Remembering Princess Diana, Olympics Final Weekend, ‘Family Game Fight,’ J.J. Abrams’ ‘UFO’

PBS reflects on Princess Diana’s short life and long legacy in a new edition of In Their Own Words. The Tokyo Olympics wraps up competition in advance of Sunday’s Closing Ceremony. Immediately afterward, NBC launches a new slapstick game show. Showtime presents a four-part docuseries feeding our never-ending obsession with UFOs.

Princess Diana and Prince Charles
Princess Diana Archive/Getty Images

In Their Own Words

SUNDAY: Last month marked the 40th anniversary of the royal wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, and she also would have turned 60. Frozen in time as a glamorous ex-royal who died too young with so much yet to accomplish on the world stage, Diana’s brief existence and long shadow are explored in the latest edition of the series that uses the subject’s own words as a biographical framework. Historians, biographers and friends are also interviewed in this portrait that recounts her turbulent personal life while championing her humanitarian causes.

(Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

SATURDAY & SUNDAY: The torch will go out after the athletes, those still remaining in Tokyo, take their final bows in an annual ritual that brings these most unusual Summer Games to a close. (Peacock streams it live on Sunday at 7 am/ET.) Before then, many gold-medal finals can be seen across NBC’s many platforms. Saturday’s prime-time package (8/7c) includes live coverage of the men’s marathon. Stay up later to catch the women’s basketball final between USA and Japan (10:30/9:30c) and the women’s volleyball final between USA and Brazil (1:30 am/12:30c). For a complete listing of events, and where and when to watch, go to nbcolympics.com/schedule.

NBC

Family Game Fight!

Series Premiere

SUNDAY: Wasting no time getting back to business, NBC resumes its summer lineup of game-show-heavy programming with an abbreviated version of its latest offering: a slapstick team competition hosted by Kristen Bell and her loving husband Dax Shepard, who also participate in many of the word-association games. (Fans of Ellen will be well acquainted with their act.) Pies in the face and dousings of ice water are among the messy staples, with a rousing “Spin Cycle” final round in which the host couple acts out or draws clues to help the winning team earn a potential $100,000 payday.

SHOWTIME

UFO

Series Premiere

SUNDAY: J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot company is behind the latest TV investigation into those eerie aerial sightings from space, questioning what the government and the Pentagon may be hiding from their own widely publicized reports. The four-part series borrows from New York Times reporting and features eyewitness testimony from across the U.S. as UFO revisits many of the most famous encounters, including the 2006 Chicago O’Hare saucer sighting. (All four episodes are available to Showtime subscribers on its digital platforms starting Sunday, for those who’d rather not wait for the weekly linear rollout.)

'Sweet Revenge: A Hannah Swensen Mystery' Stars Cameron Mathison and Alison Sweeney
Marcel Williams/Crown Media

Sweet Revenge

Movie Premiere

SUNDAY: No longer calling itself Murder, She Baked, the Hannah Swensen franchise otherwise is just as cozy a murder mystery as ever, as baker Hannah (Alison Sweeney) looks into the suspicious killing of a 24-hour gym’s spin instructor alongside detective fiancé Mike (Cameron Mathison). Barbara Niven (Chesapeake Shores) also returns as Hannah’s mom, Delores, who’s celebrating the release of her latest Regency romance novel.

Nicola Walker Sanjeev Bhaskar Cassie Sunny Unforgotten
Courtesy of Mainstreet Pictures LTD

Unforgotten

SUNDAY: Nothing will ever be quite the same for the cold-case detective squad after the shattering events in the penultimate episode of the Masterpiece import’s gripping fourth season. Partners Cassie (Nicola Walker) and Sunny (Sanjeev Bhaskar) are edging ever closer to the truth behind the murder cover-up that involves several suspects still in the police department. The investigation isn’t just blowing up their lives, it’s creating more turmoil for an exhausted Cassie, who’s more than ready to retire.

Round Two for Drama:

Two provocative cable dramas begin their second seasons on Sunday. On the Epix historical mob drama Godfather of Harlem (9/8c), Harlem’s Bumpy Johnson (Forest Whitaker) emerges from three months of hiding from rival boss Chin Gigante (Vincent D’Onofrio) to receive a prestigious award, while forging bonds with European suppliers that might make it safe to reunite with his family. Showtime’s The L Word: Generation Q (10/9c) resumes with big changes within L.A.’s LGBTQ community, including for Shane (Katherine Moennig), who gets pulled into the city’s poker scene in the wake of her divorce, anything to keep her bar’s lights on.

Inside Weekend TV:

  •  The Bunker Boom: Better Safe Than Sorry (Saturday, 9/8c, CNN): A two-week anthology of short documentary films concludes with a report on survivalists living off the grid in rural South Dakota. Followed by Lessons from the Water: Diving with a Purpose (9:30/8:30c), profiling an organization of Black scuba divers seeking to uncover new historical details about the nearly 500 voyages shipwrecked during the slave trade.
  • Sunday Night Baseball (Sunday, 7 pm/ET, ABC): For the first time in its 32-year history, the Sunday night game airs exclusively on ABC, with an interleague matchup between the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.
  • Blindspotting (Sunday, 9/8c, Starz): In the season finale of the acclaimed movie’s well-regarded spinoff, Ashley (Jasmine Cephas Jones) finally takes her young son Sean (Atticus Woodward)—along with the whole family—to see his incarcerated dad, Miles (the film’s star Rafael Casal) in prison.