‘Reservation Dogs’ Finale, Reality Takeover (‘Survivor’ & ‘Race’ Expand, ‘Snake Oil’ After ‘Masked Singer,’ Celebrity Games on ABC ‘Talent’ Results), UFO ‘Encounters’

Series Finale

Few shows have left us wanting more than this Peabody and AFI Award-winning dramedy about life in an Indigenous community in Oklahoma, signing off after three acclaimed seasons. Community is the theme of the bittersweet series finale, which hits all the emotions of joy, sadness, humor, hope and compassion for elders and youth alike. The framework is a ritual ceremony paying respects to a recently passed elder, bringing together characters from throughout the show’s run, while the title “Dogs” each face reckonings about their future. This is a world too rarely seen on TV and almost never treated with such irreverent respect. While Dogs will be missed, it’s always satisfying when a terrific series ends by its own design, showering its characters (and by extension its fans) with affection.

Season Premiere

8/7c

Here we go again. A new batch of 18 contestants, split into three tribes, embarks on the grueling social experiment, now in its 45th season (and 23rd year). Survivor has become such a familiar presence in the prime-time landscape it may be hard to remember what a breakthrough phenomenon it was in the summer of 2000. Expanding this season to 90-minute episodes, Survivor has a fan base so obsessive that this new crew is nearly overcome with giddiness during their first challenge, even before they reach land. At a memorably surprising first tribal council, the players on the bottom rung have to decide whether to eject the weakest or the weirdest player or maybe the one who seems most overwhelmed. As a player echoes the sentiment so often heard: “It looks easier when you’re on the couch.”

Season Premiere

9:30/8:30c

Also expanding to 90 minutes—because like most networks, CBS has nothing new to schedule at 10/9c during the strike-impacted fall—Race’s 35th season begins at the world-famous Hollywood sign, marking its 100th anniversary. For the first time since the pandemic, the 13 teams will be traveling the world on commercial flights. But first, it’s a short trip to downtown Los Angeles, where one member from each team walks a nerve-wracking tightrope between rooftops at the Biltmore Hotel. Then it’s off to Thailand.

Season Premiere

8/7c

Also marking a milestone, TV’s silliest singing competition launches its 10th season with five costumed secret celebrities performing before the audience and a panel of judges. A live-sized “S’more” is among the new characters, and look for a Donut, Anteater, Hawk and Hibiscus as the season progresses. (Who knows? You might even recognize the person underneath when unmasked, though there’s no guarantee.)

Series Premiere

9/8c

Think Shark Tank with To Tell the Truth subterfuge. Saturday Night Live alum David Spade hosts a potentially comical game show in which entrepreneurs pitch their dream projects to contestants who need to decipher which are for real and which are “snake oil.” Celebrity advisors (in the pilot, Rob Riggle and Michelle Williams) help the contestants decipher fact from fiction, with money prizes at stake.

Season Premiere

8/7c

The games continue with wall-to-wall celebrity participants in ABC prime time. Ken Jennings hosts the second season of Celebrity Jeopardy! with a typically eclectic group competing in the first quarterfinal. The Morning Show’s Mark Duplass faces Schitt’s Creek’s Emily Hampshire and Ghosts star Utkarsh Ambudkar. Followed by the Season 4 premiere of Celebrity Wheel of Fortune (9/8c), where Ted Lasso’s Brendan Hunt plays against Saturday Night Live veteran Melissa Villaseñor and sportscaster Joe Buck. The night ends with the The $100,000 Pyramid (10/9c) opening its seventh season with The Afterparty’s Tiffany Haddish taking on Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson in the first round, and Wayne Brady opposite comedian Joel Kim Booster in the second.

Season Finale

8/7c

A winning act will be named from the 11 finalists that performed Tuesday, with a $1 million prize and the chance to join the AGT show at the Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Season 18’s winner, the Mayyas, returns to perform as part of an all-star roster including Jon Batiste, Jason Derulo, Diane Warren, Thirty Seconds to Mars and celebrity chef Cat Cora.

Documentary Premiere

Close encounters of the allegedly extraterrestrial kind provide the speculative meat for a four-part docuseries that travels the globe to explore these accounts with eyewitness interviews and perspective from scientists and military personnel. Among the otherworldly happenings described: lights in the sky over Texas, submersible objects off the coast of Wales, schoolchildren encountering their own version of “E.T.” in Zimbabwe and a non-human intelligence disrupting a Japanese power plant.

The fictional sci-fi thriller about the Earth under alien attack also covers a lot of ground, from Wyoming to Paris to Brazil in just one episode as Season 2 enters its second half. The British schoolkids arrive in Paris, continuing their search for Caspar (Billy Barratt), who has a psychic link to the invaders—as does young Luke (Azhy Robertson), whose family is among an imperiled caravan seeking safety and answers in the American West. Making the most direct contact with an alien intelligence is Japanese scientist Mitsuki (cast standout Shioli Kutsuna) at the spacecraft crash site in Brazil, as their mind-probing communication takes an ominous turn. Also on Apple: the series finale of ’80s fitness dramedy Physical, the Season 1 finale of the animated Strange Planet, and a new episode of The Morning Show, where the embattled network’s CEO Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) may be forced to make a financial deal with the devil to keep the lights on.

INSIDE WEDNESDAY TV:

• Republican Presidential Debate (9 pm/ET, Fox Business Network, Fox News Channel, Univision): Broadcast from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, the second debate of candidates angling for the GOP nomination is once again missing the party’s front-runner. Fox News anchors Dana Perino and Stuart Varney moderate alongside Univision’s Ilia Calderón.
• Archer (10/9c, FXX): Archer and his spy team infiltrate a luxury plastic-surgery resort in Costa Rica, where the titular spy (H. Jon Benjamin) gets an unhappy diagnosis right out of Nip/Tuck: “This is the body of a man with no more second chances.” While the dispirited agent hunts for a drug kingpin who changes his appearance every five years, Lana (Aisha Tyler) is back at The Agency, learning a hard lesson about the payoffs involved in running a spy firm.
• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (streaming on Netflix): Benedict Cumberbatch stars with Ralph Fiennes and Ben Kingsley in Wes Anderson’s whimsical short film, based on Roald Dahl’s fable about a wealthy man who seeks out a guru who can see without using his eyes in hopes of learning to use this skill to cheat at gambling.
• Love in Fairhope (streaming on Hulu): Shades of The Hills in an “unscripted romantic series” in which five women seek love in a small Alabama town “where fantasy and reality collide.”
• CNN Max (streaming on Max): A new 24/7 news hub, featuring CNN anchors with original and network programming including Anderson Cooper 360 and The Lead with Jake Tapper, sets up shop at the streamer.