ABC, 8:00 p.m. ET
SPECIAL: Last night’s opening round of this all-time all-star Jeopardy! prime-time championship was everything it was billed and hoped to be. The long-running quiz show’s three most successful players – Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter, and James Holzhauer – squared off against one another. In the first round of the first game, every question was answered correctly. At the end of the second climactic round of Final Jeopardy, when the two-game totals were added to anoint a first-night winner, the winning margin was only a few hundred dollars. And tonight, it’s night two. Host Alex Trebek promises similar excitement. I believe him.
PBS, 8:00 p.m. ET
In this new installment of Nature, we meet a man who became obsessed with studying whales after surviving an encounter in which he was in a whale-watching kayak when a whale breached virtually on top of them. Why didn’t he die? And why do whales sometimes do that? Any time a TV nature series gets us this close to a creature this large, the results are worth watching – and marveling at. Expect a whale of a tale. And a whale with a tail. It’s about time someone broached this subject. And breached it. Check local listings.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Watch this 1959 comedy again, and pay particular attention to the deft dance pulled off by Marilyn Monroe – part innocent playfulness, part sex-appeal siren. It’s a confidently funny performance (as are those by her male co-stars, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), but watch and wonder: Who, among today’s movie actresses, would be most able to pull off Monroe’s role here?