NFL Kickoff, Nicole Kidman in ‘The Perfect Couple,’ Kevin Hart and a ‘Fight Night’ Heist, Reliving Apollo 13

NFL Kickoff

Are you ready for some … Silly question, because there’s no bigger TV franchise than the NFL, which kicks off the season with a traditional Thursday night launch of NBC’s Sunday Night Football. A pregame show, which also serves as a preview for Friday’s first-ever regular season game in Brazil (presented on Peacock), sets up the game between defending Super Bowl champs Kansas City Chiefs and quarterback Patrick Mahomes, hosting the Baltimore Ravens at Kansas City’s GEHA Field. Mike Tirico returns as play-by-play announcer, leading a team including analyst Cris Collinsworth and sideline reporter Melissa Stark.

The Perfect Couple

A lavish Nantucket wedding party becomes a crime scene in Emmy winner Susanne Bier’s enjoyably trashy and glossy adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s beach read, a fun post-Labor Day escape. Nicole Kidman swans around as the groom’s (Billy Howle) mother, a famous mystery novelist whose idea of security is forcing the outsider bride-to-be (Bad Sisters’ Eve Hewson) to sign an NDA. The festivities go awry when a body washes up on the beach, spoiling the “I do’s” as an investigation of the privileged toxic rich gets underway. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s Donna Lynne Champlin nearly steals the show as the unimpressed detective poking into their messy lives. The supporting cast includes Dakota Fanning, Meghann Fahy (The White Lotus) as the flirty maid of honor and Liev Schreiber as the groom’s cad of a dad.

Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist

The star power is just as impressive in an eight-part fact-based drama starring Kevin Hart as “Chicken Man,” a numbers-running hustler in 1970 Atlanta who thinks he’s hit the big time when he plans a splashy afterparty for a notorious New York gangster (Samuel L. Jackson) on the night of Muhammed Ali’s (Dexter Darden) comeback fight after his suspension from the sport. The boxer is a polarizing cultural lightning rod, especially in the South, but Chicken Man is undaunted in his wheeling and dealing—until his party is hijacked by masked robbers who have no idea that they’ve targeted some of the highest-ranking members of the Black Mafia. Vividly recreating the ’70s vibe in its look and technique, Fight Night also stars Don Cheadle as a pioneering and put-upon Black detective who needs to be convinced that Chicken Man wasn’t in on the heist, plus Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard of Empire fame. The series opens with three episodes.

Apollo 13: Survival

“Houston, we’ve had a problem.” With those ominous and historic words uttered from space in April 1970, the world held its breath as NASA engineers and Apollo 13 astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise scrambled to figure out a way to return to Earth safely after their service module was disabled by an explosion. Familiar to many through Ron Howard’s Oscar-winning 1995 film dramatizing the incident, the events are brought back to life in a new documentary from BAFTA-nominated director Peter Middleton, with audio recordings, never-seen film materials, and archival interviews with the crew, their families, and members of the official Houston team.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Rory Kinnear makes his first appearance in the epic fantasy as the iconic hermit Tom Bombadil, who encounters the bewildered Stranger (Daniel Weyman) during his search for his swept-away Harfoot friends. Playfully enigmatic, Tom is more direct in his warnings about the sinister forces of the Dark Wizard (Ciarán Hinds) and Sauron (Charlie Vickers): “If [they] combine into one, there will be no end to burning ’til all Middle-Earth is ashes.” Elsewhere in the sprawling story, the journeys of Galadriel (Robert Aramayo), and of Isildur (Ismael Cruz Córdova), are beset by the sort of harrowing monstrous encounters fans have come to expect.

INSIDE THURSDAY TV:

• Totally Funny Animals (9/8c, The CW): The humorous clip show moves into a new time period, followed by Totally Funny Kids (9:30/8:30c). Props to Animals for the best episode title of the week: “Top 10 Characters Cut from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats.”
• Trigger Point (streaming on Peacock): The nail-biting thriller from executive producer Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty) returns for a second season with a one-year time jump. Duty’s Vicky McClure stars as bomb disposal expert Lana Washington, back from a training mission in Ukraine and going undercover to unmask the members of a disruptive terrorist cell that targeted a power station.
• Coming from America (streaming on Max): An unscripted series follows several African American families as they return to their ancestral motherland of Africa to seek new opportunities and a better life, only to experience culture shock.