What to Watch Thursday, September 17: The Traitors: New Blood, Monster & Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Thursday has plenty to choose from without requiring a novel to explain it. The Traitors: New Blood opens the castle to everyday Americans on NBC, Netflix tackles one of America's most infamous murder cases with Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds reaches its penultimate Season 4 episode with La'An at the center of the story.

Netflix also brings back Stranger Things: Tales From '85, CBS has another Big Brother eviction, The Voice celebrates its upcoming 30th season, and Prime Video has Thursday Night Football. Basically, Thursday has officially entered fall-TV mode.

TV Cave Top Pick: The Traitors: New Blood

The Traitors: New Blood premieres tonight at 8 PM ET on NBC with a special two-hour launch. Alan Cumming is back at the castle, but there's a major change: instead of reality-TV veterans and celebrities, 22 everyday Americans are playing the game this time. The premiere streams Friday on Peacock.

That's what makes New Blood worth watching even if you already know The Traitors formula inside and out. Nobody enters with an established reality-TV reputation or years of experience making alliances in front of cameras. We get to figure these people out right along with everyone in the castle, while Alan Cumming continues dressing like every breakfast might end with someone's execution.

Thursday, September 17 TV Schedule

Time (ET)	Show	Network/Streaming	Tonight
Streaming	Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story	Netflix	Season 4 premiere; 8 episodes
Streaming	Stranger Things: Tales From '85	Netflix	Season 2 premiere
Streaming	Star Trek: Strange New Worlds	Paramount+	S4E9, “Once La'An a Time”
Streaming	The Howard Stern Show	HBO Max	Streaming series premiere
Streaming	Cooper and Fry	BritBox	New episode
Streaming	The Fixers	Netflix	Series premiere
Streaming	Not a Stranger	Netflix	Series premiere
Streaming	Plastic Beauty	Netflix	Series premiere
7:00 PM	Building Buffalo	NFL Network	Two-part documentary premiere
8:00 PM	The Traitors: New Blood	NBC	Two-hour series premiere
8:00 PM	Big Brother	CBS	New Season 28 episode
8:00 PM	The Real Housewives of Orange County	Bravo	New Season 20 episode
8:15 PM	Detroit Lions at Buffalo Bills	Prime Video	Thursday Night Football
9:00 PM	A Killer Story	HBO	Episode 2
9:00 PM	TNA iMPACT!	AMC	New episode
10:00 PM	The Voice 30th Season Celebration	NBC	Anniversary special

Monster Takes On Lizzie Borden

Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story arrives on Netflix today with all eight episodes available. Ella Beatty plays Borden, who was accused and later acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother in Massachusetts in 1892, with Charlie Hunnam and Rebecca Hall playing Andrew and Abby Borden.

It's familiar true-crime territory with a very different central figure for Monster. The Borden case has survived more than a century of books, movies, television adaptations and that rhyme everyone somehow knows, so the question isn't whether audiences recognize Lizzie. It's what Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan's version does with a story that has already become American folklore.

Strange New Worlds Puts La'An Center Stage

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds reaches Season 4, Episode 9 today with “Once La'An a Time.” Paramount+ describes the 48-minute episode as a return to the world of the Elysian Kingdom, except this time the Enterprise crew has encountered an actual fantasy planet.

Christina Chong's La'An is at the center of the adventure as the season heads toward next week's finale. Strange New Worlds has never met a genre it wasn't willing to try, and apparently four seasons in, “send La'An into an actual fantasy world” is where we've arrived. We're not complaining.

Stranger Things Heads Back to 1985

Netflix also has Season 2 of Stranger Things: Tales From '85, with all eight animated episodes arriving today. The Hawkins gang is approaching Valentine's Day when ghostly sightings and another collection of very strange creatures begin causing problems around town.

At some point, someone really should investigate why anybody still lives in Hawkins. Until then, Tales From '85 gives Netflix another way to keep the Stranger Things universe moving.

Between The Traitors: New Blood, Lizzie Borden, La'An's fantasy adventure, Stranger Things, Big Brother and Thursday Night Football, there's more than enough happening tonight. Pick your lane, castle betrayal, murder, space fantasy, reality-TV eviction or football and Thursday has you covered.