Queens of Country, France and Tennis (‘Monarch,’ ‘Serpent Queen,’ Serena on CNN), Obamas on Canvas, New ‘American Gigolo’

Monarch

SUNDAY: “People like a little Game of Thrones with their country music,” quips the campy stylist to the Romans, the reigning “first damn family of country music,” in this sudsy musical drama set in Texas. The hairdresser may just be wishfully thinking, because while there is plenty of betrayal and backstabbing among these not-so-noble Romans, the temperature rarely rises in this tepid bath of well-worn clichés. Monarch hopes to do for Fox what Empire did in the hi-hop arena, but it feels more like a tired Nashville knockoff if that series had begun with Connie Britton already one foot out the door. Susan Sarandon is the marquee star in the premiere as matriarch Dottie Roman, whose terminal cancer diagnosis triggers a sibling rivalry for succession between her heir-apparent daughter Nicky (Anna Friel) and rebellious younger sis Gigi (Beth Ditto), who favors Lizzo and Lady Gaga in her musical choices. Authentic country star Trace Adkins is their growling big daddy, Albie Roman.

The Serpent Queen

SUNDAY: Last seen as the vile Alpha on The Walking Dead, Samantha Morton keeps her viciousness more tongue-in-cheek in this dishy historical drama about the fearsome 16th-century French queen Catherine de Medici. Frequently breaking the fourth wall in flashbacks depicting her rise to power as an orphan (saucy Liv Hill) in an arranged marriage to French royalty, Catherine learns the ropes of survival the hard way. (Imagine consummating your marriage with an audience looking on in the bedchamber, including your uncle Pope Clement—played by Game of Thrones’ formidable Charles Dance, no less). Perfect for those who like attitude in their costume dramas.

Serena Williams: On Her Terms

SUNDAY: On the final weekend of the U.S. Open, where whoever wins the women’s championship on Saturday and the men’s on Sunday it will be their first such Grand Slam title, no one proved to be a bigger draw than Serena Williams on what was billed as her farewell appearance at center court. Barring breaking royal news, CNN will celebrate her long career and public and private life in an hour special featuring interviews with other pioneering female athletes, many who have also juggled motherhood with athletic achievement.

Picturing the Obamas

SATURDAY: They unveiled their White House portraits earlier this week to great fanfare, but since 2018, the National Portrait Gallery paintings of former First Couple Barack and Michelle Obama have doubled attendance to the D.C. museum since going in display. A two-hour documentary special follows these celebrated portraits as they reach a wider audience on a national tour to stops including Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston and Brooklyn. The artists, Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, are profiled as the special explores the Obamas’ legacy.

American Gigolo

SUNDAY: A curious throwback, this downbeat sequel to the slick 1980 movie hit (daring for its time) puts The Walking Dead’s Jon Bernthal in the unenviable position of trying to live up to the image created by Richard Gere as the swaggeringly seductive Julian Kaye. He’s got the abs for it, though they’re now covered in prison tattoos after spending 15 years behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit—but whose details he still can’t remember. Julian feels neither hero nor antihero as he re-enters society after a sudden exoneration. Gretchen Mol takes over for Lauren Hutton as the ex-lover wealthy wife (of a tech mogul now, not a politician) who can’t quit her “Johnny”—his real name, as we’re reminded in unsettling flashbacks to his indoctrination into the sex trade at a perilously young age. Rosie O’Donnell barks every so often as the detective still trying to figure out who’s behind the long-ago murder. At least the Debbie Harry soundtrack holds up.

House of the Dragon

SUNDAY: Triumphant in battle (the series’ strong suit so far), cocky Prince Daemon (Matt Smith) returns to Kings Landing in full swagger as the dark fantasy’s fourth episode opens. Praise from his brother the ailing King Viserys (Paddy Considine) may be short lived, once the mischievous Daemon rescues his restless niece, Princess Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock), from all the suitors begging for her hand and takes her for a night on the town, causing much clucking within the court about her potentially soiled virtue. Oh brother, indeed.

Inside Weekend TV:

• 9/11: Missing Carmen Rivera (Saturday, 10/9c, National Geographic): An intimate remembrance of the emotional fallout from the 2001 terror attack focuses on the months-long search by Luis Rivera for his wife Carmen, whose office was on the 96th floor of the World Trade Center’s south tower.
• NFL Icons (Saturday, 10/9c, Epix): With a new pro football season officially getting underway this weekend, the docuseries profiling gridiron greats returns for an eight-episode Season 2. First up: coaching-broadcasting legend John Madden.
• Sunday Night Football (Sunday, 8:15 pm/ET, NBC): Dominating Sunday prime time, the season kicks off with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Dallas to play the Cowboys.
• Guilt (Sunday, 9/8c, PBS): In the Masterpiece Mystery! season finale, brothers Max (Mark Bonnar) and Jake (Jamie Sives) have an uneasy reunion, orchestrated by the villainous Lynches. Everyone’s plotting against someone in this deadly web. Who will get their comeuppance this time, and will anyone be able to escape intact?
• Tales of The Walking Dead (Sunday, 9/8c, AMC): The least satisfying episode to date in the horror anthology still packs a queasy hallucinatory punch, as a stranger named Davon (The Boys’ Jessie T. Usher) awakens in a bizarre Maine community of French-speaking zealots, missing a leg and finding himself chained to a zombie with a burned-off face. Accused by the local mob of a terrible crime, Davon scrambles to make sense of his situation before it’s too late.
• To Her with Love (Sunday, 9/8c, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries): The ghost of Sidney Poitier (and his hit To Sir with Love) hovers over this movie from Hallmark’s new Mahogany franchise, starring Skye P. Marshall and Tobias Truvillion as teachers at a North Carolina high school who hit it off (bonding over Poitier movies) while trying to save the school’s arts department.