The CMA Awards, ‘Nova’ Revisits the Thai Cave Rescue, ‘Origin’ on YouTube
A critical checklist of notable Wednesday TV:
The 52nd Annual CMA Awards (8/7c, ABC): Though it sometimes feels there’s a country-music awards show every other week, Nashville insists the CMA Awards is Music City’s “Biggest Night,” and Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley are back for the 11th year to host from Bridgestone Arena. The performance roster, as usual, is a “who’s who” of country-music royalty, starting with the hosts and including Garth Brooks, Kelsea Ballerini, Luke Bryan, Kenny Chesney, Dan+Shay, Keith Urban, Vince Gill, Jason Aldean with Miranda Lambert, Dierks Bentley with Brothers Osborne, and many more. And yes, awards will be handed out along the musical way.
Nova: Thai Cave Rescue (9/8c, PBS, check local listings at pbs.org): The whole world was riveted this summer to the plight of 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped for days within the flooded Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Thailand. The rescue efforts will surely eventually result in big-screen movie heroics, but first, PBS’s premiere science program devotes an hour to revealing the technological ingenuity that allowed an international team of cave and Navy SEAL divers to navigate the underground caverns and bring the boys and their coach safely home.
Origin (streaming on YouTube Premium): Sci-fi/fantasy veteran Paul W.S. Anderson (Event Horizon, the Resident Evil franchise) directs the first two episodes of a space mystery in which strangers awaken aboard a ship on its way to a distant planet, and while they try to figure out why all of this is happening, it becomes clear someone in their midst isn’t who they claim to be. Harry Potter’s Tom Felton leads an international cast.
Inside Wednesday TV: With the launch of Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico just a few days away, CBS’s SEAL Team (9/8c) gets in on the action, as Bravo Team pursues leads to the head of a powerful Mexican drug cartel… FX’s American Horror Story: Apocalypse (10/9c) wraps its chaotic journey to the center of supernatural dystopia. (Remember when horror actually meant scary?)… Comedy Central’s South Park (10/9c) follows suit with its own over-the-top mayhem, as the boys escape jail and go on the lam from the police and the monstrous ManBearPig. Only on this twisted animated comedy would Satan come to the town’s rescue.
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