NFL Kickoff, Nicole Kidman in ‘The Excellent Couple,’ Kevin Hart and a ‘Battle Night time’ Heist, Reliving Apollo 13

Are you prepared for some … Foolish query, as a result of there’s no larger TV franchise than the NFL, which kicks off the season with a conventional Thursday evening launch of NBC’s Sunday Night time Soccer. A pregame present, which additionally serves as a preview for Friday’s first-ever common season sport in Brazil (introduced on Peacock), units up the sport between defending Tremendous Bowl champs Kansas Metropolis Chiefs and quarterback Patrick Mahomes, internet hosting the Baltimore Ravens at Kansas Metropolis’s GEHA Discipline. Mike Tirico returns as play-by-play announcer, main a group together with analyst Cris Collinsworth and sideline reporter Melissa Stark.

A lavish Nantucket wedding ceremony occasion turns into a criminal offense scene in Emmy winner Susanne Bier’s enjoyably trashy and shiny adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s seaside learn, a enjoyable post-Labor Day escape. Nicole Kidman swans round because the groom’s (Billy Howle) mom, a well-known thriller novelist whose concept of safety is forcing the outsider bride-to-be (Unhealthy Sisters’ Eve Hewson) to signal an NDA. The festivities go awry when a physique washes up on the seaside, spoiling the “I do’s” as an investigation of the privileged poisonous wealthy will get underway. Loopy Ex-Girlfriend’s Donna Lynne Champlin almost steals the present because the unimpressed detective poking into their messy lives. The supporting forged consists of Dakota Fanning, Meghann Fahy (The White Lotus) because the flirty maid of honor and Liev Schreiber because the groom’s cad of a dad.

The star energy is simply as spectacular in an eight-part fact-based drama starring Kevin Hart as “Hen Man,” a numbers-running hustler in 1970 Atlanta who thinks he’s hit the large time when he plans a splashy afterparty for a infamous New York gangster (Samuel L. Jackson) on the evening of Muhammed Ali’s (Dexter Darden) comeback battle after his suspension from the game. The boxer is a polarizing cultural lightning rod, particularly within the South, however Hen Man is undaunted in his wheeling and dealing—till his occasion is hijacked by masked robbers who don’t know that they’ve focused a few of the highest-ranking members of the Black Mafia. Vividly recreating the ’70s vibe in its look and approach, Battle Night time additionally stars Don Cheadle as a pioneering and put-upon Black detective who must be satisfied that Hen Man wasn’t in on the heist, plus Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard of Empire fame. The sequence opens with three episodes.

“Houston, we’ve had an issue.” With these ominous and historic phrases uttered from house in April 1970, the world held its breath as NASA engineers and Apollo 13 astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise scrambled to determine a method to return to Earth safely after their service module was disabled by an explosion. Acquainted to many by Ron Howard’s Oscar-winning 1995 movie dramatizing the incident, the occasions are introduced again to life in a brand new documentary from BAFTA-nominated director Peter Middleton, with audio recordings, never-seen movie supplies, and archival interviews with the crew, their households, and members of the official Houston group.

Rory Kinnear makes his first look within the epic fantasy as the long-lasting hermit Tom Bombadil, who encounters the bewildered Stranger (Daniel Weyman) throughout his seek for his swept-away Harfoot mates. Playfully enigmatic, Tom is extra direct in his warnings concerning the sinister forces of the Darkish Wizard (Ciarán Hinds) and Sauron (Charlie Vickers): “If [they] mix into one, there shall be no finish to burning ’til all Center-Earth is ashes.” Elsewhere within the sprawling story, the journeys of Galadriel (Robert Aramayo), and of Isildur (Ismael Cruz Córdova), are beset by the kind of harrowing monstrous encounters followers have come to anticipate.

INSIDE THURSDAY TV:

• Completely Humorous Animals (9/8c, The CW): The humorous clip present strikes into a brand new time interval, adopted by Completely Humorous Youngsters (9:30/8:30c). Props to Animals for the perfect episode title of the week: “High 10 Characters Minimize from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats.”
• Set off Level (streaming on Peacock): The nail-biting thriller from govt producer Jed Mercurio (Line of Obligation) returns for a second season with a one-year time leap. Obligation’s Vicky McClure stars as bomb disposal skilled Lana Washington, again from a coaching mission in Ukraine and going undercover to unmask the members of a disruptive terrorist cell that focused an influence station.
• Coming from America (streaming on Max): An unscripted sequence follows a number of African American households as they return to their ancestral motherland of Africa to hunt new alternatives and a greater life, solely to expertise tradition shock.