NBC, 8:00 p.m. ET
CYCLE FINALE: Part 1 of 2. The Final Four perform tonight, and the winner of this new cycle of The Voice will be selected and revealed tomorrow night. Watch, in particular, for Jordan Smith, 21, from Harlan, KY. Last week he sang “Somebody to Love” in the semifinals, and his downloadable recording of it soared to the top spot on iTunes. More to the point, Adam Levine reacted to his vocal performance by saying, “That’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen in my entire life.” Tonight, more singing. Tomorrow, a victor. And I expect it’ll be Smith, who may end up as the first Voice winner to actually emerge as a star.
CBS, 8:00 p.m. ET
Tonight’s episode has Supergirl fighting on two fronts. At work, in her drab alter ego, she’s fighting to save her boss’ job. And in her Supergirl outfit, she’s doing battle with someone else with formidable powers and fighting skills: Astra.
Syfy, 8:00 p.m. ET
MINISERIES PREMIERE: Part 1 of 3. This three-part Syfy miniseries is based on the novel by Arthur C. Clarke – which, like Robert Heinlein’s Stranger In a Strange Land, is one of the most admired science fiction novels of the era never to be adapted for the screen. (Okay, add Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan and Cat’s Cradle to that list as well.) Clarke, after all, is the guy whose short story inspired Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, so this new dramatization of his 1953 Childhood’s End classic should be worth the wait. Right? Only partly. One problem is, so many subsequent alien-invasion dramas have borrowed from Clarke’s playbook, from TV’s V to the movies Independence Day and War of the Worlds, that this story seems overly familiar, at least in its opening installments. And the characters and actors don’t pull you into the drama effectively, which is a problem that has nothing to do with the age of the story. Continues tomorrow and Wednesday.
HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET
New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff, who’s also the guy who concocted and drew that famous New Yorker cartoon with the caption “How about never? Is never good for you?,” takes viewers of this documentary through a tour of just what it takes to make a New Yorker cartoon. This study also includes such classic contributors as James Thurber and Charles Addams, so expect the best. And expect to laugh. Good thing for freeze frame…
NBC, 10:00 p.m. ET
Adele is the biggest musical phenomenon of the year, and this concert, taped last month at Radio City Music Hall, has her doing her first U.S. concert in years. Her set list includes her current smash “Hello,” as well as “Hometown Glory” (the first song she ever wrote) and her breakthrough hit, “Rolling in the Deep.” Lorne Michaels is the executive producer.
FX, 10:00 p.m. ET
SEASON FINALE: Tonight is the Season 2 finale of Fargo, which means it’s the concluding episode of this particularly brutal, and entertaining, story line. (And bizarre, thanks to the bizarrely unexpected element during last week's motel shootout.) This year, Fargo has climbed to the top tier of many TV critics’ end-of-year Top 10 lists – including mine, which I’ll discussing on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross the last week of the year.