Meet eccentric New York personalities through the wandering HBO series “High Maintenance.” And catch the teenage comedy “Mean Girls” before it leaves Netflix in January.
What’s on TV
HIGH MAINTENANCE 10 p.m. on HBO; also on HBO streaming platforms. ’ Tis the season to recap before next year’s premieres. Come Jan. 19, this mellow anthology by the husband-and-wife duo Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair returns for a second run. (It began as a web series before moving to HBO last year.) Mr. Sinclair plays The Guy, an unkempt pot dealer whose deliveries around New York City lead him into the lives of the strangest of characters, sometimes more than he’d like. Despite the comedy’s move to television, James Poniewozik wrote in his review, “this is the same wry, peripatetic series at heart, a vision of urban life as a web of stories connected by wisps of smoke.”
THE NINETIES 8 p.m. on CNN. The advent of Internet Explorer. The rise and fall of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. The cultural phenomenon that was “Friends.” For those who would rather step back in time than welcome the new year, this seven-part series by CNN and HBO dissects the trends, politics and pop culture that defined the ’90s, beginning with a look at titles that dominated the small screen.
THE GRAHAM NORTON SHOW 10 p.m. on BBC America. “The Last Jedi” cast members Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Mark Hamill and Gwendoline Christie join Graham Norton on his laid-back talk show. The British pop singer Sam Smith performs.
What’s Streaming
MEAN GIRLS (2004) on iTunes, Amazon and Netflix. This cult classic immediately made waves upon its release, so much so that Mariah Carey has repeatedly expressed her obsession with the film and Barack Obama alluded to it in a Twitter joke. Written by Tina Fey (who also stars as a frustrated teacher) and based in part on the self-help book, “Queen Bees and Wannabes,” the comedy follows a homeschooled teenager (Lindsay Lohan) who moves to the heart of American suburbia from Africa. Perplexed by the mind games and unspoken rules of high school, she mingles with two opposing cliques and, under a mischievous plot, joins the “Plastics” — a group of narcissistic, beauty-obsessed queens led by the most wicked girl in school (Rachel McAdams). More than a decade after the movie hit the big screen, its impact has yet to fade: A “Mean Girls” musical is headed to Broadway next spring.
THE TRIP TO ITALY (2014) on iTunes, Amazon and Mubi. This improvisational sequel to Michael Winterbottom’s “The Trip” sees the stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon cruising through Italy’s scenic landscape on an all-expenses-paid culinary trip for The Observer of London. Playing slightly fictionalized versions of themselves, the comics take a little Romantic poets’ tour and riff off each other’s impressions. (Mr. Brydon impersonates Michael Caine to a T.) “Like its predecessor,” Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times, “‘The Trip to Italy’ flirts with seriousness yet invariably, perhaps rightly, it always goes for the joke, the pun, the fun and the sun.”
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