Adele performs before an audience of London celebrities in a two-hour concert special. The PBS tradition of Sunday night drama continues with new seasons of Call the Midwife and Sanditon, joined by crime drama Before We Die. As a curtain-raiser to next week’s Oscars, Derek and Julianne Hough celebrate movie dance classics in a prime-time special. If you missed it on streaming and in theaters, the Sopranos movie prequel The Many Saints of Newark lands on HBO, where it all started.
Raven Varona/ITV/Sony Pictures Television
An Audience with Adele
SUNDAY: When Adele sings, the world listens. American audiences now get to experience the superstar’s hometown concert in London, first shown in the U.K. last November, from the stage of the London Palladium. The crowd includes celebrities who pepper Adele with questions about her idols and inspirations, and she’s surprised by a special guest from her childhood. The songlist includes early classics (“Someone Like You” and “Hello”) and newer favorites (“Easy on Me”).
Call the Midwife
SUNDAY: Sunday-night drama is back in full force on PBS, led by one of its longest-running British hits: the 11th season of Call the Midwife, which opens on Easter 1967 with the nuns and midwives of Nonnatus House joining in the celebration. Casting a pall over the festivities is the discovery of a newborn’s skeleton during a nearby demolition, which hits Trixie (Helen George) particularly hard.
Joss Barratt/PBS Masterpiece
Sanditon
SUNDAY: Masterpiece fans have spoken, and after their outrage when the Jane Austen-inspired romantic drama was canceled after just one season—with its heroine Charlotte (Rose Williams) left heartbroken—the series based on Jane Austen’s final unfinished novel is back for a second season. (A third is guaranteed.) A love-wary Charlotte returns to the seaside town with younger sister Alison (Rosie Graham), who’s much more eager to pursue romance and finds it in a Cyrano-inspired triangle involving two Army soldiers. Sanditon never really recovers from the loss of Theo James, who played Charlotte’s dashing love interest Sidney Parker in Season 1, and her new suitors (a stiff lieutenant and a morose widower) are no match. But even a lesser Sanditon will be a welcome distraction for many. (See the full review.)
Before We Die (2021)
SUNDAY: The lineup of British drama concludes on a more somber note with an adaptation of a British crime drama. Lesley Sharp (The Full Monty) stars as veteran Detective Inspector Hannah Laing, investigating the murder of her former colleague (and secret lover) with the help of a skeptical new partner, Billy Murdoch (Troy’s Vincent Regan). An informant leads her to a Croatian family running a local restaurant where her son Christian (Patrick Gibson) works.
ABC
Step Into…The Movies with Derek and Julianne Hough
SUNDAY: The Houghs, Dancing with the Stars veterans and sibling choreographers, pay homage to classic dance sequences from favorite movies—running the gamut from Singin’ in the Rain to Dirty Dancing to La La Land—in a musical special intended to whet cinephiles’ appetite for next Sunday’s Oscar telecast. Guests for the special include Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann, West Side Story Oscar front-runner Ariana DeBose, Footloose’s Kevin Bacon, Chicago director Rob Marshall, Kenny Ortega, Glee’s Amber Riley and more.
HBO Max
The Many Saints of Newark
SATURDAY: The Sopranos has come full circle. The drama that helped put HBO on the map inspired David Chase’s prequel (which previously streamed on HBO Max while it was in theaters). We meet a young Tony Soprano (played by the late James Gandolfini’s son Michael), but the story’s focus is on his loving yet hot-tempered uncle/mentor, Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola). Fans can have fun comparing stars playing younger versions of such iconic characters as Livia Soprano (Vera Farmiga in the role immortalized by the late Nancy Marchand).
Clifton Prescod/CBS
The Equalizer
SUNDAY: The hit crime drama puts Detective Dante (Tory Kittles) in the spotlight when he runs afoul of police deputies (including Oz’s Lee Tergesen) who detain and rough him up before realizing he’s on their team. Then they abduct him, and while the prisoner suffers hallucinatory flashbacks of his childhood, McCall (Queen Latifah) races to find her friend.
Inside Weekend TV:
- NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament (starts Saturday, noon/ET, CBS, TBS, TNT): There have already been memorable upsets in the first round—who’s that team that knocked off Kentucky?—and as the second round of play gets underway Saturday and Sunday, expect more nail-biting action on the college courts.
- Breaking Bad Marathon (Saturday, starts at 4 pm/3c, AMC): With the final season of Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul looming in April, AMC devotes the next five Saturdays to marathon full-season runs of the acclaimed drama that started it all, starting with Season 1’s transformation of meek Walter White (Bryan Cranston) into a meth-making menace. The marathons will include behind-the-scenes interviews and trivia factoids.
- Marry Me Now (Saturday, 9/8c, OWN): Relationship coach Rebecca Lynn Pope hosts a new series in which she guides eight Houston women to take charge of their weddings—including the proposal.
- 48 Hours (Saturday, 10/9c, CBS): In “Eric Smith: Gambling on a Killer,” the true-crime series revisits the case of Smith, convicted as an adult at 13 for a 4-year-old’s murder. Having spent nearly three decades behind bars, he was granted parole in February. Is this justice, or a mistake?
- 60 Minutes (Sunday, 7/6c, CBS): An eclectic edition of the newsmagazine features Sharyn Alfonsi’s interview with U.S. deputy national security adviser Daleep Singh about the economic sanctions on Russia, Jon Wertheim’s profile of WNBA star Sue Bird and Lesley Stahl’s report on the hot housing market inflating rents across the country.
- The Simpsons (Sunday, 8/7c, Fox): The Weeknd guest-voices when Bart makes friends with a kid influencer.
- Riverdale (Sunday, 8/7c, The CW): Now on a new night, the comics-inspired melodrama resumes its sixth season with the town trying to figure out who planted the bomb at Archie’s (KJ Apa) house.
- Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (Sunday, 10/9c, Showtime): Uma Thurman joins the docudrama’s cast as Arianna Huffington, the larger-than-life Greek-American entrepreneur who charms Uber’s power-hungry CEO and founder Travis Kalanick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and disrupts his company’s board.
- Bar Rescue (Sunday, 10/9c, Paramount Network): Jon Taffer is on the road again, trying to help struggling bars and clubs get back on their feet.