Simone Biles’ Comeback, Housemates Move in to ‘Big Brother’ House, ‘UnPrisoned’ Returns, a New Space Race

Documentary Premiere

Named Best Comeback Athlete at last week’s ESPYs, famed gymnast Simone Biles hopes to add to her cache of seven Olympic medals when the Paris Games kick off later this month. To remind us how far she’s come since withdrawing from the Tokyo Olympics four years ago amid public mental-health struggles, an inspiring two-part documentary follows her in and out of the gym as she prepares for her return to the sport she loves at the highest level. “I get to write my own ending,” she says. And we’ll be there.

Season Premiere

9/8c

Adopting an “Artificial Intelligence” theme for its 26th season, the reality show that’s a harbinger of summer’s leisure time welcomes 16 new houseguests into a world where cameras capture their every move and unfiltered thought. One twist: the newbies have an opportunity to vote in a 17th player. Launching with a two-night premiere (continuing Thursday), the regular weekly schedule includes original episodes on Sundays, Wednesdays and Thursdays (9/8c), with host Julie Chen Moonves returning to lead the live eviction show.

Season Premiere

When your family is as big a mess as that of Paige (Kerry Washington), a perfectionist relationship therapist, maybe it’s time to call in a different sort of counselor. As the second season begins for the engaging domestic comedy, enter Murphy (John Stamos), a new-age therapy coach with some quite unorthodox techniques, who brings his notions of “radical healing” to Paige, her father Edwin (Delroy Lindo), who’s still seeking direction after a 17-year stint in prison, and Paige’s 16-year-old son Finn (Faly Rakotohavana).

Documentary Premiere

9/8c

This rollicking documentary lets you know from the start that it’s not dealing with the billionaire showmanship of Musk-vs-Bezos. Wild Wild Space captures the tone of a different sort of free-wheeling commercial enterprise, profiling three upstart rocket and satellite companies—Astra Space, Rocket Lab and Planet Labs—who circumvent government bureaucracy in a competition to put rockets and their satellite payloads into low earth orbit. Space is big business, and as we’re told, “whoever controls space may very well control the future of humanity.”

The movie channel’s tribute to late producer-director Roger Corman ends with a night that could be labeled “Before They Were Star Directors.” Corman’s low-budget productions gave many future legends of the trade their start, including Martin Scorsese with the 1972 Boxcar Bertha (8/7c), his second film, starring Barbara Hershey as a Depression-era bank and train robber. Followed by Peter Bodganovich’s debut movie, the chilling Targets (9:45/8:45c), featuring Boris Karloff in one of his final roles; Francis Ford Coppola’s lurid 1963 Dementia 13 (11:30/10:30c), Jonathan Demme’s 1974 women-in-prison melodrama Caged Heat (1 am/12c) and Joe Dante’s 1978 thriller Piranha (2:30 am/1:30c).

INSIDE WEDNESDAY TV:

• Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (8/7c, ABC): Rosie O’Donnell teams with Celebrity Jeopardy! champ Lisa Ann Walter (Abbott Elementary) to share the hot seat and raise more money for charity, followed by comedian Sebastian Maniscalco and actor Omar J. Dorsey.
• The Ark (10/9c, Syfy): The mission of Ark One continues into a second season of the sci-fi drama, with the crew of the ill-fated spaceship resuming their search for a place to call home for humanity.
• Presumed Innocent (streaming on Apple TV+): Recently renewed for a second season—thankfully with a fresh case—the penultimate episode of the legal drama’s first season finds defendant Rusty (Jake Gyllenhaal) making some risky moves in the courtroom after the shocking cliffhanger that nearly upended his murder trial.