Adventures of Boba Fett, ‘Wonder Years’ Marathon, Times Square Killer, Oscar winning romcoms

The Book of Boba Fett

Reintroduced during the climax of The Mandalorian’s second season, bounty hunter Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) takes center stage in a Star Wars action series. Usurping the throne of desert planet Tattoine once held by the notorious Jabba the Hut, Boba and mercenary sidekick Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) take on the criminal underworld in a succession of high-octane fight scenes that are a specialty of executive producer Robert Rodriguez, who directs three of the seven episodes.

The Wonder Years

Before 2021 is over, travel back to the late 1960s for a taste of one of the fall’s highlights: a reimagined version of the nostalgic coming-of-age family comedy, this time set in the Deep South of the late 1960s. ABC devotes its prime-time lineup to replays of first-season highlights, starting with the pilot episode that introduces young Dean (Elisha “EJ” Williams) and the Williams family. Other episodes include “Be Prepared” (8:30/7:30c), when a camping trip gives Dean a new perspective on his cooler-than-cool musician father, Bill (Dulé Hill), and to close out the night, “The Club” (10:30/9:30), where Dean gains new appreciation for his awesome mom, Lillian (Saycon Sengbloh), after he’s busted sharing “racy” magazines with his classmates at school.

Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer

Location, location, location. The notion behind Joe Berlinger’s Crime Scene series is to show how certain locales become associated with notorious crimes—or at least help make diabolical activity easier to flourish. The second season opens in December 1979 during a fire at a flophouse Times Square hotel, where evidence of a brutal crime leads detectives on the hunt for a serial killer preying on sex workers. (Think The Deuce meets SVU.) The trail eventually leads to murderer Richard Cunningham, who somehow stayed under the radar from the 1960s to 1980.

It Happened One Night

The 1934 Frank Capra comedy, starring Oscar winners Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in a screwball farce including a memorable hitchhiking scene, is the centerpiece of a day-long wallow in romantic comedies distinguished by Oscar-winning screenplays. The binge begins early at 6:30 am (all times ET) with the spectacular 1951 Gene Kelly musical An American in Paris, with an indelible Gershwin score, followed by another enchanting Oscar-winning best picture, 1958’s Gigi (8:30 am), Olivia de Havilland in 1943’s Princess O’Rourke (10:30 am), Shirley Temple crushing on Cary Grant in 1947’s The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (12:15 pm), Lauren Bacall and Gregory Peck in Designing Woman (2 pm), and the aforementioned It Happened One Night followed by the sparkling The Philadelphia Story (6 pm), starring Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart and Cary Grant.

Inside Wednesday TV:

• Married at First Sight (8/7c, Lifetime): In advance of the Jan. 5 return of the long-running quick-commitment hit, two specials go behind the scenes. First, a Matchmaking Special looks at the fix-up process. On Thursday, Kevin Frazier hosts an introduction to the five pairs about to rush down the aisle in Season 14.
• Earth Emergency (8/7c, PBS, check local listings at pbs.org): Richard Gere narrates this informative, if unnerving, study of how environmental feedback loops—in other words, warming caused by human activity—are accelerating climate change in forests, permafrost, the atmosphere and at the poles. The Dalai Lama and activist Greta Thunberg are among the voices sounding the alarm.
• Where Chefs Eat (9/8c, Cooking Channel): Chopped’s Ted Allen is on a first-name basis with many celebrity chefs, and in this special, he decides to find out where those who make great food go to satisfy their own cravings. He starts in Philadelphia, where he follows chef Mike Solomonov on a tour of his favorite local cuisine.
• Calls from the Inside (9/8c, Investigation Discovery): A new series listens in on recorded calls made from prison that shed light on notorious crimes, sometimes sealing the inmate’s fate.