Your weekly guide to TV’s best and worst one-hour shows
Beginnings and endings are evenly matched in the coming week:
“Inside Men” (Wednesday, 10 p.m., BBC America)
Mama is convinced that the BBC America is actively waging a war against Great Britain’s tourism industry. After sitting through the gruesome police dramas like “Luther” and “Whitechapel,” drearily terrifying sci-fi shows like “Bedlam” and “The Fades” and sad comedies like “Twenty Twelve,” you’d believe the last pleasant day when the sun shined in England was sometime around the “Downton Abbey” era. The finale of this heist thriller is no different, even though the four-episode series featured plenty of unpredictable twists in the dissection of a very thoughtful robbery. But all horrifyingly criminal schemes must come to an end, and so the boys must bid adieu to their old lives in the finale as their plan unravels.
“Eureka” (Monday, 9 p.m., Syfy)
Laden with references to the real-life end of this series, the genius town ends the way it lived: not quite clever enough to be this self-referential. But if you stuck with the quirky show for all six years, you’ll be rewarded with reuniting with former characters, witnessing the dismantling of the sheriff’s SUV and enduring endless inside jokes about the final chapter as the Department of Defense shuts down the town.
“Political Animals” (Sunday, 10 p.m., USA)
The dialogue in this miniseries physically hurts Mama’s ears, which is a shame considering the wealth of talent in this Clinton-esque story. If you listen only to Ellen Burstyn, who plays Sigourney Weaver’s mouthy mom, you might believe this could be a good series, but then poor Ciarán Hinds speaks and, like Mama, you’ll wonder if viewers could have penned a less contrived plot.
“The Firm” (Saturday, 10 p.m., NBC)
According to NBC, the series finale is an episode titled Chapter 22. Honestly, Mama didn’t know they got past the prologue of this ill-conceived, implausible continuation of the Tom Cruise movie/John Grisham book. And so the conspiracy dies on a Saturday night in mid-summer.
“Leverage” (Sunday, 8 p.m., TNT)
Our team of con artists set up headquarters in Portland, Ore., this year, which seems to be the trendy new setting for TV, and “The Princess Bride” star Cary Elwes shows up as the predictably wealthy, soulless exec. Entering its fifth season, the series suffers from continually having to top its last caper — this episode requires the cast to steal Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose. They’ll have to snag the Statue of Liberty if the show lasts much longer.