The four-part “Cowboy Cartel,” streaming on Apple TV+ offers a gripping story, larger-than-life personalities and an interesting vantage point on the “Border Crisis” a much-covered if little-understood issue.
Raised in rural West Tennessee, Scott Lawson worshiped his police-officer father. So, when Lawson graduated from the FBI academy in 2009, he wanted to serve in the South, close to his family and comfort zone. Instead, he was sent to Laredo, a Texas city on the border with Mexico, where narcotics enter the American market.
“Cartel” offers a crash course in the escalating violence of Mexican drug gangs. When Lawson arrived at the border, he quickly learned that Los Zetas had risen to the top of a bloody heap. Former members of Mexico’s special forces, they were conscripted by drug cartels to work security. With their military training (much of it in the United States) and heavy weaponry, they soon became a cartel of their own, dispatching rivals with homicidal sadism.
As a rookie officer with a Tennessee twang, gentle demeanor and shaky command of Spanish, Lawson seemed like the least likely agent to take on Mexico’s most violent gangsters. Until he happened upon a tip that the cartel’s bosses, the two psychopathic Trevino brothers, were engaging in money laundering by buying, selling and racing horses in the United States’ Quarter horse market.
Over four episodes, Lawson and virtually every agent working with him explain their infiltration of a racket rather far from the violent drug trade, but no less dangerous.
On the plus side, “Cartel” is a slow immersion into a fascinating demimonde that puts the emphasis on colorful personalities and painstaking legwork. It depicts the efforts of FBI agents worlds removed from the stylized violence and fear-mongering of shows like CBS’s “FBI.”
On the negative side, it’s a very slow burn. “Cartel” falls into the pace of too many true-crime docuseries and podcasts, belaboring every scene and development, turning a very good 90-minute film into a four-episode ordeal.
— Speaking of elaboration, Netflix streams “Rebel Moon: Part One: Director’s Cut.” Not to be confused with the director’s cut of “Part Two,” also streaming beginning today.
Netflix also streams the full-length animated “SpongeBob” feature “Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie.” One would assume that a cartoon long associated with Viacom’s Nickelodeon would stream on Paramount+. But when it comes to the streaming business, it’s safer not to make assumptions.
Netflix also streams “Modern Masters: S.S. Rajamouli,” a film director whose 2022 epic “RRR” was an international hit, one of the most expensive and highest-grossing films in Indian history. “RRR” can be streamed on Netflix.
— After a benevolent scientist (Scott Bakula) dedicates his life’s work to a youth serum, his unscrupulous son (Stephen Dorff) sets out to exploit it for malicious ends in the 2023 shocker “Divinity,” streaming on Shudder.
— TCM unspools a daylong tribute to actress and director Ida Lupino. Best known for her roles in noir films like “They Drive by Night” (10 p.m., TV-PG), she directed many films at a time when few women worked behind the camera. A feminist filmmaker decades before her time, she made films about unwed mothers, rape victims and unconventional women. She also directed popular comedies like “The Trouble With Angels” (1966) and more than 100 television episodes, everything from “The Twilight Zone” to “Gilligan’s Island.”
TONIGHT’S OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
— “Primetime in Paris: The Olympics” (7:30 p.m., NBC) presents swimming, track and field and diving.
— A fetching detective with a four-pawed partner named Zeus must work with her ex-boyfriend in the 2024 romance “Jazz Ramsey: A K-9 Mystery” (9 p.m., Hallmark, TV-PG).
— A woman’s accusations against an officer reverberate on “Blue Bloods” (10 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14).
CULT CHOICE
Tycoons (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) play a cynical game with a Wall Street broker (Dan Aykroyd) and a street hustler (Eddie Murphy) in the 1983 comedy “Trading Places” (8:15 p.m., IFC).
SERIES NOTES
RuPaul hosts “Lingo” (8 p.m., CBS, TV-PG) … “WWE Friday Night SmackDown” (8 p.m., Fox, TV-PG) … “Jeopardy! Masters” (8 p.m., ABC, r, TV-PG) … Yakuza assassins flood the streets on “S.W.A.T.” (9 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14) … “20/20” (9 p.m., ABC).
LATE NIGHT
Keanu Reeves and Charles Wesley Godwin sit down on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” (11:35 p.m., CBS, r) … “The Tonight Show” and “Late Night With Seth Meyers” are preempted for Olympic coverage … Kathryn Hahn, Seth Rogen, Joe Locke and Cigarettes After Sex appear on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” (11:35 p.m., ABC, r) … Taylor Tomlinson hosts Marcella Arguello, Thomas Lennon and Sarah Tiana on “After Midnight” (12:35 a.m., CBS, r).
