Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, July 5-11. Details and times are subject to change.
Monday
OBSESSION (1976) 10:15 p.m. on TCM. In “Vertigo,” Alfred Hitchcock used his directorial virtuosity to make viewers think one character was an entirely different character. In “Obsession,” Brian De Palma used his directorial virtuosity to make viewers think he was Alfred Hitchcock. The screenplay, written by Paul Schrader, follows a New Orleans businessman (Cliff Robertson) who meets a woman (Geneviève Bujold) who is a doppelgänger of his late wife, Elizabeth. He tries to transform his new love interest into his old one. Critical opinion on the movie was mixed at the time it was released, but some writers have since assessed it more favorably: In a 2016 article for The New York Times, the critic Stephen Holden wrote that the plot of “Obsession” takes “extremely emotional hairpin turns that Hitchcock would never have dreamed of.” The score that the famous Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann wrote for “Obsession,” Holden added, “is the luscious icing on the cake.” TCM is showing the film alongside De Palma’s THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES (1990), which airs at 8 p.m.
THE LITTLE THINGS (2021) 10 p.m. on HBO Signature. Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto star in this old-fashioned crime thriller. Written and directed by John Lee Hancock (“The Blind Side”), the film follows a pair of detectives (Washington and Malek) working to catch a serial killer (Leto) in Southern California in the 1990s. Hancock had been sitting on the script for decades — and that fact shows, for better or worse. A.O. Scott called the movie “an unapologetic throwback” in his review for The Times. “Thanks to Hancock’s craft and the discipline of the actors, it’s more than watchable,” Scott wrote, “but you are unlikely to be haunted, disturbed or even surprised.”
STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON (2015) 8:45 p.m. on FX. The origins of the rap group N.W.A — and its three most famous members, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E and Ice Cube — are dramatized in this biopic. The film was directed by F. Gary Gray, who made his feature debut directing Ice Cube in “Friday” in 1995, then jumped to action movies like “Law Abiding Citizen” (2009) and “The Fate of the Furious” (2017). Viewers may sense some of that thriller DNA in “Straight Outta Compton”; it opens in the mid-1980s with a drug deal that turns violent fast, then holds onto that momentum as it follows the rise of Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins), Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and company, and the tensions that follow. The result is a movie that “speaks to fighting the power (to borrow a message from another music legend) that it also embraces,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times. “It’s another story of ultimate outsiders turned ultimate insiders,” she added, “which makes it as blissfully American as apple pie, low riders and gangster rap itself.”
Wednesday
LOVE ISLAND 9:30 p.m. on CBS. The British version of this reality series is known both for its raunch and for its role in kicking up a debate over the ethics of reality television after two former participants killed themselves. Like the British original, the American edition, which debuted in 2019, gathers a group of contestants on an island, where they’re expected to find romance. The third season begins on Wednesday night.
Thursday
SAM COOKE: LEGEND (2003) 8:30 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Aretha Franklin and Bobby Womack are among the interviewees in this documentary about the soul singer Sam Cooke. Narrated by the actor Jeffrey Wright, the movie looks at Cooke’s transition from gospel to R&B; his role in the Civil Rights movement; and the legacy he left after his death in 1964, at 33.
Friday
GREAT PERFORMANCES: GLORIA ESTEFAN — SANGRE YORUBA 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The singer Gloria Estefan travels through Africa, Brazil and Cuba in this episode of PBS’s “Great Performances” series. Estefan looks at the way Brazilian music grew out of African traditions, and visits landmarks like the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro and the Bay of All Saints. She performs some songs, too.
Saturday
THE 2021 ESPYS 8 p.m. on ABC. The actor Anthony Mackie, who recently demonstrated his athleticism by running around as Captain America in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” will host this year’s edition of the ESPY Awards, which honor achievements in sports. Nominees for the top awards this year include Tom Brady, Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka.
JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. Daniel Kaluuya won an Academy Award earlier this year for his portrayal of the Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in this historical drama. The film looks at the lead-up to Hampton’s killing by police during a raid in 1969 (he was 21) by following Bill O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), who was both the head of security for the Black Panther Party in Chicago and a paid informant for the F.B.I. The film, directed by Shaka King, is both “tense” and “methodical,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. Scott called it “a disciplined, impassioned effort to bring clarity to a volatile moment, to dispense with the sentimentality and revisionism that too often cloud movies about the ’60s and about the politics of race.”
Sunday
SHARK WEEK all day on Discovery. This year’s edition of Discovery’s long-running (and perhaps inexplicable) multiday shark-themed spectacular kicks off on Sunday and runs through the following weekend. Sunday’s programming includes specials that bring sharks into proximity with the comedian Tiffany Haddish (“Tiffany Haddish Does Shark Week,” which airs at 9 p.m.) and cast members from the TV show “Jackass,” including its star Johnny Knoxville (“Jackass Does Shark Week,” at 10 p.m.).
