A Good ‘Knight,’ NFL Divisional Playoffs, ‘Landman’ Finale, an ‘Industry’ Birthday

Series Premiere

10/9c

SUNDAY: The second spinoff from Game of Thrones’ fantasy universe is a rarity: an anti-epic, small-scaled in scope at only six episodes, each clocking in at around 30 minutes. And yet it’s huge in heart and even in humor, much of it at the expense of its endearing underdog title hero: Ser Duncan the Tall (affable Peter Claffey), a humble and forlorn hedge knight — “like a knight, but sadder,” we’re told — who hopes to find glory and make his name at a tournament among better established knights. Joining him for the adventure: a solemn, bald little boy named Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) who’s wise beyond his years and begs to become his squire. Let’s hope this short first season is an appetizer of more to come. (See the full review.)

SATURDAY and SUNDAY: The NFL’s post-season takes a step closer to the Super Bowl with four Divisional Round matches that will decide who plays for the AFC and NFC Championships next weekend. The action starts Saturday with the AFC’s No. 6 Buffalo Bills vs. No. 1 Denver Broncos (4:30 pm/ET, CBS), followed by the NFC’s No. 6 San Francisco 49ers vs. No. 1 Seattle (8 pm/ET, Fox). Sunday’s games open with the AFC’s No. 5 Houston Texans vs. No. 2 New England Patriots (3 pm/ET, ABC and ESPN), followed by the NFC’s No. 5 Los Angeles Rams vs. No. 2 Chicago Bears (6:30 pm/ET, NBC).

Season Finale

SUNDAY: The Season 2 finale of Taylor Sheridan’s laid-back oil drama finds Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) railing at God — “Can you give me a f***ing chance?” — while juggling professional and personal crises. He’s off to Fort Worth making deals in the wake of being fired by Cami (Demi Moore), while back home, he enlists Rebecca (Kayla Wallace), the shark of a lawyer who describes herself as “a life ruiner,” to speak up for Cooper (Jacob Lofland) when he lands in legal hot water after beating up Ariana’s (Paulina Chavez) attempted rapist.

9/8c

SUNDAY: In what amounts to his strongest Emmy reel since leaving Game of Thrones, Kit Harington runs the gamut from rage to near-catatonic depression as Sir Henry Muck, whose failed bid for Parliament has him in a state of perpetual brooding as his 40th birthday approaches. His neglected bride Yasmin (Marisa Abela) and others in his orbit beg him to snap out of it, but as he tells entrepreneur Whitney (Max Minghella), who covets Henry’s British connections, “I failed upwards and then failed totally. There are no second acts.” Whitney hopes to prove him wrong.

9/8c

SUNDAY: The Pekingese Tricki Woo is having a birthday, but the spoiled dog’s mistress Mrs. Pumphrey (Patricia Hodge) frets that her beloved has turned against her. Siegfried (Samuel West) suggests it may be a function of age: “None of us can escape the inevitable,” he declares, though he’s resistant to change in the clinic, when James (Nicholas Ralph) brings in a newfangled X-ray machine in hopes of modernizing the practice. Sandwiched by new episodes of Miss Scarlet (8/7c) and Bookish (10/9).

INSIDE WEEKEND TV:

• Australian Open (Saturday, 7 pm/ET, streaming on the ESPN App): First-round action of the year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament begins, with live coverage starting at 10 pm/ET on ESPN2.
• Love on the Amazon (Saturday, 8/7c, Hallmark Channel): Claire (Grey’s Anatomy‘s Jaicy Elliot) gets more than she bargained for when she hires a riverboat captain (Rafael de la Fuente) to take her to her marine-biologist sister on the Amazon in Brazil.
• I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco (Saturday, 8/7c, Lifetime): General Hospital‘s Chloe Lanier portrays the wronged wife who was shot in the head in 1992 by her husband’s mistress, Amy Fisher, in a docudrama narrated by the real-life Mary Jo.
• Iyanla: The Inside Fix (Saturday, 8/7c, OWN): Spiritual coach Iyanla Vanzant revisits 12 of the most impactful episodes of her Fix My Life series, offering fresh insights.
• 48 Hours (Saturday, 10/9c, CBS): A shooting ruled accidental is re-examined eight years later when surveillance audio sheds new light on the 2013 death of Melissa Rocuba.
• Saturday Night Live (Saturday, 11:30/10:30c, 8:30 pm/PT, NBC): The late-night comedy show returns from holiday hiatus with Stranger Things‘ Finn Wolfhard as the first-time guest host and A$AP Rocky as the first-time musical guest.
• The Hillside Strangler (Sunday, 9/8c, MGM+): A four-part true-crime series revisits the serial-killer case that terrorized L.A. in the late ’70s. Famed detective Frank Salerno tells how he captured cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, with Bianchi also opening up on camera.