Fireworks blast over Maracan‹ during the Rio 2016 closing ceremony on Sunday, August 21, 2016.

Best-bets for Aug. 8: Olympic finale leads a big night

1) Olympics finale. It’s time for more spectacle, complete with pomp and people, plus (we’ll assume) dancers and fireworks (shown here is the 2016 ceremony) and more. You can catch the closing ceremony live at 7 a.m. ET on Peacock or on tape at 8 p.m. on NBC. In between, there are tapes of finals: At 9 a.m. ET, USA has women’s basketball; from 1-6 p.m. ET, NBC has women’s volleyball and handball and men’s water polo, plus cycling and group rhythm gymnastics. It also has a wrap-up at 7. Read more…

1) Olympics finale. It’s time for more spectacle, complete with pomp and people, plus (we’ll assume) dancers and fireworks (shown here is the 2016 ceremony) and more. You can catch the closing ceremony live at 7 a.m. ET on Peacock or on tape at 8 p.m. on NBC. In between, there are tapes of finals: At 9 a.m. ET, USA has women’s basketball; from 1-6 p.m. ET, NBC has women’s volleyball and handball and men’s water polo, plus cycling and group rhythm gymnastics. It also has a wrap-up at 7.

2) “Unforgotten,” 9 p.m., PBS. Cassie just wanted to retire early, due to emotional stress. Instead, she must stay three months or lose her pension. Now she’s obsessed with a 30-year-old murder that may have involved several police-academy grads, two of them still on the force. Weary and short of sleep, she nears some answers; then a jolt sets up next week’s finale. It’s an excellent episode, followed by a fairly good “Professor T,” as the stoic prof connects with a key witness who has Down’s syndrome.

3) “UFO” debut, 9 p.m., Showtime. J.J. Abrams has been a master of scripted science-fiction, producing TV’s “Alias,” “Lost” and “Fringe” and directing “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” movies. Now he moves to the documentary side, for this four-part series. It starts with the New York Times’ 2017 story about the government’s longtime interest in UFO’s. That’s followed at 10 by the season-opener of “The L Word: Generation Q,” a scripted series about gay friends in Los Angeles.

4) Baseball, 7 p.m. ET, ABC. This seemed like a fine idea at the time: ABC – which had only carried one game (a wild-card playoff) in the past 25 years – would try another. It would be in historic Wrigley Field, with a classic rivalry – the White Sox and, as ABC put it, “Kevin Bryant and the Chicago Cubs.” Except by the time ABC announced the game, the Cubs had had an 11-game losing streak. Now Bryant is gone; so are most of the other top Cubs – Rizzo, Baez, Kimbrel, more – and much of the fun.

5) “Family Game Fight” debut, 10:30-11 p.m., NBC. Here’s a half-size look at a show that will get an hourlong slot Wednesday. Kristen Bell and her husband, Dax Shepard, will join opposite teams for fast-pased games. Those games are quite good … but only about 30 percent as good as the screeching crowd and contestants seem to think. Amid the cacophony, it’s hard to appreciate the clever parts.

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