Your weekly guide to TV’s best and worst one-hour shows
If it’s October, the Halloween shows must be here. Nightmare-inducers “The Walking Dead” and “American Horror Story” rise from their graves later this month, but TV brings on the scare this week — or at least some good costumes — to get you in the mood:
“Bedlam” (Saturday, 9 p.m., BBC America)
If you liked the first season of this haunted Melrose Place, Mama hopes you didn’t get too attached to the cast or hope for any resolution of the multiple cliffhangers. Because despite no fewer than three main cast members being left in peril as Season 1 closed, the sophomore year dumps all those characters — and their stories — in favor of a new cast of London apartment dwellers for the former asylum’s ghosts to torture. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that sweet Molly is among those MIA (she was last seen riding off in a suspicious white van), since portrayer Ashley Madekwe snagged a regular gig on “Revenge” as conniving social climber Ashley Davenport. But working in this show’s favor is its length — each season is six episodes — which compresses all the horror into digestible form.
“Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” (Tuesday, 9 p.m., The CW)
Here’s a little treat for all of you who hadn’t discovered the Interwebs by 2008: the fantastic Joss Whedon musical he created to curb his boredom during the writer’s strike. It’s not a Halloween show per se, but stars Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion, who don adorably dorky costumes as Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer, respectively.
“666 Park Avenue” (Sunday, 10 p.m., ABC)
We’re only an episode into the other haunted apartment building series, so Mama is willing to give it a little longer to figure out that this show would be much scarier if it didn’t graphically reveal all of the residents’ deaths and maimings. Devilish Terry O’Quinn and Vanessa Williams are more than capable of portraying wicked without sucking a guy into a wall. The series’ obvious progenitor, “Rosemary’s Baby,” was terrifying because you never quite knew what was going on, which was also why O’Quinn’s masterpiece, “Lost,” was intriguing. Leave out the blood and guts and focus on the understated evil, and Mama will sign on for a full-year lease.
“Once Upon a Time” (Sunday, 8 p.m., ABC)
The only person scarier than Regina the Evil Queen/Mayor (Lana Parrilla) is back: her mom, Cora (Barbara Hershey). The mother from hell returns in a flashback — which really seems a bit superfluous now that the storybook characters remember who they are — as we see pre-evil Regina on her wedding day to King Leopold (Richard Schiff).