Week’s top 10 for April 20: Hail, Prince; goodbye to four shows

1) “Let’s Go Crazy: The Grammy Salute to Prince,” 9-11 p.m. Tuesday, CBS. Yes, the at-home specials have been welcome. Still, here’s what we haven’t had lately – all-out, rock spectacle. Taped Jan. 26 in Los Angeles, this was stuffed with stars – Alicia Keys, Common (shown here), John Legend, Chris Martin, H.E.R., Beck. Usher, Juanes, Mavis Staples, Susanna Hoffs and Gary Clark Jr., plus the Foo Fighters and Earth, Wind & Fire. Performing together are Prince’s old colleagues – Sheila E, Morris Day, Time and Revolution. Read more…

1) “Let’s Go Crazy: The Grammy Salute to Prince,” 9-11 p.m. Tuesday, CBS. Yes, the at-home specials have been welcome. Still, here’s what we haven’t had lately – all-out, rock spectacle. Taped Jan. 26 in Los Angeles, this was stuffed with stars – Alicia Keys, Common (shown here), John Legend, Chris Martin, H.E.R., Beck. Usher, Juanes, Mavis Staples, Susanna Hoffs and Gary Clark Jr., plus the Foo Fighters and Earth, Wind & Fire. Performing together are Prince’s old colleagues – Sheila E, Morris Day, Time and Revolution.

2) “Will & Grace” series finale, 9 p.m. Thursday, NBC, with retrospective at 9:30. In 1998, this was revolutionary – a comedy with four main characters, two of them gay. It was also, at times, extremely funny. It drew six Emmy nominations for best comedy (winning once), left in 2007 … and returned a decade later for three years. Now Will and Grace prepare to move to the home they bought … except she keeps almost giving birth. Karen wants closure with her ex-husband; Jack has a shot at Broadway.

3) “Empire” series-finale, 9 p.m. Tuesday, Fox. For six seasons, Lucious and Cookie have raged, loved, divorced, re-united and re-split; they’ve also almost killed each other. Will they end up together? Possibly. Last week, a music mogul tried to crush the “Bossyfest” concert for Cookie’s new label; enraged at the white bias, Lucious said his Empire label will link wth hers, for a massive festival. As that nears, Cookie reflects; Lucious, torn between her and Yana, grasps to keep control of Empire.

4) “God Friended Me” series-finale, 8 and 9 p.m. Sunday, CBS. It’s a week with way too many farewells. This show only lasted two seasons, but deserves credit for human drama, outside the usual cop-court-doctor turf. The idea – messages from an all-knowing Facebook “God account” – intrigued viewers; for this second season, however, ratings dropped 20 percent overall, 26 percent for ages 18-49. Fortunately, CBS canceled it in time for producers to wrap things up and (maybe) answer questions.

5) “Homeland” series finale, 9 p.m. Sunday, Showtime. A great series ends after eight seasons, a best-drama Emmy and three more nominations. Claire Danes – perhaps TV’s finest actor – has won two best-actress Emmys (plus three more nods) as Carrie, the brilliant, gutsy and tortured (literally and figuratively) agent; Mandy Patinkin has four nominations as Saul, her mentor. This last season has involved Afghanistan, Pakistan, a presidential assassination and an attempted Taliban peace treaty.

6) “Jane Goodall: The Hope,” 9 p.m.., Wednesday, National Geographic and Nat Geo Wild. For 60 years, Jane Goodall has studied chimps in the wild. Now Goodall, 86, is at the core Wednesday, as TV celebrates the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. At noon ET, National Geographic reruns the gorgeous film “Jane” (2017); at 9 p.m. ET, that channel and Nat Geo Wild debut “Jane Goodall: The Hope.” And at 9 p.m. ET, BBC America views Goodall and others in “She Walks With Apes.”

7) More Earth Day, Wednesday. The DisneyNature unit has made stunning films for theaters. Now two of them air on the Disney Channel – “Monkey Kingdom” at 3:50 and 6:35 p.m., “Penguins” at 5:15 and 9. Sandwiched in there at 8 p.m. is “Born Wild: The Next Generation,” which simulcasts at 8 p.m. on the National Geographic channels. There’s more, including “Planet Earth II,” from 3-9 p.m. and 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. on BBC America; PBS has “Climate Change: The Facts” at 8 p.m. and “H2O” at 9.

8) “Frontline,” 9 p.m. Tuesday, PBS. TV has done a fine job of day-to-day coronavirus coverage, but now “Frontline” goes back to where it started in the U.S. That’s Seattle, where a man, 35, visited a hospital on Jan. 20. “It’s one person, coming in from China, and we have it under control and it’s going to be fine,” President Trump told a reporter. It wasn’t. “It’s like watching a slow-moving landslide,” Dr. Ryan Reay says. The federal government’s hands-off approach, officials say, led to “mayor vs. mayor.”

9) NFL draft, 8-11:30 ;p.m. ET Thursday (Round 1), 7-11:30 p.m. Friday (2 and 3) and noon to 7 p.m. Saturday (4 through 7), ABC, ESPN and NFL Network. With no actual games being played, sports fans can obsess on this. It’s usually a splashy affair, drawing players, reporters and general managers to Las Vegas. Now that’s more basic. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will announce the choices from his home; some commentators will be in the ESPN studio, with others working from their homes.

10) ALSO: One ambitious series (“Better Call Saul,” 10 p.m. today, AMC) ends its fifth season and another debuts. “Penny Dreadful: City of Angels” (10:10 p.m. Sunday, Showtime) is set in 1938 Los Angeles, amid old Hollywood, Nazis and radio evangelism. The city’s first Mexican-American police detective probes a murder, while people scheme to put a freeway through his neighborhood. Beautifully filmed, this also has a supernatural element, with the demons of Mexican folk culture turning lethal.

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