TV TOP PICKS

7 p.m. on SHOW

The Good Lord Bird

Ethan Hawke is executive producer and star of this new limited-series adaptation of James McBride’s novel about abolitionist John Brown. The story is told from the perspective of “Onion” (Joshua Caleb Johnson), a fictional slave character who becomes a part of Brown’s ragtag family of abolitionist soldiers during Bleeding Kansas, when that state was a battleground between pro- and anti-slavery forces. Ultimately, Onion takes part in Brown’s 1859 raid on the Army depot at Harper’s Ferry, Va. Daveed Diggs and Wyatt Russell also are featured.

8 p.m. on SHOW

The Comedy Store

Showtime canceled its underrated dramedy I’m Dying Up Here after two seasons, but the venue that inspired that series — the Comedy Store in Los Angeles — is the star of this new four-part documentary series from actor-director Mike Binder, a former stand-up comic himself. The limited series chronicles the nearly 50-year history of this storied club, where such stars as Richard Pryor, Jay Leno, Sam Kinison and David Letterman got their starts. The film includes vintage performance footage and interviews with Judd Apatow and Martin Lawrence, among others.

8 p.m. on AMC

The Walking Dead:

World Beyond

This new companion series further expands the fictional world of The Walking Dead with a new cast and stories that revolve primarily around the first generation to grow up in the civilization that has survived the zombie apocalypse. As the story opens, two sisters and a couple of their friends decide to leave a comfortable and relatively safe space to embark on an important quest that will challenge them like nothing they’ve ever known. Annet Mahendru, Aliyah Royale, pictured, and Joe Holt star.

9 p.m. on PBS

Cobra

This new limited series, a political thriller, stars Robert Carlyle (Once Upon a Time) as Conservative British Prime Minister Robert Sutherland, who confronts a major crisis as the story opens: A looming solar storm threatens to have a devastating effect on power grids in the United Kingdom. The magnitude of this threat forces members of Sutherland’s government to set aside personal differences and pull together the emergency committee that gives this series its title. Victoria Hamilton, David Haig, Lucy Cohu and Marsha Thomason also star.