The Bob Newhart Show
SATURDAY: I can think of no better way to spend any down time this weekend than marveling at the deadpan gifts of one of TV’s most legendary comedians. Catchy’s tribute to Bob Newhart, who passed away this week at 94, runs from noon Saturday to 6 am/5c on Monday, featuring classic episodes of The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78), Newhart (1982-90) and the lesser-known Bob (1992-93), all of which originally aired on CBS. Newhart’s expert timing allowed his co-stars to shine, but he often got the last laugh in his droll reactions to their tomfoolery. Another treat for Newhart fans: TBS pays tribute to his Emmy-winning The Big Bang Theory character of Professor Proton with a six-episode “In Memory of Professor Proton” marathon Sunday, starting at 8/7c.
Snowpiercer
SUNDAY: The post-apocalyptic train ride continues, albeit from a different platform. After TNT derailed the propulsive futuristic thriller by taking it off the lineup last year, AMC stepped up to present the fourth and final season. The action picks up nine months after Snowpiercer and Big Alice parted ways, with Andre (Daveed Diggs) and his followers discovering that their New Eden isn’t quite the paradise they’d hoped. Back on the main train, Melanie (Jennifer Connelly) sends Till (Mickey Sumner) and Ben (Iddo Goldberg) on a dangerous reconnaissance mission.
House of the Dragon
SUNDAY: With only two more episodes to go in its second season, the Game of Thrones prequel is still girding up for the next fiery battle in another table-setting hour. (Actually, a bit more than an hour.) Slighted Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) has the most intriguing dilemma: Knowing that her Blacks are outmanned and out-dragoned, she hopes to recruit lesser nobles with Targaryen bloodlines—Westeros is replete with bastards, as we all know—to step up and see if those testy dragons will accept them as riders. Such an experiment comes with high risk. If the dragon isn’t impressed, you could end up like a marshmallow after an encounter with a campfire. Back at Kings Landing, the rulers are about to learn that you can’t win over the smallfolk’s hearts and minds if their bellies are empty.
How It Really Happened
SUNDAY: With the Paris Games starting in less than a week, the documentary series returns with a two-hour special revisiting the horror that unfolded in Atlanta almost 30 years ago when a bombing disrupted the centennial games in 1996. The discovery of a suspicious backpack came too late to prevent two deaths and the injury of 100 more. The special includes interviews with agents and journalists who were there, as well as friends and the attorney of the wrongly accused suspect, Richard Jewell.
Orphan Black: Echoes
SUNDAY: An emotional flashback episode gives insight into how Kira (Keeley Hawes), the daughter of a clone, developed her groundbreaking bio-printing technology decades earlier—and why she allowed it to be perverted into printing actual human beings like Lucy (Krysten Ritter). It’s a Frankenstein story with elements of “The Monkey’s Paw.”
INSIDE WEEKEND TV:
- WNBA All-Star Game (8:30 pm/ET, ABC): The best in pro women’s basketball compete from Footprint Center in Phoenix. And while she may not be on the Olympics team, this year’s sensation Caitlin Clark is on the roster.
- Abducted at an HBCU: A Black Girl Missing Movie (Saturday, 8/7c, Lifetime): Power’s Naturi Naughton stars in the second of a series of Black Girl Missing movies as Ellen, an HBCU college counselor who’s the only one to notice when Shannon (Tanyell Quian), a student struggling to pay her tuition, goes missing. Ellen’s search for the truth leads to the discovery of a trafficking ring.
- A Very Vermont Christmas (8/7c, Hallmark Channel): It’s still Yuletide at Hallmark, where a skier (Switched at Birth’s Katie Leclerc) and a local brew master (Chuck’s Ryan McPartlin) team up to concoct a holiday microbrew that could bail out her family’s business.
- Professor T (Sunday, 8/7c, PBS): The Season 3 finale of the British mystery gets personal for autistic criminologist Jasper Tempest (Ben Miller) when he learns the truth about his father’s death, which complicates his already fraught relationship with his mother (Frances de la Tour). Followed by a new episode of Grantchester (9/8c) and the Season 2 finale of I. Ray (10/9c).
- Raising Fame (Sunday, 10/9c, TV One): Celebrity moms Lucille O’Neal (mom of Shaquille) and Sonya Curry (mom of Stephen) welcome Magic Johnson and his mom Christine to reflect on her influence on his successful basketball and business career. Preceded by Uncensored (9/8c), which profiles boxer-turned-actor Pooch Hall (Ray Donovan).
- Forbidden Love (10/9c, TLC): Four couples from different faith backgrounds explore their futures in a reality series depicting the strains of religious conversion on a relationship.