HIGHLIGHTS this week
Friday
8 p.m. on KAET Movie: The Oratorio
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese looks back at a seismic musical moment in 1826 that marked the beginning of a cultural awakening in America. The occasion? A one-night-only performance in St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, Scorsese’s home church in the Little Italy section of New York. The presentation marked the arrival of Italian opera in the New World. This documentary presents the backstory to that event, an incredible chronicle r. that involves Mozart’s most celebrated librettist, opera’s first acknowledged diva and a freed slave turned hairdresser.
8 p.m. on HALL Movie: Gingerbread Miracle
Ever since she experienced a relatively minor setback in her career fortunes, freelance attorney Maya (Merritt Patterson, “The Royals”) has been living in an apartment above her parents’ garage and using the Casillas Panaderia — a Mexican bakery — as her unofficial office space. The business has held a soft spot in her heart since her teenage years, when she worked there with her high school crush, Alex Casillas.
Saturday
8 p.m. on LIFE Movie: Highway to Heaven
Actress and singer Jill Scott is both an executive producer and star on this new modern reboot of the classic TV drama that ran on NBC for five seasons in the late ’80s. Scott takes the gender-switched lead — a character originated by Michael Landon — as Angela, a heavenly emissary dispatched to help mortals in crisis. Barry Watson (“7th Heaven”) also stars as Bruce, a junior high school principal to whom Angela reveals her true identity. The drama will air as a series of event TV movies.
Sunday
9 p.m. on TVL PARMT CMT Yellowstone
Season 3 left multiple fates unresolved when it ended in August 2020. Leading character John Dutton (Kevin Costner) was shot, while Kayce (Luke Grimes), the youngest Dutton son, also was targeted by a gunman. Elsewhere, daughter Beth’s (Kelly Reilly) office was blown up by a mail bomb, with Beth inside at the time. The status of those lives presumably will be clarified in tonight’s two-hour premiere, which sees the obviously coordinated attacks on the Dutton clan continuing, as everyone tries to figure out who is responsible.
11 p.m. on SHOW American Rust
This family drama starring Jeff Daniels as the ethically compromised police chief of a Pennsylvania Rust Belt town wraps up Season 1 with a finale called “Denmark,” in which Del Harris (Daniels) finally finds the anonymous eyewitness he has been seeking. Elsewhere, Billy Poe (Alex Neustaedter) is sent back into the general prison population to face the consequences of his actions. The district attorney may be forced to drop the murder case, and Lee English (Julia Mayorga) decides not to return to New York. Maura Tierney also stars.
Monday
9 p.m. on CBS NCIS: Hawai’i
After a Navy petty officer is murdered, Tennant (Vanessa Lachey) and her team investigate the killing while also providing protection to a friend and colleague of the victim in the new episode “Rescuers.” Moses Goods, Mark Gessner, Ashleigh Lathrop and Ashton Holmes guest star; Alex Tarrant, Noah Mills, Yasmine Al-Bustami and Jason Antoon also star.
11 p.m. on KAET Independent Lens
A new episode called “Ferguson Rises” examines the turbulent aftermath and extended protests in this suburb of St. Louis, Mo., following the 2014 fatal shooting of Black teenager Michael Brown Jr. by a white police officer. The episode incorporates a variety of interview perspectives from both Black and white Ferguson residents to police officers, business owners and protestors. Those comments are interwoven with a heartbreaking portrait of a grieving father struggling to find purpose in his pain.
Tuesday
9 p.m. on SHOW Movie: Queen Bees
A stellar ensemble cast buoys Michael Lembeck’s somewhat uneven 2021 romantic comedy, with Ellen Burstyn starring as Helen Wilson, a fiercely independent widow who resists her daughter’s (Elizabeth Mitchell) pleas for her to move into a nursing home, until a fire destroys Helen’s kitchen after she locks herself out of her home. Helen predictably has trouble fitting in at the Pine Grove facility, but a charming senior (James Caan) changes her attitude. Ann-Margret, Jane Curtin, Christopher Lloyd, Loretta Devine and French Stewart also star.
11:03 p.m. on HIST Great Escapes With Morgan Freeman
Not, as the title may suggest, a breezy travel series, this engrossing new docuseries finds host Morgan Freeman walking viewers through a step-by-step account of some of the most fascinating prison breaks in history. The series premiere, “Alcatraz,” looks back at a 1962 attempt to break out of what at the time was considered the most technologically secure prison in America. Brothers Philip and John Anglin masterminded the scheme, while enlisting the help of other inmates.
Wednesday
7 p.m. on ABC The 55th Annual CMA Awards
From Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn., two-time CMA entertainer of the year Luke Bryan hosts this threehour special covering annual ceremonies honoring outstanding achievements in the country music industry between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021. Among this year’s field of nominees, Eric Church and Chris Stapleton sit at the top of the heap, with five nominations apiece. Both are up for Entertainer of the Year, a category in which they’ll compete with Luke Combs, Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood.
Thursday
8:01 p.m. on CBS Ghosts
After Sam (Rose McIver) lands a gig writing an article that looks back to the time Flower (Sheila Carrasco) and her friends from the commune held up a bank, the little hippie ghost begs Sam to turn down the assignment, explaining that she is mortified about a part of the story she never has revealed, in the new episode “Flower’s Article.” Utkarsh Ambudkar, Brandon Scott Jones, Rebecca Wisocky and Richie Moriarty also star.