Best-bets for Sept. 23: endless football … plus some laughs

1) Football, 7:30 p.m. ET, NBC. Two top-10 teams collide, with Notre Dame (shown here) hosting Ohio State. That’s on the second Saturday this year (and the second one ever) when five broadcast networks have primetime games. Also at 7:30 p.m.. ABC has Texas at Baylor and CBS has Iowa at Penn State. CW has Georgia Tech at Wake Forest at 6:30 p.m.; Fox has Oregon State at Washington State at 7, then Southern Cal at Arizona State at 10:30. Read more…

1) Football, 7:30 p.m. ET, NBC. Two top-10 teams collide, with Notre Dame (shown here) hosting Ohio State. That’s on the second Saturday this year (and the second one ever) when five broadcast networks have primetime games. Also at 7:30 p.m.. ABC has Texas at Baylor and CBS has Iowa at Penn State. CW has Georgia Tech at Wake Forest at 6:30 p.m.; Fox has Oregon State at Washington State at 7, then Southern Cal at Arizona State at 10:30.

2) “Saturday Night Live,” 11:29 p.m., NBC. Jenna Ortega has been on TV since she was 9. She’s starred in a Disney Channel series (“Stuck in the Middle”), played the teen version of the lead character in “Jane the Virgin”and is Emmy-nominated for the title role in Netflix’s “Wednesday.” As it happens, next Wednesday, she’ll turn 21. Here’s a rerun of her turn as “SNL” host; The 1975 is music guest.

3) “Shakespeare & Hathaway,” 7 and 8 p.m. ET, Ovation. This likable show, a light mystery, sometimes ignores the mystery part. Not this time; the key people are “enigmatologists” – focusing on puzzles and such. When a young podcaster arrives to solve her mom’s disappearance, the case gets tangled in clues. That’s at 8, following the story of a young rebel who might foul her sister’s wedding.

4) “Girl in Room 13” (2022), 8 p.m., Lifetime Movie Network. Yes, this is a fairly standard film in the pretty-girl-in-jeopardy mode, sometimes straining credibility. But it arrived a month after Anne Heche’s death (at 53, after a car crash), demonstrating that she was a skilled actress. As the mother of a missing teen, Heche is alternately commanding, crumbling and raging. It’s fiction, but at 6 p.m., LMN has a true story, “The Girl Who Escaped” (2023).

5) ALSO: This seems to be “John Wick” night. The first two films are at 8 and 10:03 p.m. on Syfy; the fourth (2022) is 3:15 p.m. on Starz. That one leads into three “Expendables” movies, at 6:06, 7:50 and 9:33. For less violence and more music, catch Freeform; it has two excellent animated movies, with “The Little Mermaid” at 7:45 p.m. and “Beauty and the Beast” at 9:45. Also, at 10 p.m. ET, Hulu has the second half of the “iHeartRadio Music Festival.”

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