Devilish Jack Black in ‘Dear Santa,’ ‘Family Guy’ Holiday Special, Jamaican Intrigue in ‘Get Millie Black,’ Another ‘NCIS’ Origin Story

Not to be confused with the same-named uplifting reality series (streaming Friday on Hulu) about a program that grants wishes to Santa’s earnest letter-writers, this irreverent comedy from the Farrelly Brothers (Dumb and Dumber) puts a demonic spin on the traditional holiday comedy. The unholy shenanigans begin when young Liam (Robert Timothy Smith) misspells his “Dear Santa” note, and a satanic mischief-maker (Jack Black) appears from below to grant the boy’s wishes—at the cost of his soul. Post Malone makes a cameo in a movie not likely to be shown on Hallmark or its competitors.

Also skewering the season with dark humor, Seth MacFarlane’s long-running animated comedy presents its second streaming exclusive, a yuletide caper that finds Baby Stewie desperate to get off of Santa’s “naughty list.” He insists to his canine pal Brian, “I’m breaking good.” (To be fair, he hasn’t tried to kill his mother Lois for quite some time.) But it won’t be easy for the insolent infant to mend his ways entirely. His dad, Peter, is even more stressed, having taken his wife’s treasured Christmas brooch to use for the office’s White Elephant gift exchange. (Explaining the rules is a hilarious parody of Jeff Goldblum.) Peter enlists his buddies in a caper to steal it back, because what could go wrong?

A pungent five-part mystery set in Jamaica stars Tamara Lawrance (Small Axe) as Millie-Jean Black, sent away from her island country as a youth to the U.K., where she became a Metropolitan Police detective. She uses her skills upon returning to her native land to reunite with her brother—now a defiant trans woman named Hibiscus (Chyna McQueen)—and offer her services on a missing-person case involving a teenage girl who’s in danger of falling through the system’s cracks. In noir-style voice-over narration, Millie insists, “This is a ghost story” in a land haunted by history.

Flashbacks within flashbacks give franchise fans more insight into the professional growing pains of NIS agent (later NCIS team leader) Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Austin Stowell). And so it is as the series revisits the first meeting between Gibbs and his mentor Mike Franks (Kyle Schmid) while the team investigates the murder of a Jane Doe who suffered from dementia. On the NCIS mothership (9/8c), Knight (Katrina Law) is assigned to protect the wife of a defense contractor whose home was attacked. Series star Rocky Carroll directs the episode.

You’d think these silly Staten Island vampires would be unfazed by film crews, considering that they’ve been sharing their misadventures over the last six seasons in front of omnipresent cameras. And yet Nandor (Kayvan Novak) and Laszlo (Matt Berry) declare war when the production of Guillermo’s (Harvey Guillén) favorite TV procedural, P.I. Undercover: New York, moves into the neighborhood. Kevin Pollak guests as the show’s top-ranked gumshoe. Elsewhere, Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) brings along Nadja (Natasia Demitriou) to a small dinner party hosted by an old friend (Silicon Valley’s hilarious Zach Woods) who may be even more boring than energy vampire Colin.

INSIDE MONDAY TV:

• The Neighborhood (8/7c, CBS): Time to celebrate, when Marty (Marcel Spears) and Courtney (Skye Townsend) take baby Daphne to her christening. Followed by Poppa’s House (8:30/7:30c), where Poppa (Damon Wayans) butts in with unwanted parenting advice when his grandson starts acting up. At work, he thinks his co-host Dr. Ivy (Essence Atkins) is flirting with him. He should think again.
• Monday Night Football (8 pm/ET, ABC and ESPN): The Baltimore Ravens take on the Los Angeles Chargers in a simulcast game.
• Studio C (9/8c, 6 pm/PT, BYUtv): America’s Got Talent host and Brooklyn Nine-Nine alum Terry Crews guest-stars in the sketch comedy’s Season 19 finale.
• The Body Politic (10/9c, PBS): A POV documentary follows idealistic Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott through his first year in office in 2020 as he unveils a plan to institute police reform and curb the scourge of gun violence.
• Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey (streaming on Netflix): A three-part true-crime documentary revisits the still unsolved 1996 murder of the Colorado 6-year-old, which became a national obsession. Director Jon Berlinger explores the mishandling of the case by authorities and the media.
• Whitstable Pearl (streaming on Acorn TV): In the British mystery’s Season 3 finale, private eye Pearl (Kerry Godliman) is hired by an investment banker after he’s almost killed, a crime that may be connected to the shooting death of a taxi driver.