CBS, 9:00 p.m. ET
SPECIAL PREMIERE: Five days before Election Day, CBS is presenting an entertainment special called Every Vote Counts, co-hosted by Kerry Washington, Alicia Keys, and America Ferrera, and featuring appearances and/or performances by Lizzo, Billie Eilish, Chris Rock, Amy Schumer, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Coldplay, Jennifer Lopez, and others. The lineup is long because, these days, celebrities can participate easily and, if not phone it in, then literally Zoom it in. But to say Every Vote Counts is one thing. To televise a network special with that title, when many state and local officials and political players and pundits are saying today that it’s already too late to trust the mail to deliver your vote on time (urging in-person voting or delivery or drop-box usage instead), seems wildly optimistic. As for the program’s subtitle, A Celebration of Democracy – let’s wait a week or so, shall we? Let’s find out whether there’s any democracy left to celebrate…
CBS, 10:00 p.m. ET
Tonight’s CBS repeat showing of the 2017 episode of CBS All Access’ Star Trek: Discovery gives a callback all the way to the third episode of Season 1 from the original NBC Star Trek series back in 1966. Back then, one of the more colorful early recurring characters was Harry Mudd, a rogue con man played by Roger C. Carmel. The same character was reprised in the animated Star Trek series, and popped up again in Star Trek: Discovery – played, this time, by Rainn Wilson from NBC’s The Office. So though it took either three years, or 54 years (depending on how you look at it), for this particular Star Trek villain to arrive on CBS, here’s Mudd in your CBS eye!
Sundance, 11:00 p.m. ET
SEASON PREMIERE: This latest season of the German and American spy series about an agent of East Germany during the Cold War takes the story of Martin Rauch (played by Jonas Nay) up to 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall – and, naturally, a climactic event for this impressive series, which began five years ago as Deutschland 83, and continued two years ago with the sequel, Deutschland 86.