1) Basketball, 8:30 p.m. ET today, CBS. A no-upset year concludes. For the first time in 17 years (and, reportedly, the second in tourney history), each team seeded No. 1 in a quadrant reached the final four. There’s no Cinderella team, no Butler or Bradley or Texas Tech. Instead, Florida, Duke (shown here), Auburn and Houston collided Saturday, with the winners tonight.
2) “The Last of Us” season-opener, 9 p.m. Sunday, HBO. In its first season, this drew raves and 24 Emmy nominations, including best drama. It won eight Emmys … but waited two years for its second season. The story actually jumps ahead five years. Ellie, with a rare immunity to the pandemic disease, is in a Wyoming compound, surrounded by danger.
3) “Matlock,” 9 p.m. Thursday, CBS. Last week ended with a jolt, as Olympia learned about Matty’s ruse. That brings a tense hour, reminding us that Kathy Bates is a gifted, Oscar-winning actress. Can Matty salvage any pieces of their friendship? Can she find who buried a key drug study? That will be settled (partly) in next week’s season-finale.
4) “We Want the Funk,” 9-10:30 p.m. Tuesday, PBS. “Music was our freedom,” Questlove says in this vibrant documentary. And most free of all was the funk sound. Rippling with great clips, this spans the generations. It puts special focus on James Brown, but also has music masters (from George Clinton to Kirk Franklin) still around to tell their story.
5) “Will Trent,” 8 p.m., Tuesday, ABC. After probing the Olaf Collective, Will reports disturbing news to Amanda, his boss at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Soon, the Atlanta police close in on the cult’s leader, in a dangerous confrontation. That’s followed by “The Rookie,” as cops scramble to learn who is putting up ant-police billboards.
6) “Good Cop/Bad Cop” season-finale, 9 p.m. Wednesday, CW. It’s been a fun first season for this show, a co-production with Roku. Far from her role as Blair Waldorf in “Gossip Girl,” Leighton Meester plays a savvy cop, reluctantly working with her brother for their dad, the police chief. Now a decades-old murder case could rip the small town apart.
7) “Now Hear This” season-opener, 9 p.m. Friday, PBS. Tony Bennett didn’t really leave his heart in San Francisco, but Frederic Chopin literally left his in Warsaw. (After his death, his sister smuggled it back to a cathedral.) That’s one of many stories about a man who was away from his Polish homeland for half his lifetime. It’s accompanied by bursts of great music.
8) “The Ten Commandments” (1956), 7-11:44 p.m. Saturday, ABC. This epic won an Oscar for special effects and was nominated for six more, including best picture. It has its annual ABC run, then jumps to cable’s UpTV the next day. At 10:30 a.m. ET, it starts a Palm Sunday marathon that includes “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965) at 9 p.m.
9) “Saturday Night Live,” 11:29 p.m. Saturday, NBC. Jon Hamm – a familiar figure on “SNL” – hosts. This is only his fourth time as host (and his first since 2010). But in that 15-year interim, he showed up six times in sketches and another time in the show’s 50-year special. Lizzo is the music guest; she’s done it three times before, once doubling as the host.
10) MORE: Sunday brings the season-finale of Showtime’s “Yellowajackets” at 8 p.m. and the season-opener of MGM+’s “The Godfather of Harlem” at 9. And this is a good week for David Alan Grier: At 8 p.m. Tuesday on NBC, “St. Denis” reruns the episode that sees Dr. Ron get online criticism; at 10 p.m. Thursday on CBS, he’s the villain in a terrific “Elsbeth.”
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