What’s Worth Watching: ‘The X-Files’, ‘Galavant’, ‘Downton Abbey’ and more for Sunday, January 24

The X-Files (approximately 10/9c, following the NFC Championship game): It’s a big day for winning teams—first in football, as the Patriots and Broncos battle for the AFC Championship on CBS (3:05/2:05c), then the Cardinals and Panthers face off for the NFC Championship on Fox (6:40/5:40c). The latter game delivers a huge potential audience to the long-awaited comeback of The X-Files, with Agents Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) once again embroiled in conspiracy and mystery for six episodes. The opener, written and directed by series creator Chris Carter, overreaches by trying to flip the show’s daunting mythology on its head, but when the show moves to Mondays on Jan. 25 (8/7c), the stand-alone escapades are more fun.

Galavant (8/7c, ABC): With the finale looming in just a week for this charmingly kooky musical-comedy diversion, a mortally wounded Galavant (Joshua Sasse) is rushed to a healer named Neo of Sporin—no, the puns have not grown in sophistication—who helps the knight rally an army. Of zombies. Let the battle between Hortensia and Valencia (those are kingdoms, not princesses) commence!

Downton Abbey (9/8c, PBS, check local listings at pbs.org): Yay, Tom Branson (Allen Leech) is back, and he’s not the only familiar face evoking the memory of beloved Sybil in the most satisfying episode yet in the final season. Matthew Goode, as racing enthusiast Henry Talbot, returns to raise the pulse of Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), while the household dithers on what to call the newly married Mrs. Hughes-or-is-it-Carson? “It’s like Jane Eyre asking to be called Mrs. Rochester,” muses the visiting Lady Rosamund (Samantha Bond). Oh, how we’ll miss these people.

The Circus (8/7c, Showtime): Last week’s premiere tagged along with the campaigns of the mavericks: Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz. Now the political reporters turn their gaze to the more establishment GOP candidates still hoping to break out against the upstart outsiders: Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich.

Billions (10/9c, Showtime): Jerry O’Connell (as a disgraced billionaire) and Penn Jillette (as an MC at a swank fundraiser) are among the guest stars in the second episode of the slick high-finance melodrama, which reveals new levels of arrogance in combatants Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis) and U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti). No one’s scarier, though, than Hall (Terry Kinney), Axe’s shadowy fixer, who goes to great sordid lengths to get leverage on a mole within Rhoades’ office.