1) Figure Skating, 8 p.m., USA Network. Approximately forever, women have been top-billed in American coverage of figure-skating. (Shown here is a Olympics skater.) Not this time. The best spot in the World Figure Skating Championships — Saturday night on NBC — goes to the men; women are relegated to tonight on cable. Peacock will start coverage of the women at 6 p.m.; earlier, it has rhythm dance at 11:20 a.m.
2) Basketball tournament. CBS again starts with a solid match-up – Northwestern.and Florida Atlantic at 12:15 p.m. Alas, it follows at 2:45 with Stetson (the school, not the hat) facing top-ranked Connecticut. Its other games are at 7:10 and 9:40 p.m.. TruTV has games at 12:40, 3:10, 7:35 and 10:05. Also, it’s TNT at 1:30, 4, 6:50 and 9:20; and TBS at 2, 4:30, 7:25 and 9:55.
3) “Iron Man” (2008) and “Iron Man” 2 (2010), 6 and 9 p.m., AMC. Long before winning an Oscar in “Oppenheimer,” Robert Downey Jr. brought surprising charm to superhero tales. That’s preceded by fun “Ghostbusters” films at 10 a.m. (2016), 1 p.m. (1984) and 3:30 p.m. (1989). Also, FX has animated gems, with “Encanto” (2021), “Frozen” (2013) and “Frozen II” (2019), at 6, 8 and 10.
4) “Menus-plaisirs: les Troisgros” (2023), 9 p.m., PBS. Some people swear by Frederick Wiseman’s unobtrusive style. This film, visiting an acclaimed French restaurant, has won at least six best-documentary awards. Still, keep in mind that this is four hours, with lots of sub-titles and lots of cooking.
5) ALSO: There are more sports, both fake (wrestling on Fox) and real (the women’s basketball tourney starts ts first full round, on all four ESPN channels). One alternative is “Password,” at 8 p.m. on NBC. It’s a quick rerun, with Joe Manganiello (the “True Blood” co-star and “Deal or No Deal Island” host) and Jimmy Fallon.
— Mike Hughes, TV America