American Masters - Season 39

Season 39

Episodes

The Disappearance of Miss Scott
Learn about jazz virtuoso and screen superstar Hazel Scott, the first Black American to have their own television show. An early civil rights pioneer, she faced down the Red Scare at the risk of losing her career and was a champion for equality. The film features interviews with Mickey Guyton, Tracie Thoms, Amanda Seales, and Sheryl Lee Ralph as the voice of Hazel Scott.

LIZA: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story
Take an intimate look into the life of Liza Minnelli, the iconic actress best known for her Oscar-winning performance in Cabaret. Following in the footsteps of her mother, the legendary Judy Garland, Minnelli used her boundless raw talent to overcome hardship and build her own legacy, with support from mentors like Kay Thompson, Fred Ebb, Charles Aznavour, Halston and Bob Fosse.

Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse
Explore the work of cartoonist Art Spiegelman and the impact of his Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus, about his parents' survival of the Holocaust. A defender of free speech, Spiegelman has spoken out as book bans spread across the country.

Janis Ian: Breaking Silence
Trace the rise of iconic singer-songwriter Janis Ian, a fearless voice in folk music and gay rights advocate whose groundbreaking songs include "Society's Child" (1966), which tackles interracial love and her searing anthem about bullying "At Seventeen" (1976). Despite backlash, Ian continues to use her music to challenge societal norms and speak her truth.

Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny
Discover the life and work of Hannah Arendt, one of the most influential political writers of the 20th century. She transformed her time as a political prisoner and refugee during World War II into daring insights about the human condition, the refugee crisis and totalitarianism. Her warnings about a crisis in American democracy during McCarthyism and Watergate continue to resonate today.

Marcella
Discover how celebrated cookbook writer Marcella Hazan shaped Italian cuisine in America. Arriving in New York having never cooked, challenged by a disabled right arm, she soon inspired millions of home cooks with the glories of Italian cuisine. Features interviews with Jacques Pépin, Danny Meyer, Lidia Bastianich, Hazan's widower and writing partner Victor Hazan, and their son Giuliano Hazan.

Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore
Take an intimate look at the life of actress Marlee Matlin as she shares her story in her native American Sign Language. At 21 years old, Matlin became the first Deaf actor to win an Academy Award, and she became an outspoken champion of Deaf rights. With four Emmy nominations and major roles in "The West Wing"and the Oscar-winning "CODA," the film explores Matlin's life as she reclaims her own story.

Starring Dick Van Dyke
Celebrate the life and career of legendary actor Dick Van Dyke on his 100th birthday. Known for films like "Bye Bye Birdie," "Mary Poppins," "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," TV show "Diagnosis Murder"and his classic CBS sitcom, Van Dyke has delighted audiences on screen and stage for eight decades. Featuring never-before-seen footage, photos and home movies that detail Van Dyke's extraordinary showbiz legacy.
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EastEnders
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The Yogurt Shop Murders
In 1991, four teenage girls were brutally murdered at a frozen yogurt shop in Austin, Texas. What happened that night forever shook the Austin community and continues to mystify the police and haunt the families left in the wake of unthinkable loss. Including interviews with the investigative teams, the victims' parents and siblings, and the two men who served time for the crime, the series explores law enforcement practices and raises complex questions about press coverage and the power of suggestion on memory. The series offers a unique window into the lasting effects of grief and the enduring impact of unrelenting crime coverage in mainstream media through poignant interviews with those closest to the crime and investigation.

The Gilded Age
The American Gilded Age was a period of immense economic change, of huge fortunes made and lost, and the rise of disparity between old money and new.
Against this backdrop of change, the story begins in 1882 — introducing young Marian Brook, the orphaned daughter of a Union general, who moves into the New York City home of her thoroughly old money aunts Agnes van Rhijn and Ada Brook. Accompanied by Peggy Scott, an accomplished African-American woman, Marian inadvertently becomes enmeshed in a social war between one of her aunts, a scion of the old money set, and her stupendously rich neighbors, a ruthless railroad tycoon and his ambitious wife, George and Bertha Russell.
In this exciting new world that is on the brink of the modern age, will Marian follow the established rules of society, or forge her own path?

Alien: Earth
When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet's greatest threat. As members of the crash recovery crew search for survivors among the wreckage of a mysterious crashed space vessel, they encounter mysterious predatory life forms more terrifying than they could have ever imagined. With this new threat unlocked, the search crew must fight for survival and what they choose to do with this discovery could change planet Earth as they know it.

The Crow Girl
The Crow Girl begins with the gruesome discovery of a teenage boy's body discarded in plain sight. Determined to find who is responsible, DCI Jeanette Kilburn joins forces with psychotherapist Sophia Craven to hunt the killer despite opposition from her superiors including confidant DI Lou Stanley.
The investigation takes them into a dangerous world of historic abuse and murder. Together they uncover a chain of shocking events involving the disappearance of children that have gone overlooked for decades, as well as evidence of police corruption. As the body count rises and the two women are dragged into the depths of the murders, an intimacy starts to form between them, and so begins a complex, twisted love story. All the while, the killer is inching ever closer to home.