Bob Odenkirk’s star rose quickly in the 1990s from writer and occasional performer on SNL to cast member on the criminally underappreciated at the time The Ben Stiller Show to co-creator of the hipster icon sketch show Mr. Show with Bob & David. Then he practically disappeared for almost two decades. Then came Breaking Bad, where his role as Saul Goodman would lead to his own culturally iconic six season show Better Call Saul. Now he’s everywhere. His latest project in his prestige TV moment starts today.

BRAD’S PICK:
Lucky Hank [AMC, 9p]
Lucky Hank is definitely an ironic name. Bob Odenkirk’s professor character bearing that name gets his nose slashed by a feminist poet, suspects his wife is having an affair with his dean, and discovers his secretary is a better writer than he is. Also he has to deal with his father. And this is all on the course of a week. That’s a lot for the Chairman of the English Department at West Central Pennsylvania University to deal with.. but it does make for some awkward laughs. And are you really gonna not even start to watch a show with Odenkirk. C’mon, we know you better than that.

JASON’S PICK:
Marie Antoinette [PBS, 10p]
The writer of the Oscar nominated The Favorite stays in the period zone, but crosses the channel to France. The reviews are decidedly mixed, but if you enjoy this brand of historical drama, you’ll enjoy an hour of the pageantry for the night. And the settings, outfits, and cinematography will be undoubtedly spectacular. Relatively unknown outside her native France, Emilia Schule, takes on the title role. 

BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE:

• PBS is busy tonight as one of its tentpoles returns. Call the Midwife enters its astounding 12th season tonight with the introduction of a new character, Sister Veronica. She’s played by that actress Rebecca Gethens; you’ve seen her once or twice… in that thing or something else. Then there’s the third season return of Sandition which has lavish sets, betrayals, melodramatic flourishes… you know, all that sort of thing.
• Animation dominates Fox and there’s really two shows on tonight that we love to talk about. Both of them were in our 2022 year-end Top 20. The Great North will have to follow up its classic episode where Beef was involved in a budding romance with a woman voiced by Megan Mullaly–famously Beef voicer Ron Swanson’s real life wife and longtime sweetheart. This week Beef’s son Wolf and daughter-in-law Honeybee will have their future parenting goals tested when a school choir gets stuck in their house and becomes their charges. And on Bob’s Burgers, the pranking stakes are high on April 1 (just go with it!) as Mr. Fischoeder will kick Bob and the rest of the Belchers out if Bob can’t prank him and prank him good. Mr. Fischoeder is one strange chap. And these shows have some strange character names.
• Hallmark mysteries are what they are, but The Cases of Mystery Lane sounds particularly charming, if there seems to be a bit of a tonal disconnect between the gritty crimes and the quirky relationship between its leads played by Aimee Garcia and Paul Campbell. Well, it also titularly sounds like a budget kids book collecting the sleuthing stories of an off-brand Encyclopedia Jones.