1) “Saturday Night Live” season-opener, 11:29 p.m., NBC. The show finally returns to its studio for the first time in seven months. It did three at-home episodes last spring, but now it ‘s full-scale, with Chris Rock (shown here in a previous hosting gig) hosting and Megan Thee Stallion as music guest. There will be five straight new episodes, leading up to the election, with Jim Carrey filling in as Joe Biden and Alec Baldwin contiuing as Donald Trump … unless news events cause “SNL” to shelve its Trump bits. All 17 cast members are returning, now joined by three newcomers.
2) Football, all day. With no basketball until Sunday and no baseball until Monday, college football gets all the attention. CBS may have the best match-up, with second-ranked Alabama hosting Texas A&M (ranged No. 13) at 3:30 p.m. ET; Fox has Texas (ranked No. 9) hosting Texas Christian at noon ET. There’s much more, including three on ABC – Baylor at West Virginia at noon, North Carolina (No. 12) at Boston at 3:30 and Oklahoma (No. 18) at Iowa State at 7:30 p.m.
3) “NCIS: Los Angeles” and “NCIS: New Orleans,” 8 and 9 p.m., CBS. The first rerun has the team searching for a woman who has killed people in Athens, Rome and London. The second follows a car crash in which a Naval officer disappeared … along with a laptop with confidential information.
4) Game-show reruns, 8 and 9 p.m., Fox and NBC. Fox simply replays Wednesday’s shows – “The Masked Singer” and “I Can See Your Voice.” NBC has “The Wall” and “Ellen’s Game of Games.”
5) “The Good Witch” movies, 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. Hallmark has been making these pleasant-enough films since 2008; here are the first six. Other movies include one of the all-time greats – “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), 8 p.m. ET, Turner Classic Movies – plus two sides of Ben Affleck. “The Way Back” (2020, 6:10 p.m., HBO) is a well-acted drama about a troubled coach; “The Accountant” (2016, 8 p.m. TNT) is mostly just straight-ahead action.