British Mystery Bonanza on PBS, History of Black TV on CNN, ABC Plays More Games, Christmas in July

Grantchester

SUNDAY: With Endeavour in the rear-view mirror, this pastoral mystery series becomes Masterpiece’s longest-running franchise, opening Season 8 with vicar Will Davenport (Tom Brittney) now happily married to a noticeably pregnant Bonnie (Charlotte Ritchie)—though contentment is in short supply when Will and DI Georgie Keating (the stalwart Robson Green) look into the death of a promising young man who was part of a local motorcycle club. Will’s penchant for revving up his own motorbike to blow off steam has serious consequences that will haunt him throughout the season.

DI Ray

SUNDAY: ER’s Parminder Nagra stars in a strong new entry in PBS’s mystery lineup as the title character Rachita Ray, a British-Asian policewoman newly promoted to a Birmingham homicide squad as the four-episode season begins. Her pride is tempered when she begins to realize she may have been hired for diversity optics, which is seemingly confirmed when her first case is labeled a CSH (“culturally specific homicide”). Her boss (Game of Thrones’ Gemma Whelan) doesn’t want to hear her trepidations about shaky evidence involving a Muslim man’s presumed honor killing: “The whole point is that you help us with that, not hinder us.” Battlestar Galactica’s Jamie Bamber (also seen in Acorn’s current Cannes Confidential) co-stars as Ray’s not-so-public love interest, the higher-ranking DCI Martyn Hunter.

See It Loud: The History of Black Television

SUNDAY: LeBron James with Maverick Carter are executive producers of a five-part docuseries that traces the slow growth and influence of Black actors, creators and images on TV through the decades in genres from comedy (The Jeffersons) and drama (Roots) to horror and reality TV. The opening chapter deals with the history of Black sitcoms.

Celebrity Family Feud

SUNDAY: It’s Misty vs. Misty in the first round of a new season of the long-running game show hosted by Steve Harvey. Yellowjackets stars face off in the first game, with the adult stars led by Christina Ricci (Misty) facing their younger counterparts, led by Samantha Hanratty (Young Misty). In the second game, Gayle King and Sophia Bush Hughes lead competing teams playing for charity. Followed by a new episode of The $100,000 Pyramid (10/9c) featuring RuPaul Charles vs. actress Lauren Lapkus, then Blue Bloods’ Steve Schirripa taking on comedian Loni Love. New to the Sunday lineup: The Prank Panel (8/7c), where Johnny Knoxville, Eric Andre and Gabourey Sidibe oversee elaborate hidden-camera pranks.

A Royal Christmas Crush

SATURDAY: Beat the July heat with the launch of the annual “Christmas in July” stunt for those already yearning for yuletide. In the first of two new movies this month, Arrow–verse alum Katie Cassidy stars as an architect whose new gig at the Royal Ice Hotel in a frozen kingdom leads to a heartwarming romance with a prince (Stephen Huszar). Not to be outdone, rival cable channel Great American Family counters with a “Great American Christmas” movie, A Belgian Chocolate Christmas (Saturday, 8/7c), about a photographer (Jaclyn Hales) taking a shot on romance with a chocolatier (Zane Stephens) at a Belgian culinary school.

The Righteous Gemstones

SUNDAY: An episode-long flashback takes us back to the year 2000, when church leaders Eli and Aimee-Leigh Gemstone (John Goodman and Jennifer Nettles) fend off accusations of scamming their followers with a costly Y2K survival kit. Turns out the scheme also ignited a family feud continuing two decades later involving Eli’s resentful sister May-May (Mom’s fearless Kristen Johnston) and her henpecked husband/future militia leader Peter (Steve Zahn).

Joe Pickett

SUNDAY: Proving that scoundrels are more fun to play, David Alan Grier returns to the superior Western-set mystery series as jailbird/former game warden Vern Dunnegan, who may be the key to current game warden Joe’s (Michael Dorman) investigation into the murder of several hunters — and possibly the disappearance of a local Indigenous woman. But before he talks, Vern wants a deal. And Joe isn’t amused, though the way Grier chews the scenery, it’s hard not to be. Elsewhere, the decision to use Joe’s disgraced boss Randy Pope (Chris Gauthier) as bait to smoke out the killer doesn’t go exactly to plan.

INSIDE WEEKEND TV:

• Greatest Geek Year Ever: 1982 (Saturday, 8/7c, The CW): A new series celebrating the many pop-culture breakthroughs in the watershed year of 1982 begins with a nod to “The Summer of Spielberg,” with segments on the blockbuster E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Poltergeist.
• V.C. Andrews’ Dawn (Saturday, 8/7c, Lifetime): In the first movie of a four-part limited series (through July 29) based on Andrews’ Dawn Cutler novels, DC’s Stargirl’s Brec Bassinger stars as Dawn, whose unpleasant discovery about the parents who raised her thrusts her into an even more harrowing family situation, when she falls under the rule of a wicked grandmother (Knots Landing icon Donna Mills).
• 1883 (Sunday, 8/7c, Paramount Network): Another brutally eventful episode of the Western Yellowstone prequel finds Elsa (Isabel May) falling hard for cowboy Ennis (Eric Nelsen), while the wagon train contends with a food thief and deadly bandits.
• Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York (Sunday, 9/8c, HBO): A four-part true-crime docuseries, airing weekly, relives the terror and frustration within the New York City gay community when a serial killer stalked gay men in bars in the early 1990s, with institutional and cultural bias undermining the investigation until the NYC Anti-Violence Project pushed the police to take action.
• The Walking Dead: Dead City (Sunday, 9/8c, AMC): The pursuit of the “Slavic psychopathic nutjob” known as the Croat (Željko Ivanek) leads Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) through the creepiness of the New York subway tunnels into Penn Station, where yet more danger lurks.
• Running Wild with Bear Grylls: The Challenge (Sunday, 9/8c, National Geographic): A new season of celebrity adventures with the survivalist opens with multi-Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper traversing the treacherous Wyoming Basin. Followed by the series premiere of Never Say Never with Jeff Jenkins (10/9c), featuring a travel journalist seeking new ways to be taken out of his comfort zone. First stop: New Zealand, where Jenkins faces whitewater rapids and an underground river.
• Luann and Sonja: Welcome to Crappie Lake (Sunday, 9/8c, Bravo): Real Housewives Luann de Lesseps and Sonja Morgan accept an invitation from small-town Benton, Illinois to revitalize a town (population just under 7,000) that has yet to bounce back from the pandemic. Divas to the rescue!
• Domina (Sunday, 9/8c and 10/9c, MGM+): Following the channel premiere of the hit film Creed (7/6c), the second season of the historical drama set in Ancient Rome opens with aristocratic Livia Drusilla (Kasia Smutniak) and second husband, the emperor Gaius aka Caesar Augustus (Matthew McNulty), fighting to hold onto their power.
• To End All War: Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb (Sunday, 10/9c, MSNBC): In advance of the feature film Oppenheimer, a documentary explores the history and legacy of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw the successful development of the atomic bomb and was haunted by its devastating power forever after.