1) “Endeavour” season-opener, 9-11 p.m., PBS. It’s been a long run – eight seasons of “Inspector Morse” … nine of the “Inspector Lewis” sequel … and now the ninth and final one of this prequel (shown here). Like Ridley (see next paragraph), Endeavour Morse (left) is somber; his one romance (with his colleague’s daughter) crumbled and he’s back from alcohol rehab. But unlike Ridley, his movie-length stories air in one night. This first one, involving a famous orchestra, is excellent.
2) “Ridley” debut, 8 p.m., PBS. Like many British cop shows, this has a somber hero. Alex Ridley has a beautiful house for his retirement, but nothing to do there; his wife and daughter died in a revenge fire. And like many of those shows, its stories are movie-length. That’s s problem, with PBS splitting each over two Sundays. Tonight’s opener is slow and bland; next week’s finale is potent
3) “The Walking Dead: Dead City” debut, 9 p.m., AMC and Sundance. Ducking zombies in the country is easy (apparently), but now Maggie (Lauren Cohan) plunges into Manhattan, trying to rescue her son. She brings Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a guy she hates (for, among other things, killing her husband), but needs. They face a chilling villain (Zeljko Ivanek) and a charming-but-lethal marshal. The result is taut, messy, gory and very well-crafted.
4) “The Lazarus Project,” 9 p.m., TNT, rerunning at 10:04. It sounded simple: Whenever an event endangers our existence, this unit winds back the clock to July 1 and tries to stop it; only its people know. But last week, we saw a crisis that had to be re-wound time and again; now we see the effect that has on a pregnancy. All of that happens while George schemes to save his late girlfriend. It’s an intense and jolting hour, smarty written and tautly played.
5) ALSO: “The Righteous Gemstones” finally return for a third season – 16 months after the second ended – with the family wobbling after its patriarch (John Goodman) semi-retired as pastor. That’s at 10 and 10:38 p.m. on HBO, which has the terrific “I, Tonya” (2017) at 6:51 p.m. and “The Idol” at 9. There’s football on Fox, golf on NBC … and would be basketball on ABC, except the tourney ended early. So the delightful “Up” (2009) is at 9.
— Mike Hughes, TV America