Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, Formula 1 on Netflix, Remembering George Jones, Familiar Face on ‘Blue Bloods’

What is the tournament we’ve long been waiting for? Answer: the annual Tournament of Champions, long delayed by the writers’ strike and following what seems an endless run of Champions Wildcard and Second Chance contests. Ken Jennings welcomes back the biggest field in Jeopardy! history, with 27 quarterfinalists including six players from the Wildcard competitions, the winner of the High School Reunion tournament and Ike Barinholtz, the first Celebrity Jeopardy! champion. They’ll be playing for nine spots in the semifinals, which begin March 7, with the best-of-seven finals starting March 12. For those keeping score, the player with the longest streak—21-game winner Cris Pannullo—appears on Monday.

Season Premiere

A very different sort of sport gets the spotlight in the sixth season of the influential behind-the-scenes docuseries that launched a subgenre of immersive sports shows on the streamer. Over 10 episodes, Drive to Survive follows Formula 1 racers and their teams as they battle it out for supremacy on the road to the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship.

Special

Recently and memorably brought to life by Michael Shannon in Showtime’s docudrama George & Tammy, country legend George Jones is remembered on the 10^th anniversary of his passing in a concert special filmed last April at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Among the A-list talent saluting Jones in song: Travis Tritt (“The Race Is On”), Dierks Bentley (“Why Baby Why”), Lorrie Morgan (“A Picture of Me Without You”), Sara Evans (“She Still Things I Care”), Wynonna with Jamey Johnson (“Golden Ring”), Gretchen Wilson (“I Always Get Lucky With You”), Tanya Tucker (“The Grand Tour”), Jelly Roll (“Bartender’s Blues”) and Brad Paisley (“He Stopped Loving Her Today”).

10/9c

As the venerable police and family drama continues the first half of its final season, don’t be surprised when characters return from the show’s past. Enter Jackie Curatola (Jennifer Esposito from Seasons 1-3), a former partner of Danny’s (Donnie Wahlberg), who teams with him and Baez (Marisa Ramirez) after a serial killer reappears. Will Hochman is back as Joe Hill, who gets on Jamie’s (Will Estes) wrong side after interfering with his uncle’s undercover work. And Commissioner Frank’s (Tom Selleck) testy relationship with Mayor Chase (Dylan Walsh) isn’t likely to improve when he hears the mayor is thinking about bringing back a Commission of Police.

Series Premiere

The voice talent is out of this world in a frenetic animated sci-fi/medical comedy—think Grey’s Anatomy meets Scrubs in outer space. Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All at Once) and Keke Palmer (Password) are doctors Sleech and Klak, who bond over medical crises and amorous angst with assists from Poker Face’s Natasha Lyonne as sardonic Nurse Tup and Maya Rudolph as the robot Dr. Vlam. The regular cast also includes Succession  Emmy winner Kieran Culkin, who in one episode is reunited with his sibs Macaulay, Rory, Christian and Shane.

INSIDE FRIDAY TV:

• RuPaul’s Drag Race (8/7c, MTV): Kyra Sedgwick is the guest judge when the queen-testants play the annual “Snatch Game,” with All Stars winner Chad Michaels popping into the “workroom” to offer support.
• S.W.A.T. (8/7c, CBS): The two-part season opener concludes with Hondo (Shemar Moore) and Hicks (Patrick St. Esprit) looking for a missing Powell (Anna Enger Ritch) and a deadly bomb in Mexico City.
• True Crime Watch: ABC’s 20/20 (9/8c) reports on the bizarre 2018 murder in Orlando of Shanti Cooper-Tronnes, whose husband David was convicted of killing her because she refused to appear with him on a home-renovation TV show. Dateline NBC (9/8c) dives into the wrongful-conviction story of Christopher Tapp, who spent 20 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and whose life after exoneration took another tragic twist.
• Fire Country (9/8c, CBS): Series star Kevin Alejandro (Manny Perez) directs a tense episode in which a bonfire party leads to a perilous cave rescue.
• Crime Time: Freefall (9/8c, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries): Lyndie Greenwood (The Expanse) stars as Hadley Warner, the former star of a TV crime series who, upon retiring to a small town, teams with an actual detective (Luke Macfarlane) to solve her first real case.
• CMT Campfire Sessions (10/9c, CMT): Country star Darius Rucker is this week’s headliner on the intimate concert series.

ON THE STREAM:

• Jenny Slate: Seasoned Professional (streaming on Prime Video): “I want to be brave for love,” quirky comedian Jenny Slate insists in a revealing and buzzed-about stand-up comedy special.
• Mea Culpa (streaming on Netflix): In writer/director Tyler Perry’s steamy legal melodrama, Kelly Rowland is Mea, a criminal defense lawyer whose case involving an artist (Trevante Rhodes) accused of murder gets seriously personal.
• Earthsounds (streaming on Apple TV+): Listen up! This enthralling 12-part nature series, narrated by Tom Hiddleston, zeroes in on the sounds of nature, using cutting-edge audio technology in locations from the Himalayas to the Australian forests, the African plains and deserts, the polar extremes and the Atlantic coasts.
• Masters of the Air (streaming on Apple TV+): Now past its halfway point, the WWII drama finds pilot Rosie (Nate Mann) sent against his wishes on mandatory R&R, while Crosby (Anthony Boyle) makes a new acquaintance (A Small Light’s wonderful Bel Powley) in London at a conference. Not having such a great time: downed pilot Bucky (Callum Turner), an eyewitness to the depths of Nazi horrors.
• History of Evil (streaming on Shudder): The Vampire Diaries’ Paul Wesley and Orange Is the New Black’s Jackie Cruz star in a thriller about a political prisoner who escapes with her family to take shelter in a (what else) haunted house.
• Priscilla (streaming on Max): Sofia Coppola’s drama about the relationship between Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) and Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) makes its streaming debut.