1) Football, 3 p.m. ET, CBS, and 6:30, Fox. Now we’ll learn who will be in the Super Bowl. First is a battle of young quarterbacks: The Chiefs (14-5) and Patrick Mahomes, 26, already have one Super Bowl win; they face Joe Burrow, 25, and the Bengals, hoping to continue their two-year leap from 2-14 to 12-7. Then the veterans take over. Jimmy Garoppolo, 30, and the 49ers (12-7), face the Rams (14-5) and Matthew Stafford (shown here), 33, who had never won a play-off game until this year.
2) “Next Level Chef,” after football (about 10 p.m. ET), Fox. In a late switch, Fox has delayed “Monarch” until fall, inserting this new episode.
3) “All Creatures Great and Small,” 9 p.m., PBS. One thing has hung over the characters this season: Tristan doesn’t know he flunked his final course at vet school. (His older brother read the school’s letter and told him he’d passed). Now that issue peaks. The moment seems forced, but it’s still a fairly good episode; terrific ones are coming up, before the season concludes in three weeks.
4) “We Need to Talk About Cosby” opener, 10 p.m., Showtime. The extremes of Bill Cosby’s life are, as one person says here, “impossible to comprehend.” There’s his beloved status as an entertainer – and the consistent reports of drugging and raping. “The juxtaposition is just bananas,” one person says. To illustrate, W. Kamau Bell (a former Cosby admirer) takes us through the early triumphs, then closes this first hour with a horrifying account. Three more hours await.
5) ALSO: “Around the World in 80 Days” (8 p.m.) is becoming the mirror opposite of its network (PBS): It offers poor stories, semi-redeemed by zesty visuals. For the second straight week, a tale rests on begging an official for mercy; we expect more. For great storytelling, turn to Turner Classic Movies for the comedy “His Girl Friday” (1940) at 6:15 p.m. ET and the Paul Newman drama “The Verdict” (1982) at 8.
— Mike Hughes, TV America