1) “American Music Awards,” 8-11 p.m. Sunday, ABC. Eleven days after airing the Country Music Association awards, ABC has more music. One song, “Butter,” links BTS and Megan Thee Stallion. Others will link Carrie Underwood with Jason Aldean and New Edition with New Kids On the Block. Also performing are Kane Brown, Bad Bunny and Olivia Rodrigo (shown here), who leads with seven nominations. She’s up for artist of the year, alongside BTS, Drake, Taylor Swift, Aiana Grande and The Weeknd.
2) “The Goldbergs,” 8 p.m. Wednesday, ABC. Some of the best comedy episodes have centered on Thanksgiving, when people are thrown together in fresh ways. Now Beverly frets: Linda Schwartz – the mother of her daughter’s fiance – is planning a holiday feast; Beverly gets competitive … and is surprised when her father-in-law (Judd Hirsch) brings a new “lady friend.” And at 9:30 p.m., “Home Economics” finds the three siblings with their first attempt at creating their own Thanksgiving dinner.
3) “The Flash,” 8 p.m. Tuesday, CW. Superhero shows like to go super-big. So CW launches a five-week story with the world in peril (again). A villain named Despero arrives and The Flash assembles his heroic friends. We quickly see Brandon Routh as The Atom; also on the way are Batwoman, Green Arrow, Black Lightning, Sentinel, Damien Darkh and even Tom Cavanagh as Reverse Flash. “The Flash” finished its seventh season in July; after the five-parter, it will rest, then do the rest of its eighth.
4) “Independent Lens: Storm Lake,” 10 p.m. today, PBS. Storm Lake is your typical Iowa town of 11,000, except it has Buena Vista University, a large Tyson plant, lots of ethnic groups … and the Storm Lake Times. Art Cullen edits (winning a Pulitzer for his editorials), his wife writes features and their son is the news reporter. Twice a week, they put out a lively paper (circulation 3,330), ranging from a pork queen to presidential candidates. With newspapers in decline, this is a fascinating portrait.
5) “Ordinary Joe,” 10 p.m. Monday, NBC Most weeks, this leaps nimbly between three variations of Joe’s life – a rock star (married to Amy), nurse (married to Jenny) and cop (unmarried). But today, the focus is sharply on Amy, beautifully played by Natalie Martinez. She’s dating Cop Joe and pondering the future with a friend of Nurse Joe. But the real power comes alongside Rock Star Joe: Amy is a congressional aide whose boss has just been killed; tonight’s final 10 minutes pack fierce emotions.
6) “Riverdale” season-opener, 9 p.m. Tuesday, CW. Six weeks ago, the fifth season had its explosive (literally) finale. Separately, people burned the diner, burned the newspaper and ran Hiram (Veronica’s dad) out of town; the town was re-formed as Riverdale, with Veronica and Reggie starting a casino and Betty starting an FBI office. She also fell back in love with Archie … just before Hiram returned and set off a bomb. Now we learn if they’re alive – we expect they are – and what the new tragedy will be.
7) “Young Sheldon,” 8 p.m. Thursday, CBS. Reba McEntire could be content with her music success – 25 No. 1 country singles and 75 million records sold. But she’s also been busy acting, with movies, Broadway amd two of her own situation comedies. She has an upcoming Christmas movie (Nov. 26 on Lifetime). And here, she returns as June, the ex-wife of Dale (Craig T. Nelson) and the pal of his girlfriend (Annie Potts), who is Sheldon’s grandmother. When she’s injured, they take care of her.
8) “Dean Martin: King of Cool,” 5-6:30 p.m. PT Friday, Turner Classic Movies. Martin was known by everyone, this film says, thanks to 150 records, 60 movies and an eight-year TV series. Yet no one really knew him. In Steubenville, Ohio, he spoke only Italian until he was 6, quit school in 10th grade, boxed and dealt blackjack. Later, he stuck to a reserved, cool-guy image. This will be followed by “The Caddy” (1953) with Jerry Lewis and “Rio Bravo” (1959) with John Wayne, at 6:30 and 8:15 p.m.
9) Christmas movies, cable. This year’s holiday movies are earlier and more diverse. Lifetime has new ones at 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday — two with Black leads and one starring Rekha Sharma, a Canadian actress with South Asian roots. In “Baking Spirits Bright,” she plays an optimistic fruitcake maker. That’s at 8 p.m. Sunday, colliding with films on Ion and Bounce, plus Hallmark’s “A Kiss Before Christmas,” re-uniting the “Desperate Housewives” duo of Teri Hatcher and James Denton.
10) “Grantchester” season-finale, 9 p.m. Sunday, PBS. It’s been a devastating year for Will, the crime-solving vicar in a 1950s English village. His curate, Leonard, was imprisoned for homosexuality; his friend Geordie (who’s the police chief) has crumbled with the arrival of Johnny, who was his fellow inmate in a wartime prison. All of that peaks in a potent episode. There’s a murder that gets solved way too easily (as usual), but triggers a great performance from the oft-reserved Robson Green as Geordie.