1) “Only Murders in the Building” finale, Hulu. A great season concludes with Oliver (Martin Short, tighty) frantically trying to stop Loretta (Meryl Streep) from confessing. She’s just trying to protect the son she gave up at birth, but Oliver is convinced that neither is the killer. Also, he loves her AND needs her to co-star in his musical, alongside Charles (Steve Martin, center, alongside Selena Gomez) and others. Now we should learn who the real killer is … and, maybe, how the musical does.
2) “Found” debut, 10 p.m., NBC. The idea, at least, is worthy: The media focuses on a few missing-people (usually cute, female and white), while ignoring the others. Now Gabi and her friend (both of them survivors of a long-ago kidnapping) look for the overlooked. That good idea is done to loud excess, complete with a wretched and repugnant closing twist. That twist is meant to be a surprise, but it appears in the show’s ads.
3) “The Swarm,” 9 p.m., CW. Young lovers try their first kiss on a South African shore. That’s when crabs, teeming mobs of them, choose to crawl out of the sea. It’s a jolting start to an hour that mostly has quiet reflection. The oceans have been disrupted and scientists are stymied. Reaching the halfway mark in its eight-week story, this is slow but well-acted. It peaks now as Charlie (the talented Leonie Benesch) talks about a sinking that took her friend.
4) Baseball, all day. The play-offs begin. That starts on the ESPN channels, with the first round today, Wednesday and possibly Thursday. The second round then starts Saturday on Fox Sports1 and TBS. All of this points toward the World Series, which starts Oct. 27 on Fox.
5) ALSO: “FBI True,” which originally aired on Paramount+, makes its CBS debut. The opener recounts a 2013 crisis, when a heavily armed veteran held a 5-year-old boy hostage in an Alabama bunker. That’s at 9 p.m., the same time that PBS wraps its involving, three-week profile of artist Frida Kahlo. But if you prefer fiction, there’s hope: Fox has delayed one of its reality shows, replacing it at 9 with reruns of “9-1-1: Lone Star.”
— Mike Hughes, TV America