CW’s ‘Good Cop/Bad Cop,’ Pixar’s ‘Win or Lose,’ Night at the Museum on PBS, ‘Prime Target’ on the Run

Good Cop/Bad Cop

A welcome addition to a TV season specializing in light procedurals (High Potential, Elsbeth and the like), this comedy/mystery hybrid stars Gossip Girl alum Leighton Meester and Australia’s Luke Cook (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), joining Wild Cards on Wednesday as TV’s latest crime-solving odd couple. The twist: They’re brother and sister, though estranged for years, after uptight Henry (Cook) wrote an editorial suggesting their dad Big Hank (Clancy Brown), the police chief of small-town Eden Vale, step down. Meester is Lou, the more agreeable and possibly too-nice sibling, who stayed in Eden Vale to work for her dad while the anti-social Henry joined the Seattle police, hitting a career wall because he can’t play nice. (Think The Big Bang Theory‘s Sheldon Cooper with a badge.) When Big Hank recruits Henry to the local squad to partner with Lou, it’s a mismatch only the viewer will find amusing.

Wild Cards

Elsewhere, the second season of the Canadian crime dramedy provides a very compatible lead-in for Good Cop/Bad Cop with the charismatic partnership of Detective Con Ellis (Giacomo Gianniotti) and con woman Max Mitchell (Vanessa Morgan). This week, they try to separate fact from fiction when an amnesiac biomedical engineer asks them to find his missing wife, who he believes was kidnapped by aliens.

Win or Lose

Pixar knows how to play the game, with Inside Out 2 the studio’s latest Oscar nominee. So don’t be surprised if Pixar’s first animated streaming series is a contender in this year’s Emmy race. Win or Lose takes an endearing and multi-faceted look at a coed middle-school softball team preparing for a State Championship game, with episodes focusing on various players — including the coach’s kid, Laurie (voiced by Rosie Foss), whose anxiety manifests in an imaginary blob called “Sweaty” (Jo Firestone) — as well as parents and a neurotic umpire. Regardless of the final score, they’re all winners.

Nature

The inexhaustible TV host Sir David Attenborough, now 98, has taken viewers all over the world in his specials about Earth’s natural wonders, and in an offbeat edition of Nature called Museum Alive, he brings nature alive — through CGI — in a colorful tour of London’s Natural History Museum. Even Attenborough is astonished to be in the presence of a saber-toothed tiger and a giant dinosaur. Who wouldn’t be? Followed by another blast from the past on Nova (9/8c), with “Pompeii’s Secret Underworld,” revealing new secrets from archaeological finds in the ruins of the ancient city that was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvian in A.D. 79.

Prime Target

The suspense in this often slow-burning thriller picks up the pace when the action moves from Baghdad to France, with brainy math prodigy Edward (Leo Woodall, also starring in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy) and his NSA protector Taylah (Quintessa Swindell) trying to stay off the grid while seeking an ancient parchment that could provide the “missing link” to Edward’s research into prime numbers. (The result of which could make him, in one spy’s words, “the most important person on the planet right now.”) Their search leads to a nail-biting escapade aboard the Channel Tunnel to the U.K. amid Edward’s growing suspicion that Taylah isn’t being entirely truthful about their predicament.

Also on Apple TV+: a new episode of the workplace comedy Mythic Quest, with Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao) and her creative partner Ian (Rob McElhenney) confronting the surprise news of her pregnancy: “I can barely take care of myself, let alone a kid,” frets the neurotic coding genius. Elsewhere, rising video-game creator Dana (Imani Hakim) attends the Apex Gaming Awards, with Cozy Galaxy nominated as Game of the Year and where a superfan could become her greatest nemesis.

INSIDE WEDNESDAY TV:

• The Masked Singer (8/7c, Fox): The theme is “Shrek Night,” and for someone in Group A, the mask will come off.
• Chicago Med (8/7c, NBC): Senior Attending OB/GYN Hannah (Jessy Schram) treats a religious woman with an ectopic pregnancy. Followed by Chicago Fire (9/8c), where paramedic Violet (Hanako Greensmith) comes to the aid of a former nemesis, and Chicago P.D. (10/9c), with Atwater’s (LaRoyce Hawkins) pet community-center project threatened by a street war.
• Secrets of the Dead (10/9c, PBS): In the first of a two-part documentary, Plunderer: The Life and Times of a Nazi Art Thief, historian Jonathan Petropoulos examines the life and crimes of Bruno Lohse (the “Plunderer”), a Nazi art dealer who profited from art looted during WWII.