Best-bets for Aug. 12: feel-good night from Chen, chefs

1) “Secret Celebrity Renovation,” 8 p.m., CBS. Nathan Chen (shown here) grew up in Salt Lake City, the son of a research scientist and a medical translator. His own interests were elsewhere – piano, ballet, gymnastics and, especially, figure-skating. He’s won three world championships and Olympic gold and holds the all-time best under the current scoring system. Now he returns home to help create a skaters’ lounge in the Salt Lake City Sports Complex. Read more…

1) “Secret Celebrity Renovation,” 8 p.m., CBS. Nathan Chen (shown here) grew up in Salt Lake City, the son of a research scientist and a medical translator. His own interests were elsewhere – piano, ballet, gymnastics and, especially, figure-skating. He’s won three world championships and Olympic gold and holds the all-time best under the current scoring system. Now he returns home to help create a skaters’ lounge in the Salt Lake City Sports Complex.

2) “The Great American Recipe” finale, 9 p.m., PBS. We’re down to the final three home chefs, with wide-ranging interests. Robin Daumit’s food reflects her mother’s Syrian flavors and her current Chesapeake Bay life. Silvia Martinez was a human-resources manager in Mexico, before marrying an American and moving to California. Foo Nguyen lives in Cincinnati from ages 5 to 22, one of eight kids in a Vietnamese immigrant family.

3) “Children of the Underground,” 8 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., FX. Clashing with the feel-good excess on CBS and PBS, here’s a true, feel-awful story. It starts with officials failing to protect kids who accuse their dads of severe abuse. Then we meet Faye Yager, whose system has reportedly helped 3,000 kids be on the lam. She’s a hero to some, a vigilante villain (once on trial, facing a 60-year sentence) to others. It’s a fascinating story, told slowly and painfully.

4) “This Fool,” any time, Hulu. Here’s the entire, 10-episode season, with comedian Chris Estrada as a heightened version of himself – living with his mom, dating his high school girlfriend, helping a trash-talking cousin who’s fresh from prison. Earlier this week, FX added the eighth episode (of 10) of the delightful “Only Murders in the Building” and the third of “Reservation Dogs” – a quietly pensive one, setting up a great episode next Tuesday.

5) More streaming: Penny Marshall’s 1992 “A League of Their Own” was a delight, a fictional version of the real moment during World War II when a professional women’s baseball league was formed. Now it’s an eight-part series, with Abbi Jacobson and Nick Offerman as the catcher and manager (the Geena Davis and Tom Hanks roles in the movie). Also today, Netflix has the third season of Mindy Kaling’s teen comedy, “Never Have I Ever.”

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