What’s on TV Saturday: ‘The Favourite’ and ‘Derry Girls’

What’s on TV

THE FAVOURITE (2018) 8 p.m. on HBO; stream on HBO platforms. Olivia Colman stars as Queen Anne in Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite,” which is making its TV debut tonight. Colman, who won an Academy Award for her performance, portrays Queen Anne, the last monarch of the House of Stuart, as she faces ill health and waning political credibility. But the film’s primary focus is the love triangle between Anne; Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz), the Duchess of Marlborough and a close adviser to the queen; and Sarah’s rival, Abigail Hill (Emma Stone), a chambermaid turned close confidant. A.O. Scott, who chose the film as a Critic’s Pick, wrote in his New York Times review: “Weisz and Stone are both brilliantly witty and nimble, but Colman’s performance is nothing short of sublime. She commits absolutely to Anne’s ridiculousness, and also to the contradictory facets of her humanity.”

BURT REYNOLDS BLOCK Starts at 6 a.m. and goes all day on HDNet Movies. Feeling nostalgic? Settle in for “Happy Burt Day,” an all-day Burt Reynold marathon. The day begins with the 1966 Spaghetti Western “Navajo Joe.” Next up is “Fuzz” (1972), then “Gator” (1976) and “Malone” (1987). Reynold’s 1973 hit “White Lightning,” where he plays an ex-con who agrees to help federal agents hunt down a criminal in exchange for his release, starts at 1:40 p.m. After that, it’s “Semi-Tough” (1977) and “The End” (1978), and the day ends with “Striptease” (1996).

What’s Streaming

DERRY GIRLS Stream on Netflix. This series follows a group of five friends in 1990s Northern Ireland at the height of the ethnonationalist conflict known as The Troubles. But for the crew of four girls (Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Louisa Harland, Nicola Coughlan and Jamie-Lee O’Donnel) and one boy (Dylan Llewellyn), that violence is very much in the periphery — they’re more concerned with breaking rules and scheming to achieve some sense of freedom from their strict Catholic parents and the disciplinarian nuns at their school. The second season has much the same tone as the first; expect nods to Bill Clinton’s visit to Ireland and a weekend camping trip to heal Catholic-Protestant relationships among youths.

FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL Stream on Hulu. The four-part mini-series created by Mindy Kaling and Matt Warburton isn’t quite like the classic 1994 film of the same name. The only tangible connection, The Times’s Margaret Lyons points out in her review, is that they both take place in London. The show, though, is technically a romantic comedy and begins with Maya (Nathalie Emmanuel) leaving her messy work and personal life in the States behind to attend her college roommate’s wedding in London. While across the pond, she reconnects with old friends (Rebecca Rittenhouse, John Reynolds and Zoe Boyle) and grapples with love, loss and scandal.

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