1) Football. The week starts and ends with big games. Today, the college season has its national championship at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN and ESPN2, with a pregame show at 7. Michigan (shown here) and Washington – undefeated and ranked No. 1 and 2 – collide. Then the pros start their month-long playoffs. There are two games Saturday and three on Sunday, plus one more on Monday, Jan. 15.
2) “Yellowstone” rerun marathon, 8-11 p.m. Sunday, CBS. When networks assembled makeshift schedules during the strikes, they found a few surprises. One is that this show – already seen a few zillion times on cable and streaming – was a ratings success on CBS. Now reruns of the third season have been added. The next two Sundays have three episodes apiece, with two each on Jan. 28-29.
3) “Monsieur Spade” opener, 9 p.m. Sunday, AMC. Tough and terse, Sam Spade is the classic private eye. Created in Dashiell Hammett’s “Maltese Falcon” novel, he continued in four short stories, a movie and a radio series. Now, played by Clive Owen, he’s living quietly in France, when trouble finds him. The six-week story is oddly convoluted, but the dialog is wonderfully quick and sharp.
4) “La Brea” season-opener, 9 p.m. Tuesday, NBC. “I know things look pretty bleak now,” someone says. Duh. It was tough enough to plunge into a sinkhole and emerge in 10,000 BC, with wooly mammoths to worry about. But then a time portal went awry (don’t they always?); Eve was swept away and dinosaurs arrived. Now new crises appear, with only six weeks to the Feb. 13 finale.
5) “Fargo,” 10 p.m. Tuesday, FX. For a couple weeks, this brilliant series lost its way as Dot wandered. She even inexplicably left the hospital with her cruel first husband; he promptly chained her in a barn. That’s where we find her now; fortunately, the show is about to right itself. This episode is full of quick twists and jolts. That sets up a finale next week that is classic “Fargo.”
6) “Nature: Big Little Journeys” opener, 8 p.m. Wednesday, PBS. In a three-week series, small creatures try big migrations. Only one per cent of baby turtles survive, we’re told; in Canada, we see one try to cross a highway and reach a lake, to avoid freezing. And in South Africa, a bushbaby looks for a home. Both tykes have encounters with creatures – a moose, an elephant, etc. — much larger.
7) “Echo” opener, Wednesday, Disney+. This is the streamer’s specialty – brief series with strong characters. Its “Hawkeye” introduced Maya, who is deaf, Native American and a skilled fighter, known as Echo. This five-week series takes her home to Oklahoma and family complications. Other key streaming shows are Friday – Kevin Hart’s “Lift” on Netflix, Kaley Cuoco’s “Role Play” on Prime.
8) “SEAL Team” and more, CBS. Still a month from its new-season week, CBS gives extra time to its dramas. Over the next two Thursdays (9-11 p.m.), it will rerun a four-hour “SEAL” mission in South America that aired on Paramount+. And at 8 p.m. Friday, “SWAT” finally returns. That re-unites the line-up – “SWAT,” “Fire Country” and “Blue Bloods” – that will start new episodes Feb. 16.
9) “Critics Choice Awards,” 7-10 p.m. Sunday, CW. A week after the Golden Globes, here are more awards, with Chelsea Handler hosting. The Globes had 12 best-picurre nominees; this has 10, including two snubbed by the Globes, “Saltburn” and “Color Purple.” Also: “Barbie,” “Oppenheimer,” “Maestro,” “Poor Things,” “Past Lives,” “The Holdovers,” “American Fiction” and “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
10) ALSO: It’s a busy non-fiction week. “Gordon Ramsay Road Trip” (9 p.m. Thursday, Fox) takes Ramsay to Spain with Gino D’Acampo anf Fred Sireix. And biographies? From 8-11 p.m. Monday, ABC, reruns Hulu’s “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.” From 8-10 p.m. Saturday, CW’s “I Am Paul Walker” profiles the “Fast and Furious” star who died at 40, when he was the passenger in a one-car crash.