SUNDAY’S BEST PICKS
2PM (AP) Puppy Bowl XVIII Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg return as hosts of this year’s event, picking up a new role as well: coaches! With Snoop coaching Team Fluff and Stewart repping last year’s champions Team Ruff, the pair will cheer on their puppy players while giving each other a few challenges along the way. Celebrity pet groomer Jess
Rona also drops by to help the coaches get their adorable — and adoptable — pooches ready for play. As always, the big goal is to find forever homes for rescue pets.
6PM & Super Bowl LVI In a fluke of scheduling, tonight’s Super Bowl LVI between the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams designates the Rams as the visiting team, despite that the game is on the Rams’ home field of SoFi Stadium. Both teams got here via thrilling victories, Joe Burrow and the Bengals via their 27-24 overtime win over the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship game, and Matthew Stafford and the Rams with their hard-fought 20-17 triumph over the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC title contest. So this game, called by NBC’s Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth, has a lot to live up to.
6PM (BBCA) MOVIE Stand by Me This 1986 drama indicated what a great actor River Phoenix would be; unfortunately, he didn’t get a chance to have a long career. This adds an element of sadness to Rob Reiner’s poignant film about the friendship among four boys in 1950s Oregon. After learning the general location of a missing boy’s corpse, they embark on a journey to see the dead body, learning about courage and death along the way. Wil Wheaton, Jerry O’Connell and Corey Feldman co-star. 7PM (DISN) MOVIE Up The DisneyPixar teaming scores yet again with this delightful, sometimes emotional fantasy about a cranky senior citizen (voice of Edward Asner, who’s perfect for the part) who decides to fulfill a goal he had with his late wife. To reach South America, he attaches numerous balloons to his house and heads aloft — with a young scout (voice of Jordan Nagai), who was on the traveler’s porch at the wrong moment, as an unexpected companion. 8PM ^ Around the World in 80 Days on Masterpiece Episode 7 finds Fogg, Passepartout and Abigail (David Tennant, Ibrahim Koma, Leonie Benesch) racing through the Rocky Mountains on their way to making a critical train connection. Very much against his preference, Fogg reluctantly lets a laconic lawman and his fugitive prisoner share their chartered stagecoach, unaware the captive’s cronies are in hot pursuit. Events reach a climax in a violent showdown at sunset. John Light and Gary
Beadle guest star; Jason Watkins and Peter Sullivan also star.
9:30 PM (TCM) Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero Of Black Filmmaking Francesco Zippel’s 2021 documentary profiles the most successful Black filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century. Born in Illinois, Oscar Micheaux wrote, directed and produced more than 44 films, as well as penning six novels, before his death at age 67 in 1951. The work of this determined and gifted storyteller served as a powerful rebuke to the naked racism he came up against during his life. Interviews include cinema scholar Jacqueline Stewart, rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy and actor and filmmaker Melvin van Peebles.
10 PM (HBO) The Righteous Gemstones With Eli (John Goodman) temporarily out of the picture, the Gemstone siblings (Danny McBride, Edi Patterson, Adam Devine) are left to quarrel bitterly over which of them is now in charge, until some wise words help pave their way forward in the new episode “And Infants Shall Rule Over Them.”