1) “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” 8 p.m., NBC. Some weeks, this show is is bright, bouncy and fun. Its color palette is cheery; so are the pop songs that Zoey imagines people singing. But it also takes serious detours; last week, Simon (John Clarence Stewart, shown here) pointed to the systemic racism in his company. Now come the aftershocks. It’s a great hour, with all the songs by Black writers, performed superbly by Black (Stewart, Alex Newell as Mo) and brown (Kapil Talwalkar as Tobin) actors.
2) ”This Is Us” return, 9 p.m Tuesday., NBC. TV’s best drama jolted viewers – then vanished for a month. In the Jan. 12 episode, Randall phoned Kevin to soothe their differences. Kevin couldn’t talk; he was driving frantically from Vancouver, to be with Madison, who had gone into labor with their twins. Then the hour ended … and a promo showed Kevin’s car crashed. Now the show finally returns. We learn what happened to Kevin; also, in flashbacks, his dad takes him to football camp.
3) ”Prodigal Son,” 9:01 p.m., Fox. This show keeps finding ways to inject Malcolm’s family into his cases. Last week had a murder in the psychiatric prison where his serial-killer dad is held; now murders are linked to the debutante-training school his sister attended. As usual, it’s an interesting-but-overblown tale. This one has great guest roles for Kate Burton and Anna Baryshnikov. Their dads (Richard and Mikhail) became two of our best-known immigrants.
4) “Two Sentence Horror Stories,” 8 and 8:30 p.m., CW. Here are two subtly perfect performances by young actors. The first story has a young girl fidgeting while her mother works in a morgue on the Mexican holiday of the Day of the Dead. The second, a rerun, has a transgender teen face abuse from a teacher and from fellow students. Amid the horror, both stories have quietly moving moments.
5) “Finding Your Roots,” 8 p.m., PBS. Henry Louis Gates traces the Lebanese and Italian roots of Tony Shalhoub and Christopher Meloni. A week from now, we get a Gates double-feautre: After this show, he’ll start a superb, two-night series: “The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song.”