Daytime Emmys, Maya Rudolph in ‘Loot,’ ‘Great American Recipe,’ ‘Downton Abbey’ on Peacock

8/7c

Back again as it was last year on CBS, the Daytime Emmys celebrate the best in daytime and syndicated drama, talk and game shows. (Notably, while Jeopardy! is in the running for game show, neither of the hosts succeeding the late Alex Trebek are nominated.) Topping the nominations: CBS’s The Young and the Restless with 18. Entertainment Tonight’s Kevin Frazier and Nischelle Turner host from Pasadena.

Series Premiere

Maya Rudolph is, as ever, priceless as poor little rich woman Molly Novak. Money couldn’t buy her love—the divorce settlement from her cheating ex (Severance’s Adam Scott) was $87 billion—but maybe good works from the foundation she never even knew she had could make her a better person. The workplace comedy features Pose’s Michaela Jaé Rodriguez as the foundation’s skeptical executive director, Joel Kim Booster as Molly’s hilariously disdainful assistant, Ron Funches as her delightfully upbeat cousin and The Conners’ Nat Faxon as the hopelessly smitten, hopelessly square accountant who figures, “Nobody ends up choosing the dependable guy.” The comedy is uneven, but the feel-good vibe is worth its weight in bullion.

Series Premiere

9/8c

A new food competition celebrates the diversity of American cooking with contestants from divergent backgrounds—Vietnamese, Southern soul food, Italian, Syrian, Hungarian, Mexican and more. They display signature dishes each week to impress judges Graham Elliot, Leah Cohen and Tiffany Derry. Far from a cutthroat Top Chef battle, Recipe dishes out personal stories as the contestants describe family recipes and other inspirations. The winner will have one of their dishes displayed on the cover of The Great American Recipe Cookbook, which will include recipes from all of the show’s cooks and judges—and host Alejandra Ramos, Today food and lifestyle contributor.

Movie Premiere

If you (like me) missed your chance to watch one of your favorite shows on the big screen for the second time, Peacock adds the recent movie sequel to its Downton library of six seasons, the 2019 film and the 2016 The Manners of Downton Abbey special currently streaming. In A New Era, a movie crew sets up shop inside the Abbey while some of the Crawleys and their beloved staff head to the south of France for a holiday—and a chance to snoop into Countess Dowager Violet’s (Maggie Smith) scandalous past.

The race to Mars heats up, as does the pace of this gripping alt-history space drama as loyalties are tested when Helios tries to poach more NASA talent for its own mission aboard the retrofitted Polaris (now Phoenix) vessel. As the timeline for launch moves up, NASA chief Margo (Wrenn Schmidt) draws closer to her Soviet counterpart Sergei (Piotr Adamczyk) in ways that could prove perilous to both.

Inside Friday TV:

• Come Dance with Me (8/7c, CBS): In the dance contest’s season finale, the final three teams perform an encore of their routine the judges liked the most while taking on tricky new choreography in hopes of nabbing the $100,000 prize. The judges and choreographers also get to strut their stuff.
• American Anthems (10/9c, PBS, check local listings at pbs.org): In a literal demonstration of singing someone’s praises, a new series sends country stars out to local communities to meet everyday heroes, learning their stories that become inspirations for a new song. In the opener, Jennifer Nettles surprises the founder of a cancer foundation with just such an uplifting new tune.
• Trevor: The Musical (streaming on Disney+): 1994’s Oscar-winning coming-of-age (and coming out) short film inspired this off-Broadway musical. Holden William Hagelberger, 13, stars as teenage Trevor, whose story of self-discovery and self-worth led to the creation of the non-profit The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and mental health organization for LGBTQ youth.
• Rise (streaming on Disney+): An uplifting sports docudrama tells the origin story of NBA stars and brothers Giannis, Thanasis and Kostas Antetokounmpos and how their family emigrated from Nigeria to Greece, where they discovered the sport that would take them to the big time.
• Money Heist: Korea—Joint Economic Area (streaming on Netflix): The Spanish cult thriller gets a new translation with a series set in the Korean Peninsula, where a man known as the Professor assembles a team to raid the Korea Unified Mint.
• Chloe (streaming on Prime Video): Erin Doherty (The Crown’s Princess Anne) stars in a complex six-part psychological thriller as a woman obsessed with the seemingly charmed life of Chloe, a childhood friend whose death by apparent suicide prompts her to pretend to adopt a new identity and infiltrate Chloe’s inner circle.