Academy of Country Music Honors, Dueling Monday Night Football Games, Sean Penn Visits Ukraine in ‘Superpower,’ Freevee’s Aussie ‘Neighbours,’ Acorn’s Tasty New Sleuth

8/7c

On a night originally designated for the Emmy Awards (postponed because of the strikes until January), Fox pivots with the 16th annual ceremony (the second airing on the network) honoring country stars. Recipients include Chris Stapleton, Clint Black, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tim McGraw, K.T. Oslin, Kane Brown and more. Carly Pearce hosts for the third year and performs, with other headliners including Lady A, Keith Urban, Trisha Yearwood, BRELAND, The War and Treaty and many more.

Billed as “Two Games, One Night” over two networks, Monday Night Football isn’t likely to repeat the drama of last week’s blink-and-you-missed-it calamity of Aaron Rodgers’ short-lived debut as the Jets’ new QB. And yet it’s a full slate of gridiron action, with New Orleans at Carolina on ESPN getting an hour’s jump on Cleveland at Pittsburgh on ABC (the latter simulcast on ESPN+). Expect a double-box view when appropriate and score boxes keeping football fans apprised of what’s happening on the field they’re not watching.

Documentary Premiere

Actor-activist-filmmaker Sean Penn began filming (with co-director Aaron Kaufman) what was intended as a documentary profile of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in late 2021, and he was in Kyiv when the Russian invasion began in February 2022. Superpower is both an intimate portrait of the unlikely leader, initially known as an actor and comedian, and an on-the-ground report of a country and people under siege.

Series Premiere

The long-running Australian soap, about life on the suburban Melbourne cul-de-sac of Ramsay Street, helped launch the careers of Margot Robbie, Kylie Minogue, Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe among others during its initial 30-plus-year run through 2022. The series is now being revived, taking a two-year time jump, with episodes streaming Mondays through Thursdays. (Previous seasons with highlighted special episodes are also available as a refresher, with two FAST Channels also devoted to the show.)

Series Premiere

A BBC Radio light mystery comes to life in a four-part British series of feature-length puzzles involving gifted caterer-turned-parttime sleuth Mrs. Sidhu (Meera Syal, who also voiced the character on radio), whose gigs somehow always overlap with murder. (Wonder if Jessica Fletcher was ever a client.) In the opener, her catering job at a high-end health club gets complicated when two bodies turn up at the spa and her niece becomes the prime suspect. As Mrs. Sidhu investigates, she invariably butts heads with the gruff Inspector Burton (Craig Parkinson), who has no use for this busybody. Until he does.

INSIDE MONDAY TV:

• Them! (8/7c, Turner Classic Movies): As a kid, I was obsessed with B-horror movies of the ’50s and ’60s dealing with giant bugs, and TCM is delivering a full night of creepy-crawlers, starting with the 1954 spectacular about radioactive giant ants. Followed by 1955’s Tarantula (10/9c), the Japanese Mothra (11:30/10:30c), and overnight, 1960’s The Wasp Woman, 1957’s’ The Black Scorpion (this gave me nightmares) and 1958’s The Cosmic Monster.
• American Ninja Warrior (8/7c, NBC): A “couples special” features teams of two competing relay style on the grueling obstacle course.
• Son of a Critch (8/7c, The CW): When the men are left running the household on this nostalgic Canadian family comedy while mom (Claire Rankin) goes to the hospital for a procedure, young Mark (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) is overwhelmed and gives Pop (Malcolm McDowell) the wrong meds.
• Bulls and Saints (10/9c, PBS): A POV documentary charts the reverse migration of an undocumented family living in North Carolina trying to find a way to get back home to Mexico.
• Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen (12:37 am/11:30c, CBS): The roundtable talk show featuring top comedians sets up shop in late night for a limited run, with back-to-back episodes.
• Futurama (streaming on Hulu): An episode involving a fateful encounter with space royalty keeps getting interrupted by mock sponsors, transforming our animated heroes into wind-up toys, Hot Wheels-style cars and rubber duckies.