Strongest vs. Smartest on ‘Beast Games,’ ‘Abbott’ Goes to the Mall, True Crime With Harlan Coben, ‘Masked Singer’ Returns

Beast Games

Scrooge McDuck would have a field day diving into the mountain of cash that hovers over this anything-for-money competition, a greed-forward hybrid of Squid Game and American Ninja Warrior that Prime Video touts as its highest-rated unscripted series. Everything about Beast Games in Season 2 is big: the sets, the stunts, the initial cast of 100 “Smart” players vs. 100 “Strong” contestants, vying for a staggering $5 million prize. As the relentlessly chipper and grinning ringleader, YouTube sensation Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson wastes no time whittling the group down, bellowing like a carnival barker while offering bribes to alter the game. The season opens with three episodes.

Abbott Elementary

“Looks like I’m gonna need a bigger mop,” grumbles sage custodian Mr. Johnson (William Stanford Davis) as the staff surveys their unwelcoming new digs: an abandoned shopping mall, haphazardly converted into classrooms for the winter term while repairs continue on the embattled Philadelphia elementary school. Janine (Quinta Brunson) embraces the move with her customary “fresh start” optimism, but others aren’t quite so enthused. As the kids run riot and adult-scaled bathrooms create another obstacle, Jacob (Chris Perfetti) sees the situation as a metaphor for failed capitalism while Gregory (Tyler James Williams) observes, “Kids are about to learn long division in an abandoned Hollister.” As if public education didn’t already have enough challenges.

Harlan Coben’s Final Twist

The author of many best-selling thrillers (several of which have been adapted into Netflix series), Harlan Coben turns his gaze to twisted true-crime narratives as narrator of a stranger-than-fiction docuseries. “In a world where digital deception moves faster than fact, it doesn’t take a novel for fiction to become the motive for murder,” Coben says, guiding the viewer through a bizarre account of catfishing, cyberbullying, and social-media manipulation that culminated in the 2012 double homicide of young Tennessee parents Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth.

The Masked Singer

The 14th season of the whimsical singing competition is going to the dogs: one dubbed Pugcasso, another Queen Corgi, to name just a few of this year’s costumed contestants. (Others include Scarab, The Croissants, Stingray, and Galaxy Girl.) The two-hour premiere introduces five of the elaborately cloaked performers to panelists Rita Ora, Robin Thicke, Jenny McCarthy-Wahlberg, and Ken Jeong, leading to the season’s first double unmasking.

Marcello Hernandez: American Boy

A breakout star from the current cast of Saturday Night Live, which he joined in 2022 as the first ensemble player from Gen Z, Marcello Hernández puts his Domingo persona aside for a night to reveal humorous sides of his real self in his debut stand-up comedy special. Performing before an audience in his Miami hometown, Marcello riffs on growing up as a first-generation American.

INSIDE WEDNESDAY TV:

• Shifting Gears (8/7c, ABC): A dispute over a dog in the house spurs Riley (Kat Dennings) to consider moving her and the kids of Matt’s (Tim Allen) home.
• Chicago Med (8/7c, NBC): The staff takes stock of their choices made during a power outage. Followed by new episodes of Chicago Fire (9/8c), where Severide (Taylor Kinney) searches for an arsonist, and Chicago P.D. (10/9c).
• Hollywood Squares (8/7c, CBS): Glenn Close joins the fun in back-to-back episodes of the game show. Followed by The Price Is Right at Night (9/8c).
• Alaska State Troopers (8/7c, A&E): After more than 10 years, the reality series (previously shown on National Geographic Channel) returns with more exploits of the law-enforcement officers who patrol the sprawling state. Followed by the Season 2 premiere of Ozark Law (9/8c) and the series premiere of Desert Law (10/9c), following the Sheriff’s Department of Arizona’s Pima County.
• Ugliest House in America (8/7c, HGTV): Retta resumes her nationwide tour of unappealing domiciles in Season 7, with stops in the Great Plains, where one house resembles a dog, and the Midwest, where too much glitter dims the luster of a Victorian home.
• Tyler Perry’s Sistas (9/8c, BET): The romantic dramedy returns for a 10th season
• Expedition X (9/8c, Discovery): Jack Osbourne guests on the Season 11 premiere, teaming with fellow paranormal investigator Heather Amaro to explore a literal “ghost town” of an abandoned mining village in Vulture City, Arizona.
• My Strange Addiction (9/8c, TLC): The seventh season opens with vignettes profiling an obsessed bodybuilder and a woman who blends and snorts all of her meals. Followed by the Season 5 premiere of Save My Skin (10/9c).
• Neighborhood Watch (9:30/8:30c, HGTV): A new series uses household security cameras, smart doorbells, nanny cams, and other surveillance tools to capture hilarious and bizarre domestic situations.
• Shark Tank (10/9c, ABC): Good Morning America‘s Michael Strahan pays his second visit to the tank, hearing pitches alongside the regular sharks for products including a solution for nosebleeds and precision golf tees.
• Weathered: After the L.A. Firestorm (10/9c, PBS): A documentary revisits the neighborhoods ravaged by last year’s Los Angeles wildfires to show how residents are rebuilding and fire leaders are creating a blueprint for other communities experiencing natural disasters.
• Leader’s Playbook (10/9c, CNBC): The business channel’s Julia Boorstin hosts a series of interviews with top American CEOs, opening with Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos and CCO Bela Bajaria. A second episode goes “Inside Shake Shack.”
• The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (11:30/10:30c, NBC): Hudson Williams, an overnight star of HBO Max‘s gay hockey sensation Heated Rivalry, makes his late-night interview debut, the first (and surely not the last) for any lead cast member of the breakthrough series. (In fact, his co-star Connor Storrie is scheduled to appear on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Monday.)

ON THE STREAM:

• Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska Live (streaming on Hulu): Filmed in stark black and white, the superstar performs songs from his acclaimed 1982 album on an intimate soundstage.
• The Ms. Pat Show (streaming on BET+): The raucous sitcom that isn’t afraid to tackle the tough issues returns for a fifth season.
• Unlocked: A Jail Experiment (streaming on Netflix): The docuseries’ second season witnesses the results of an Arizona sheriff’s experiment in rehabilitating inmates by unlocking the doors to an entire pod and giving the prisoners control of their environment.
• Tron: Ares (streaming on Disney+): The latest film in the Tron franchise, sending AI beings from the Grid into the real world, makes its streaming debut.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians (streaming on Disney+ and Hulu): Percy (Walker Scobell) and Annabeth (Leah Sava Jeffries) infiltrate the island of the Cyclops Polyphemus (Aleks Paunovic) to rescue Grover (Aryan Simhadri) and Clarisse (Dior Goodjohn) — but who will end up with the Golden Fleece?