How much choice is enough? A recent report shows that the number of viewing options has grown by nearly 40% just in the past year. Much of that comes from the growth of FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV) services like Pluto, Roku, Freevee, Crackle and more.
Having merged HBO and Discovery, you’d think that MAX might have enough on its menu. Think again. For the next two months, MAX will showcase AMC series as well. From now until Halloween, Max will stream more than 200 episodes of the following series: “Fear the Walking Dead,” “Interview With the Vampire,” “Gangs of London,” “Dark Winds,” “A Discovery of Witches,” “Killing Eve” and “Ride With Norman Reedus.”
The arrangement, dubbed a “programming pop-up,” will even get its own “hub” on the Max home screen, joining HBO, Discovery and other content, including movies from Turner Classic Movies.
This is not the only expansion coming to Max. Starting Sept. 27, Max will offer a live stream of CNN content as well as archived episodes of “Anderson Cooper 360,” “The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer,” “The Lead With Jake Tapper” and “Amanpour.”
This seems like a logical combination of services owned by Warner Bros. While the AMC pop-up is a bit of a surprise, the CNN arrangement strikes this reviewer as a “What took you so long?” situation. Particularly after the brief, unhappy life of the CNN standalone app, CNN+.
— The PBS fall season begins in earnest with three returning series from across the pond.
The British crime drama “Professor T” (8 p.m. Sunday, PBS, TV-14, check local listings) returns for a second season. Ben Miller (“Bridgerton”) stars in the title role as a brilliant criminologist, beset with obsessive-compulsive disorders and a scrambled relationship with the women in his life.
“Unforgotten” on “Masterpiece” (9 p.m., Sunday, PBS, TV-PG, check local listings) enters its fifth season. DCI Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) has left the series, but she’s been replaced by the capable DCI Jessie James (Sinead Keenan) who partners with DI Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) to solve kidnappings, murders and all manner of mayhem beneath Britain’s leaden skies.
Still British but set in Amsterdam, “Van der Valk” (10 p.m. Sunday, PBS, TV-14, check local listings) enters its third season, with Marc Warren in the title role as Piet Van der Valk, police commissioner in the scenic city of canals, tourists and endless opportunities for baroque homicides.
— Netflix launches the contrived Japanese dating contest “Is She the Wolf?” Five men and five women go searching for true love, “Bachelor”-style, but among them are “lying wolves,” players incapable of love, who only want to get through the season without being discovered. Help yourself.
— A proud, wealthy family declines over the course of a half-century of social and economic change in director Orson Welles’ 1942 adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s novel “The Magnificent Ambersons” (8 p.m. Sunday, TCM, TV-PG). No book or movie has better shown how a stately mansion nestled in the best part of town can be eclipsed by urban sprawl and relegated to an old and undesirable neighborhood in a single lifetime.
A year after “Citizen Kane” anointed Welles as filmdom’s young genius, the RKO studio took over control of this movie and re-edited Welles’ version to make it more commercially acceptable. Welles complained that “They destroyed ‘Ambersons’ and it destroyed me.” A recent effort has been made to use new technology to restore scenes lost to film history.
SATURDAY’S HIGHLIGHTS
— College football action includes New Mexico at Texas A&M (7 p.m., ESPN), Texas Tech at Wyoming (7:30 p.m., CBS), West Virginia at Penn State (7:30 p.m., NBC) and North Carolina vs. South Carolina (7:30 p.m., ABC).
NBC’s game can also be streamed on Peacock, which will offer a full slate of Big 10 Football games throughout the fall.
— U.S. Open tennis (7 p.m., ESPN2).
— A weekend cabin getaway intended to bring a daughter (Lulu Wilson) closer to her estranged father turns into a violent home invasion in the 2020 shocker “Becky” (7:25 p.m., Showtime). Years later, she contends with a violent men’s group who kidnaps her dog in the 2023 sequel “The Wrath of Becky” (9 p.m., Showtime).
— An offroad vacation gets more adventurous than planned in the 2023 shocker “Kidnapping in the Grand Canyon” (8 p.m., Lifetime, TV-14).
— An archaeological dig brings two ex-lovers back together in the 2023 bauble “Love in the Great Smoky Mountains: A National Park Romance” (8 p.m., Hallmark, TV-G).
SUNDAY’S HIGHLIGHTS
— Scheduled on “60 Minutes” (7 p.m., CBS).
— Florida State hosts LSU in college football action (7 p.m., ABC).
— U.S. Open tennis (7 p.m., ESPN2).
— Chuck’s new case comes close to Prince’s periphery on “Billions” (8 p.m., Showtime, TV-MA).
— Leaphorn and Chee find evidence linking their two cases on “Dark Winds” (9 p.m., AMC, TV-14).
— Magic clashes with the coach on “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” (9 p.m., HBO, TV-MA)
— Much to celebrate on “The Chi” (9 p.m., Showtime)
CULT CHOICE
Directed by Elia Kazan and written by Harold Pinter, the 1976 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished Hollywood novel “The Last Tycoon” (10:20 p.m. Saturday, TMCX) was not well received in its time, but has probably held up better than any Fitzgerald-based film. The cast features some of the biggest stars from the mid-’70s as well as some from Hollywood’s Golden Age, including Robert De Niro, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson, Donald Pleasence, Jeanne Moreau, Theresa Russell and Ingrid Boulting.
SATURDAY SERIES
— Adrian Quesada performs on “Austin City Limits” (8 p.m., PBS, TV-PG, check local listings).
SUNDAY SERIES
The head of the household sets up two participants for eviction on “Big Brother” (8 p.m., CBS, TV-PG) … “American Ninja Warrior” (8 p.m., NBC, r, TV-PG) … Lisa becomes a charity fundraising superstar on “The Simpsons” (8 p.m., Fox, r, TV-PG)
On two episodes of “Family Guy” (8:30 p.m., Fox, r, TV-14): intimate memories take on the form of movie plot (8:30 p.m.); north by northwest (9:30 p.m.).
A case reminds McCall of mysteries surrounding her father’s death “The Equalizer” (9 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14) … “America’s Got Talent” (9 p.m., NBC, r, TV-PG) … Tina feels peer pressure on “Bob’s Burgers” (9 p.m., Fox, r, TV-PG) … A Navy reservist is murdered in his mysterious laboratory on “NCIS: Los Angeles” (10 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14).
