Time after Time, on ABC
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This 2017 series is based on the 1979 novel of the same name (which I haven't read). The book was adapted into a film, also in 1979, which I think I might have seen at some point, but I don't really remember. (I later watched it on DVD, a year after this series aired.)
Anyway, the show begins in 1893 London, with Jack the Ripper claiming his latest victim. We then see H.G. Wells entertaining some friends at his home, when his final guest arrives: Dr. John Stevenson, whom viewers immediately recognize as the Ripper, though of course neither Wells nor any of his other guests have any idea that the doctor is the famous (yet anonymous) murderer. At this point, Wells hasn't published any novels, though he's been working on his first, "The Time Machine," for awhile now. He reveals to his guests that he actually built a time machine, in order to research his book. (The general idea of wanting to test a fantastic idea in reality before writing about it rather reminded me of the movie Condorman. Though of course, the specific idea of H.G. Wells actually being a time traveler has been done in many shows and movies before this one.... Though probably all the ones I'm aware of came after 1979, so I'm not in a position to consider the novel unoriginal, even if the TV series is.) Wells hasn't actually tested his time machine yet, but he's nearly ready to. Then, some police from Scotland Yard show up at his house, doing a door-to-door search, since the Ripper's latest victim had just been found nearby. And they find the murder weapon in Stevenson's medical bag. The doctor had been left alone in the basement with the time machine, but when the police and Wells go down there, he's gone. As is the time machine.
Later, when Wells is alone in the basement, staring in shock at the empty space where his machine should be, it suddenly reappears. Because it was designed to always return to the time from which it had started, unless one has a key to countermand that. And Wells still has the key. He takes the machine into the future (2017) to find Stevenson and bring him back to 1893, to answer for his crimes. However, the machine appears not in London, but in New York City. It was on loan to a museum as part of an exhibit about H.G. Wells, though of course no one in the present believed it was a real time machine. So when Wells steps out of it, in Victorian attire, he's assumed to be... I guess, trying to generate publicity for, like, a play, or something. He's detained by assistant curator Jane Walker, who doesn't believe he's the real H.G. Wells, of course, but she decides not to have him arrested, because she doesn't want to help him get whatever publicity she thought he wanted. Meanwhile, Wells just wants to find Stevenson. And Stevenson wants to obtain the key from Wells.
Well, a lot happens in the two-hour pilot (it's listed as two one-hour episodes that aired back to back, but it really seemed to me more like a single pilot movie). One thing I want to say is that it doesn't take either time traveler long to start dressing in modern clothes, which I thought was a nice, and somewhat amusing, change of pace from Sleepy Hollow. Anyway... Stevenson also doesn't take long to start killing in the modern era. And Wells eventually manages to convince Jane that he really is H.G. Wells, and the two of them try to stop the Ripper. Meanwhile, Wells also meets Vanessa Anders, the woman who runs the museum where Jane works. And she claims to be his great great granddaughter. She says she'd met him years ago, though that meeting is still in the future, in Wells's personal timeline. She has some people working for her who know the truth about Wells and Stevenson, and can provide some help to Wells. But she has a boyfriend named Griffin Monroe, who doesn't know the truth. (She tells him Wells is a descendant of H.G. Wells.) And Griffin is running for the Senate. Also, at the end of the first night's episode(s), we see a mysterious man who seems to be stalking Wells and Stevenson.
In the third episode, Stevenson meets a neurologist named Brooke, whom he ends up sleeping with, then plans to kill. But instead, she sedates him and takes him to her private lab. He eventually escapes, but we'll see more of Brooke, and learn about a connection she has to another character. And... well, five episodes aired before ABC cancelled the show due to low ratings. We did occasionally get to see more time traveling. And there was a sort of conspiracy, or whatever, that was being revealed. I don't want to say anything specific about that. I will say I found the show reasonably entertaining, and I did look forward both to seeing even more time traveling and to learning all the secrets and plans and whatnot. I think it could have been pretty interesting in the long run, so I'm a bit disappointed we don't get to see how everything was going to ultimately play out. But I'm not too disappointed, because in the short run, it wasn't always as immediately interesting as it could have been. And I guess that's all there is to say.