enforced through other means.

Highly stylized and meticulously art-directed, “Them” sports gorgeous title sequences inspired by midcentury designer Saul Bass.

Alison Pill plays the ringleader of a band of white Stepford Wife-types, who encircle the Emorys’ home with lawn chairs and simply stare at their new neighbors with unthinking hostility while blasting a cacophony of banal pre-Elvis music in their direction.

The perfection of the art direction and the intimation of horror elements gives “Them” a tone more appropriate to a weird musical than real historical tragedy. As such, it more than borders on the brittle.

TONIGHT’S OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

— Liz makes a move she soon regrets on “The Blacklist” (8 p.m., NBC, r, TV-14).

— “WWE Friday Night SmackDown” (8 p.m., Fox, TV-PG).

— A colleague faces old complaints about excessive force on “Blue Bloods” (10 p.m., CBS, TV-14).

CULT CHOICE

Praised for its documentary style, the 1964 musical “A Hard Day’s Night” (12:35 p.m., TCM, TV-PG) was entirely scripted, and its screenplay by Alun Owen was nominated for an Academy Award.

SERIES NOTES

Exotic cars on “MacGyver” (8 p.m., CBS, TV-14) … Reassuring glamour on “Shark Tank” (8 p.m., ABC, TV-PG) … Improvisations on “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” (8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., CW, r, TV-14).

A baby in the bulrushes on “Magnum P.I.” (9 p.m., CBS, TV-14) … “Dateline” (9 p.m., NBC) … “20/20” (9 p.m., ABC) … Illusionists audition on “Penn & Teller: Fool Us” (9p.m., CW, TV-PG).

LATE NIGHT

Jimmy Fallon welcomes Demi Lovato and Alan Kim on “The Tonight Show” (11:35 p.m., NBC) … Jamie Foxx, Lauren Graham and AJR appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” (11:35 p.m., ABC, r).

Ken Jeong, Eddie Izzard and Griff visit “Late Night With Seth Meyers” (12:35 a.m., NBC, r) … Mila Kunis and Robin Thicke appear on “The Late Late Show With James Corden” (12:35 a.m., CBS, r).