‘Succession,’ ‘Yellowjackets’ Lead an Epic Sunday, Kiefer Sutherland in ‘Rabbit Hole,’ Eva Longoria in Mexico, ‘Great Expectations,’ Hallmark’s ‘Ride’

Season Premiere

9/8c

SUNDAY: The Emmy-winning drama isn’t playing it safe heading into a fourth and final season, going out with a bang as the Roy media family implodes upon itself amid a flurry of betrayals, back-channel deal making and cruel manipulations. As one relative observes: “It’s like Jaws, if everyone in Jaws worked for Jaws.” Stirring the venom in the sea of sharks is patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox), who conspired to cut his offspring out of a pending deal to sell the Waystar Royco media conglomerate. The kids Logan calls “rats”—Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv (Sarah Snook)—aren’t taking this setback lightly. Business is always personal on Succession, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. (See the full review.)

Season Premiere

9/8c

SUNDAY: If Succession is caviar laced with vinegar, Showtime’s berserk thriller is an extra-large stuffed-crust pizza (don’t ask about the stuffing) with a side of LSD. Trippy, terrifying and titillating, the show returns for a second season, toggling between the grisly survival story of a girls’ high-school soccer team crash-landed in the wilderness 25 years ago and the present-day intrigues of the adult survivors. Servant’s Lauren Ambrose joins the cast as the adult Van, with Simone Kessell the grown-up Lottie, now the spiritual leader of a cult compound, worried that the dark forces they succumbed to back in the day have come back to haunt them. For comic relief, Elijah Wood guest-stars as a citizen detective joining forces with Christina Ricci’s wacky scene-stealer Misty. (See the full review.)

Series Premiere

SUNDAY: Making a welcome return to save-the-world TV, 24’s Kiefer Sutherland broods antiheroically as John Weir, a corporate dirty-tricks specialist (“Pardon me my lack of shame”) who falls into an elaborate trap that renders him a fugitive. Deception piles upon deception in a conspiracy thriller that manages to find flashes of wry humor in its patchwork of illusion. (See the full review.)

Series Premiere

10/9c

SUNDAY: The former Desperate Housewives star, a self-described “Texican,” masters the universal language of “Wow” in a caliente companion series to the Emmy-winning Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy. She gushes—and who can blame her?—while traveling through her ancestral land, devouring every sumptuous morsel put before her. The journey begins in Mexico City, which she considers her second home.

Series Premiere

SUNDAY: From FX comes an edgy six-part adaptation from Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight of the Charles Dickens classic, which charts the unsentimental education of orphaned Pip (Tom Sweet as a child, Fionn Whitehead as the young adult), who seeks to become a gentleman in the rigid class structure of Victorian England. His guide, more’s the pity, is the embittered and ghoulish Miss Havisham (the reliably riveting Olivia Colman), who has groomed her lovely adopted ward Estella (Shalom Brune-Franklin) in all the wrong ways. Look for What We Do in the Shadows’ Matt Berry as the delightfully monikered Mr. Pumblechook, the go-between who introduces young Pip to the ogre in tattered wedding regalia.

Series Premiere

9/8c

SUNDAY: For those seeking something a bit more family-friendly, consider Hallmark’s latest drama, a contemporary Western-styled dynastic soap about a Colorado rodeo clan, the McMurrays, led by matriarch Isabel (Last Man Standing’s Nancy Travis). In the wake of a tragedy, the family struggles to keep the operation afloat while romantic complications threaten to throw a few of the younger riders off their saddles. Think Yellowstone with a lot less swearing.

INSIDE WEEKEND TV:

• NCAA Basketball Tournament: The Men’s Elite 8 play Saturday (6:09 pm/ET and 8:49 pm/ET, TBS) and Sunday (2 pm/ET and 5 pm/ET, CBS) to decide the Final Four, while the Women’s Sweet 16 round concludes Saturday (starting at 11:30 am/ET on ESPN), with the Elite Eight beginning play Sunday (7 pm/ET and 9 pm/ET on ESPN).
• Every Breath She Takes (Saturday, 8/7c, Lifetime): Tamala Jones is an abused wife who fears she’s being gaslighted after a fire destroys her home and kills her husband. Or did it?
• Picture of Her (Saturday, 8/7c, Hallmark Channel): When Beth (Rhiannon Fish) finds her image on a magazine’s cover, she goes searching for the shutterbug (Tyler Hynes) who snapped the pic.
• 60 Minutes (Sunday, 7/6c, CBS): Following the NCAA action, Jon Wertheim profiles NBA Hall of Famer-turned-broadcaster Charles Barkley. Scott Pelley examines breakthroughs in prosthetics tech that can restore a sense of touch.
• 24th Mark Twain Prize for American Humor (Sunday, 8/7c, CNN): Among those gathering at the Kennedy Center to honor recipient Adam Sandler: Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Steve Buscemi, Conan O’Brien, Judd Apatow and fellow SNL alums Chris Rock and David Spade.
• The Way Home (Sunday, 8/7c, Hallmark Channel): The time-tripping family drama sends Kat (Chyler Leigh) and daughter Alice (Sadie Laflamme-Snow) back to 2000 to observe Colton’s (Jefferson Brown) funeral in the Season 1 finale, while Kat has an epiphany concerning brother Jacob’s disappearance.
• The Equalizer (Sunday, 8/7c, CBS): Donal Logue returns as ex-CIA agent Colton Fisk, working with Robyn (Queen Latifah) and the team to connect murders within a marine biology research group to a secret spy program.
• Godfather of Harlem (Sunday, 9/8c, MGM+): In the Season 3 finale, Bumpy (Forest Whitaker) turns to Morganthau (Justin Bartha) to help prevent rivals Columbo (Michael Raymond-James) and Battle (Yul Vasquez) from bringing heroin, guns and cocaine into his territory.
• Housebroken (Sunday, 9:30/8:30c, Fox): The second season of the animated comedy about talking pets opens with Chief (Nat Faxon), the easygoing St. Bernard, befriended by a gorgeous pooch who may have a secret agenda.
• Marie Antoinette (10/9c, PBS): The seductive Madame du Barry (Gaia Weiss) shifts from mentor to conniving rival when King Louis XV (James Purefoy) begins taking a special interest in the sexually frustrated Dauphine Marie (Emilia Schüle), who still can’t get her mate the future king (Louis Cunningham) to consummate the marriage.