1) “American Music Awards,” 8-11 p.m., ABC. Cardi B (shown here) hosts a show stuffed with stars. One song links BTS and Megan Thee Stallion; another has Carrie Underwood and Jason Aldean. There’s even a boy-band mash-up, with New Edition and New Kids on the Block. Other performers include Kane Brown, Bad Bunny and Olivia Rodrigo … who leads with seven nominations. She’s up for artist of the year, alongside The Weeknd (with six nominations), BTS, Drake, Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande.
2) “Grantchester” season-finale, 9 p.m., PBS. It’s been a rough year for Will, the crime-solving vicar in a 1950s English village. His curate, Leonard, was imprisoned for homosexuality; his friend, Geordie, has crumbled with the arrival of Johnny, his colleague as prisoners of war. Now that peaks in a potent episode. A murder its solved too easily, but triggers a great performance from Robson Green as Geordie. PBS also has a “Call the Midwife” retrospective at 8 and the “Baptiste” season-finale at 10.
3) “A Kiss Before Christmas,” 8-10 p.m., Hallmark. For the eight “Desperate Housewives” seasons, Teri Hatcher and James Denton had a desperately tangled relationship. It included two marriages, several murders and endless intrigue. Now they’re back together here: They’re happily married, until he gets an alternate life, being rich and lonely. That, alas, simply takes the plot of previous Christmas movies – “The Family Man” (2000) and “Comfort and Joy” (2003) – and puts them in reverse.
4) More movies, cable. After too many white Christmases, movies are becoming more diverse. “Baking Spirits Bright” (8-10 p.m., Lifetime) stars Rekha Sharma, a Canadian with roots in India and Fiji; her character meets the guy hired to streamline her family’s fruitcake business. You can also catch some perpetual crowd-pleasers – “Ghostbusters” films at 3 (1984) and 5:30 p.m. (1989) on FX; or “Home Alone” films at 4:50 (1990) and 7:20 p.m. (1992) on Freeform.
5) “China’s Iron Fist,” 9 p.m. ET, CNN. Xi Jinping continues to consolidate power as China’s leader, helping propel what was a poor, agrarian country into having the world’s second-largest economy. Now Fareed Zakaria talks to journalists and others about the impact this global dominance has on the U.S.