Wynonna Hosts ‘Christmas at the Opry,’ Meet the Real Cary Grant (as ‘Archie’), ‘Frasier’s Christmas Finale, ‘Coach Prime’ on Prime Video

Special

8/7c

There will be a joyful noise bursting from the stage of Nashville’s iconic Grand Ole Opry when Wynonna Judd welcomes fellow country stars to sing holiday classics in front of a live audience for a two-hour music special. Guests include Trace Adkins, Breland, Mickey Guyton and Kelly Clarkson (who duets with Judd on “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem”). They all gather to perform the rollicking “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” with Brenda Lee, the legend who introduced the song back in 1958 when she was just 13. (The song just topped the Billboard 100 chart for the first time.)

Series Premiere

Currently Turner Classic Movies’ star of the month, Cary Grant was a towering superstar of immense charm, but he’d be the first to admit, as he does in this clichéd biographical miniseries, “I made him up—the perfect man—in order to survive.” Jason Isaacs (Star Trek: Discovery) plays the adult version of the film star, born as Archie Leach in Bristol, England, with a sad childhood worthy of Dickens. Once he arrives in the U.S. with a vaudeville acrobatic troupe, handsome and ambitious Archie/Cary soon finds his ways into the movies. Archie toggles between his early days and his later career in the 1960s, when he cashes in on his celebrity with personal appearances while wooing his future fourth wife Dyan Cannon (Laura Aikman), who doesn’t quite know what to make of a guy who likes eating burgers in bed. (Not to be confused with Netflix’s The Archies, also streaming today, a Bollywood-style musical comedy from India adapting the famous comic-book characters.)

Season Finale

The sitcom reboot closes its first season with a well-timed Christmas episode, in which Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) goes predictably overboard in planning a lavish holiday party, with complications including a delivery of too many trees, a live goose on the loose and Eve’s (Jess Salgueiro) more popular gathering across the hall. Stick with it for a somewhat surprise (though previously reported) blast from Frasier’s past, bringing much-needed cheer to the pompous, self-pitying Crane.

Season Premiere

The docuseries following Deion “Prime Time” Sanders’ post-NFL career as a college football coach devotes its six-episode second season to his move to the University of Colorado Boulder program for the 2023 season. It’s a rebuilding year for the Colorado Buffaloes, which took full advantage of the transfer portal, with 46 players leaving and 50 transferring in—including nine from Sanders’ previous gig at Jackson State, including sons Shedeur and Shilo and high-profile recruit Travis Hunter.

INSIDE THURSDAY TV:

• NBA In-Season Tournament Semifinals: ESPN broadcasts the first semi-final of the inaugural tournament (5 pm/ET) with the Pacers vs. the Bucks, and TNT picks up the other semifinal between the Pelicans and the Lakers (9 pm/ET) from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The final game will be played Saturday night on ABC.
• The Yule Log: Hallmark Movies & Mysteries’ To All a Good Night (8/7c) stars Kimberley Sustad as a photographer who saves the life of a mystery man (Mark Ghanimé) who may be planning to buy the parkland where the annual Christmas celebration is held. Lifetime Movie Network counters with Silent Night, Fatal Night (8/7c), a Misery-lite thriller featuring Alex Camacho as a famous mystery writer whose manager (Matthew Pohlkamp) takes her prisoner over the holidays when she decides to end her best-selling detective franchise. Streaming on BET+: Never Alone for Christmas, with Mignon Von and Allen Maldonado as exes who end up at the same Cajun Christmas retreat.
• Bachelor in Paradise (8/7c, ABC): The three-hour season finale continues to test relationships in tropical Mexico during the first-ever Paradise wedding.
• The Price Is Right at Night: Blind Holidate (8/7c, CBS): The pricing game feels more like The Dating Game when a matchmaker pairs up contestants in an audience full of singles.
• Ghosts UK (9/8c, CBS): The haunted Button House becomes a viral sensation when Fanny’s (Martha Howe-Douglas) image somehow appears in a photograph posted on social media.
• Southern Hospitality (9/8c, Bravo): It’s drama time in Season 2 for the reality show’s Republic nightclub crew in Charleston when Lucia loses her job. Manager Maddi has her own issues—namely, a cheating rumor that could derail her relationship.
• Dateline NBC (10/9c, NBC): Josh Mankiewicz reports on the 2020 disappearance and murder of Nevada cowgirl Britney Ujlaky in 2020.

ON THE STREAM:

• World War II: From the Frontlines (streaming on Netflix); From Great Britain, a docuseries uses enhanced archival footage and commentary from all sides of the conflict to bring WWII to vivid life.
• My Life with the Walter Boys (streaming on Netflix): Think “Torn Between Two Brothers” when newly orphaned teenager Jackie (Nikki Rodriguez) leaves Manhattan for Colorado, landing in a classic love triangle.
• The Lovers (streaming on Sundance Now): A romcom set in Belfast brings together Seamus (Johnny Flynn), a conceited political broadcaster from London, and Janet (Roisin Gallagher), an ill-tempered supermarket worker.
• The Black Hamptons (streaming on BET+): Season 2 of the soapy drama set in Sag Harbor welcomes new cast members including Richard Lawson (as Britton family patriarch Moses), Steven Williams (as billionaire Alexander Cora) and RonReaco Lee as boxing champ Bobby “The Beast” Boyd.
• Hush (streaming on ALLBLK): Also back for a second season: the steamy drama about the misadventures of embattled sex therapist and TV personality Draya Logan (Joyful Drake).