30 for 30 not just for sports fans

As PBS Frontline’s wrenching NFL concussion documentary League of Denial showed last month, pro sports are no longer the TV equivalent of the toy department. League of Denial mirrored a real-world controversy, and had an instant and profound effect on what’s going on in the real world, well beyond the reaches of TV.

ESPN’s often enthralling documentary showcase 30 for 30, for example, is being expanded to include even more films this season, many of them made by noted filmmakers who are also sports fans.

Friday’s film in the series is deftly titled This is What They Want and profiles controversial, and thoroughly unlikeable, tennis star Jimmy Connors’ improbable run to the semifinals of the U.S. Open Tennis Championships at age 39, in 1991. It’s a wonderful film, crisp and fast and emotionally appealing. This is What They Want is a reminder that some of TV’s best documentaries today are being made in the sports arena. (4 p.m. and midnight, TSN)

The venerable documentary-program The Fifth Estate focuses on a harrowing tale of survival and the indomitable human spirit in The Last Great Escape, about two North Koreans who fled their country and lived to tell about it. One young woman crossed an icy river into China to save her baby’s life; the other, Shin Dong-hyuk, is believed to be the only person originally born in a North Korean internment camp to have escaped, and survive. Gillian Findlay hosts. (9 p.m., CBC)

Raising Hope makes up for its late-season start with a so-called “supersized” episode — code for two unrelated half-hour episodes jammed together — in which Howdy’s grocery store gets a new owner, played by guest star Molly Shannon. (9 p.m., Fox, City)

Dracula is one of the few Friday-night network dramas to feature a fresh episode this week — owing to this being the first Friday after U.S. Thanksgiving. (10 p.m., NBC, Global)