ABC, 8:00 p.m. ET
Live from Manchester, NH, tonight’s three-hour prime-time debate is televised by ABC, and presents on stage seven candidates – quite a change from the original 20. Several candidates still vying for delegates and consideration are excluded by the debate’s rules, but here are the “magnificent” seven, as seen from left to right from the audience’s point of view: Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Tom Steyer. Based on the finally delivered results from the Iowa caucus, the Buttigieg and Biden podium placements should have been reversed – but with the New Hampshire primary only four days away, and with all the historic events of this week, this debate almost has to be a lively one. And maybe, just maybe, a crucially influential one.
NBC, 8:00 p.m. ET
I feel restrained by what I can say about this series, other than recommending it, because my son, Mark, is credited as one of the executive producers and show runners. So here it is. And for now, I’ll leave it at that.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
In 1977, Woody Allen co-wrote, starred in, and directed the groundbreaking comedy Annie Hall, which remains one of my favorite movies of all time. The next year, he directed, wrote, and did not appear in the 1978 drama Interiors. Both movies starred Diane Keaton (shown here in Interiors) – but like the double feature earlier this week showing the serious and funny sides of Marilyn Monroe (in Bus Stop and Some Like It Hot, in that order), TCM tonight is contrasting the serious and funny sides of Woody Allen. Then the network shows yet another side: Woody Allen as the actor in someone else’s movie, as a young man pretending to have written the screenplays of blacklisted writers during the 1950s, so that they could continue to write and get paid. Interiors is shown at 8 p.m. ET, Annie Hall at 10, and Martin Ritt’s The Front, from 1976, at 11:45 p.m. ET.
HBO, 10:00 p.m. ET
The bookings on Real Time have been the best ever this season, and tonight’s show continues the trend of presenting the right guest at exactly the right time. After a week in which the Democrats botch their handling and counting in the Iowa Caucus, and President Donald Trump is acquitted in his impeachment trial and crows about it in aggressively posturing appearances at a prayer meeting and the White House, who’s the right person to put it all into perspective? Among tonight’s guests: Steve Bannon.
BBC America, 11:00 p.m. ET
This week’s scheduled guests on The Graham Norton Show include Jim Carrey and Margot Robbie – who have at least one exchange that, when this show was televised in England a few days ago, raised a minor firestorm on Twitter.