Week’s top-10 for July 17: Country’s best, plus FX surge

1) “CMA Fest,” 8-11 p.m. Wednesday, ABC. There’s an arena-rock vibe to this country concert. Guitars wail, crowds roar, the music is almost relentlessly high-octane. The result is fun and occasionally more. We hear great songwriting (Jordan Davis’ “Buy Dirt,” Cody Johnson’s “’Til You Can’t”) and splendid combos. When Vince Gill and Luke Combs (they’re shown here) do “One More Last Chance” or Hardy and Lainey Wilson do “Wait in the Truck,” we’re at the heart of country. Read more…

1) “CMA Fest,” 8-11 p.m. Wednesday, ABC. There’s an arena-rock vibe to this country concert. Guitars wail, crowds roar, the music is almost relentlessly high-octane. The result is fun and occasionally more. We hear great songwriting (Jordan Davis’ “Buy Dirt,” Cody Johnson’s “’Til You Can’t”) and splendid combos. When Vince Gill and Luke Combs (they’re shown here) do “One More Last Chance” or Hardy and Lainey Wilson do “Wait in the Truck,” we’re at the heart of country.

2) “Justified: City Primeval” opener, 10 and 11:15 p.m. Tuesday, FX. Eight years after ending, “Justified” returns, sharper than ever, as an eight-part mini-series. Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) retrieves his troublemaking teen-ager (well-played by Olyphant’s real daughter Vivian). Then circumstrances whisk them to Detroit and sudden jolts. In the “Justified” spirit, this mixes humor, action, great characters and bursts of fierce violence.

3) Much more, FX. In a slow time elsewhere, FX has a surge of superb shows. At 10 p.m. Wednesday, the passionate (albeit ultra-violent) “Mayans M.C.” has its two-hour series finale. At 10 p.m. Thursday is the hilarious “What We Do in the Shadows.” And there’s a bonus: “Reservation Dogs” (which starts its third season Aug. 2 on Hulu) has been showing previous episodes on FX. At 10 p.m. today, Elora takes her driving test; at 10:36, a tornado approaches.

4) “Shark Week” begins, 8 p.m. Sunday, Discovery and Max. We already have “SharkFest,” with a deluge of new and old hours on National Geographic. Now Discovery – which started this, 35 years ago – joins. At 8 p.m., it has cameras inside a fake whale carcass to film a feeding frenzy. At 9, it asks if the giant MEG – 50 feet, 60 tons – was obliterated by smaller great whites. At 10, it probes attacks near posh Red Sea resorts. At 11, it looks back at 35 years.

5) “Claim to Fame,” 8 p.m. today, ABC. Housemates are guessing that Shayne is Eddie Murphy’s daughter, but she’s created clever distractions. Last week, she tricked “Jane” into a wrong guess; now Jane (actually Jada Star, Dolly Parton’s niece) is gone; Shayne pushes a theory that Karsyn is related to racer Jeff Gordon. It’s an interesting hour, in a show (leading into “Bachelorette”) that has already ousted Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s son and Tom Hanks’ niece.

6) “Down to Earth” and “Fantastic Friends” openers, 8 and 9 p.m. Tuesday, CW. Globetrotting shows see actors living lives more exotic than our own. Zac Efron (in a series that previously ran on Netflix) starts in Iceland, admiring its renewable energy and munching reindeer meat. Then James and Oliver Phelps (twins who were the Weasleys in Harry Potter films) crash Maisie Williams’ Caribbean vacation and get a chocolate massage; they’re in Iceland next week.

7) “Southern Storytellers” debut, 9 p.m. Tuesday, PBS. Southerners have often spun great stories, from the books of Faulkner and Capote to the poems of Angelou and songs of Parton. Now we meet people continuing that tradition. They aren’t famous as writers (although Billy Bob Thornton and Mary Steenburgen have alternate fame as actors), but they’ve drawn awards and esteem. They talk about a South of open spaces, open lives and quiet emotions.

8) “Password,” 8 p.m. Thursday, NBC. When “The Blacklist” ended its 10-year run, NBC had another hole to fill. It inserts this rerun, which has Heidi Klum facing Jimmy Fallon. That’s part of a reality-heavy summer for NBC, from “America’s Got Talent” (also with Klum) at 8 p.m. Tuesdays to a bonus: The network has started running “Baking It” episodes – which previously were on Peacock – at 8 p.m. Saturdays. Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph host.

9) “Praise Petey” debut, 10 and 10:30 p.m. Friday, Freeform, rerunning at midnight. Petey lives a cliché New York life; she has lots of clothes, lots of therapy, few opinions. Then her world implodes … and a new one appears: She inherits the small-town cult her father created. Freeform’s first animated show stars Annie Murphy (“Schitt’s Creek). Like many cartoons, “Petey” pushes too hard for laughs; still, it’s a clever show about colliding values in a new world.

10) “HouseBroken,” 9 and 9:30 p.m. Sunday, Fox. Some of the best scripted moments this summer come from Fox animation … when it’s there. On five of the past six Sundays, this was pre-empted by sports. Now it returns, with “Simpsons” and “Family Guy” reruns and new episodes of this witty show. Lisa Kudrow voices Honey, a wise cat. In the first episode, she deals with resentful siblings; in the second, ghosts of pets want her to deliver messages.

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