Week’s top-10 for June 22: It’s awards time … twice

1) BET Awards, 8-11 p.m. Sunday, CBS and BET. Amid the surge of interest in black history and culture, CBS decided (for the first time) to simulcast BET’s awards. Comedian Amanda Seales hosts a virtual ceremony stuffed with music. That includes Chloe x Halle (shwon here at the Super Bowl), Jennifer Hudson, John Legend, Alicia Keys, Lil Wayne, country’s Kane Brown and Wayne Brady, known for comedy until he won “The Masked Singer.” Others include DaBaby, D Smoke, Jonathan McReynolds and Megan Thee Stallion. Read more…

1) BET Awards, 8-11 p.m. Sunday, CBS and BET. Amid the surge of interest in black history and culture, CBS decided (for the first time) to simulcast BET’s awards. Comedian Amanda Seales hosts a virtual ceremony stuffed with music. That includes Chloe x Halle (shwon here at the Super Bowl), Jennifer Hudson, John Legend, Alicia Keys, Lil Wayne, country’s Kane Brown and Wayne Brady, known for comedy until he won “The Masked Singer.” Others include DaBaby, D Smoke, Jonathan McReynolds and Megan Thee Stallion.

2) Daytime Emmy Awards, 8-10 p.m. Friday, CBS. During the virus shutdown, CBS has become more interested in specials. This is one of three in an eight-day stretch (with Harry Connick on June 21 and BET on June 28). The five women from “The Talk” will host; their show is a nominee, facing the Ellen DeGeneres and Kelly Clarkson shows, plus “GMA3” and “Live With Kelly & Ryan.” Up for best game-show host are Alex Trebek, Steve Harvey, Wayne Brady, Pat Sajak and Alfonso Ribeiro.

3) “Greenleaf” season-opener, 9 p.m. Tuesday, Oprah Winfrey Network, rerunning at midnight. You can catch up by on the show by not sleeping. It has already started a 51-hour rerun marathon that concludes with this start of the fifth and final season. “Greenleaf” began with Grace, a big-city TV reporter, reluctantly visiting her parents (Lynn Whitfield and Keith David) and their mega-church. Now the parents are divorced and another preacher (Beau Bridges) is battling for control of the church.

4) “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am,” 8-10 p.m. Tuesday, PBS. Winfrey fans will be torn between “Greenleaf” and this compelling profile of someone who has four times been featured in Oprah’s Book Club. “Her words … are a friend to our minds,” Winfrey says here. Morrison (who died last August at 88) comes across as vibrant and cheerful … unlike many of her creations. “You don’t want to be a character in (her) novel,” says her friend, writer Walter Mosley, “because she’s very scorched-earth.”

5) “Independent Lens: Pipe Dreams,” 10 p.m. Monday, PBS (check local listings).. This is a dandy plan for documentaries: Pick a competition,meet interesting contestants in advance, then hope they win. That’s worked for a spelling bee, a crossword contest, a science fair and duck-stamp artists. Now it works wonderfully for a pipe-organ competition. “Dreams” has great visuals, powerful music and interesting people – two from the U.S., plus oness from China and Germany. You’ll root for all four.

6) “Agents of SHIELD,” 10 p.m. Wednesday, ABC. In its seventh and final season, this show keeps leaping through time. Now it does it twice in one episode. First, the team lands in the disco decade; then it leaps ahead, to a date that’s pivotal for Mack, the SHIELD director. That can be part of a Wednesday of new advetnre hours, if you start at CW: At 8 p.m. is more sci-fi, with “The 100.” At 9, “Bulletproof” has cops going undercover; that ends with an exciting (albeit wildly improbable) chase.

7) “In the Dark,” 9 p.m Thursday., CW. Last week ended fiercely: Murphy, who is blind, was about to be killed by Nia … who instead was killed by Murphy’s ex-friend Jess. Now this terrific episode jumps back (to tell how Jess got there) and ahead (reminding us that it’s tough to bury bodies in the winter). It’s a taut hour, fed by past betrayals by Jess’ girlfriend and Murphy’s ex-boyfriend Max. There’s depth here; played with subtle perfection by Brooke Markham, Jess has become one of TV’s best characters.

8) “Great Performances: Gloria: A Life,” 9 p.m. Friday, PBS (check local listings). PBS continues its summer of female icons, from Ann Richards (last Friday) to Morrison to a Gloria Steinem … then on to the 100th anniversary of women’s vote. This one – with Christine Lahti as Steinem and six others in support – is sometimes riveting and sometimes too fragile and downbeat. That’s cured in the final half-hour, when the real Steinem, 86, steps onstage … and the audience tells her stories of grit and triumph.

9) Music movies, Saturday, cable. Renee Zellweger won a well-deserved Oscar for “Judy” (2019). She was perfect as Judy Garland, but the movie (8 p.m. on Epix) is mildly disappointing, because the title and the ads promise more; we expect the full sweep of a large life; we mainly get the downbeat finish. For an opposite approach, “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) is 8 p.m. ET on Turner Classic Movies. It’s black-and-white, with little plot, but director Richard Lester catches the joy of the early Beatles.

10) Much more. The week starts tonight with the season-opener of “Penn & Teller: Fool Us.” That’s 9 p.m. on CW – which then has new episodes during its prime time (8-10 p.m.), through 8:30 p.m. on Friday. And Sunday is packed, as usual, from ABC games to PBS dramas to cable: “Black Monday” is finally back on Showtime; it reruns previous episodes at 5 p.m., then has a new one at 8, rerunning it at 8:30. Also, “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark,” a six-week crime documentary, starts at 10 p.m. on HBO.

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