BritBox ‘Confessions,’ ‘Mandalorian’ to the Mines of Mandalor, Teacher Appreciation

A powerful BritBox limited series tells the story of a former slave in 1820s London on trial for the murder of her employers. The Mandalorian heads to its helmeted hero’s home planet. It’s Teacher Appreciation Week—but only up to a point—on Abbott Elementary. Four farmers seek a love connection in Fox’s Farmer Wants a Wife dating show.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton

Powerfully disturbing and deeply erotic, this four-part adaptation (all episodes available for binge-watching) of Sara Collins’ novel stars an impressive Karla-Simone Spence as Frannie, a former slave standing trial for the double murder of her London employers. The series slowly reveals her upbringing as a slave in Jamaica, where Frannie was educated as part of a series of race-based experiments, then given into service as an adult to the London home of a cruel scientist (Stephen Campbell Moore) and his capricious French wife (Sophie Cookson), with whom she falls in love. Accused of their murders, defiant Frannie refuses to cower or lose her sense of self under the jury’s suspicious gaze. “They looked at me and saw only anger. God forbid they saw the truth.” They may not have been able to see her for who she was then, but that’s not the case now.

Disney+

The Mandalorian

With Grogu “Baby Yoda” and a timid R5 droid as company, our favorite Mando, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), heads to his desolate ancestral planet of Mandalore for a chance at redemption in the underground mines. Perils await. Can Bo-Katan (Katee Sackhoff) even be bothered to come to his rescue?

ABC

Abbott Elementary

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, and while the staff looks askance at the annual event as a stunt (with the school district giving precious little reward), the teachers perk up when principal Ava (Janelle James) scores courtside seats to a 76ers game. The hitch: There’s only two tickets, which means there will be serious (make that hilarious) shade thrown in the teachers’ lounge as they bicker over who gets to go. Off campus, Janine (Quinta Brunson) invites her friends to a game night at home with her visiting sister, Ayesha (The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri), but family tensions means it’s not all fun and games.

Michael Becker/FOX

Farmer Wants a Wife

It’s Bachelor times four, with rural farmland subbing for the usual mansion, as four ranchers seek romance with a cattle car of hopeful singles (eight for each farmer) in a dating show that has aired in 32 countries—The CW presented an earlier version in 2008—with 180 marriages and 410 children resulting. Jennifer Nettles hosts the new U.S. series, and those with a TV-dating fetish can see how Hunter (Georgia), Ryan (North Carolina), Landon (Oklahoma) and Allen (Tennessee) fare in their search for a soulmate who’s as willing to bale hay as roll in it.

Alan Markfield/CBS

True Lies

Now a secret agent-in-training, Helen (Ginger Gonzaga) goes on her first official Omega Sector mission with husband Harry (Steve Howey) in the action comedy’s second episode, underscoring the complications that ensue when spouses work together—especially when one kept his job a secret from the other for 17 years. When they arrive in Madrid to avert a bioweapon threat, Harry worries what will happen should Helen run across his seductive asset, but it turns out she’s got a handsome admirer of her own.

INSIDE WEDNESDAY TV:

• Last Call (7 pm/ET, CNBC): Brian Sullivan hosts a new live hourlong recap of the day’s top business news.
• Mavericks vs. Pelicans (7:30 pm/ET, ESPN): For the second year, the sports network marks International Women’s Day with an all-woman-led broadcast of a major NBA game. Beth Mowins and Doris Burke provide commentary, with Cassidy Hubbarth reporting and women personnel providing production assistance. Women will also be front and center on the NBA Today and NBA Countdown shows.
• Kung Fu (9/8c, The CW): The third season ends with Nicky (Olivia Liang) racing to stop Xiao from executing her master plan.
• Homicide Hunter: The Man with No Face (9/8c, ID): In a two-hour special, Lt. Joe Kenda revisits a once-cold case from 1988, the rape-murder of Colorado Springs mother Mary Lynn Vialpando, which went unsolved until a DNA database search 30 years later matched evidence Kenda’s team had collected and stored all those years ago.
• A Million Little Things (10/9c, ABC): Maggie (Allison Miller) and Gary (James Roday Rodriguez) are considering a home birth when the blessed day arrives. What will his mastiff Colin think?
• MH370: The Plane That Disappeared (streaming on Netflix): A three-part docuseries investigates theories surrounding the still-unexplained fate of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, which suddenly vanished midflight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in 2014 with 239 passengers and crew unaccounted for.
• Wu-Tang: An American Saga (streaming on Hulu): An episode filmed in the style of 1990s gangster cinema depicts Raekwon (Shameik Moore) seeking inspiration for his first solo album, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…

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