1) “La Brea” season-opener (shown here), 9 p.m., NBC. In a classic understatement, someone says: “Things look pretty bleak now.” Oh, it was bleak long ago, when people fell through a sinkhole and emerged in 10,000 BC, with mammoths romping. It got worse when a time portal went awry (don’t they always?); Eve was swept away and dinosaurs arrived. Now we’re just six weeks from the Feb. 13 finale.
2) “Fargo,” 10 p.m., FX. This brilliant series sagged for a couple weeks, when Dot wandered. She even voluntarily left a hospital with her cruel first husband; he promptly chained her in a barn. That’s where we find her now, but the show is about to right itself. This episode is full of quick twists; next week’s finale is classic “Fargo.”
3) “Only Murders in the Building,” 9-11 p.m., ABC. There’s a celebrity detour here. The podcasters suspect that Sting (playing himself) is the killer; they confer with a poscast pro, played by Tina Fey. Then the show shifts to Mabel (Selena Gomez) and her new friends, whom she takes home to visit her mother.
4) “NCIS: Sydney,” 8 p.m., CBS. On a crowded bus in Australia, a man in a U.S. Navy jacket dies a cocaine overdose. The case bring Evie – an Australian constable working with the Americans – back to her days as an undercover narcotics cop.
5) “Independent Lens” season-opener, 9-11 p.m., PBS. This documentary series opens with “Beyond Utopia,” which traces families’ dangerous attempts to flee North Korea. It won the Sundance Film Festival’s audience award for best documentary. That follows an amiable “Finding Your Roots,” at 8 p.m., with Brendan Fraser and Valerie Bertinelli.
— Mike Hughes, TV America