What’s on TV This Week: ‘Simple as Water’ and the American Music Awards

Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Nov. 15-21. Details and times are subject to change.

Monday

HOLIDAY BAKING CHAMPIONSHIP: GINGERBREAD SHOWDOWN 9 p.m. on Food Network. There may be few culinary situations more intense than baking for blood relatives. Food Network nods at that fact with this holiday baking competition show, which kicks off Monday night by challenging its contestants to make snow globe scenes out of coconut shavings and gingerbread.

Tuesday

SIMPLE AS WATER (2021) 9 p.m. on HBO. The Oscar-winning documentarian Megan Mylan gives an intricate, intimate look at the effect that the civil war in Syria has had on families in this ambitious documentary. Mylan follows an array of Syrian families whose lives have been changed by the war. They include a woman and four children living in a refugee camp in Greece; a man working as a delivery driver in Pennsylvania while applying for asylum for himself and his younger brother; and a husband and wife in Masyaf, in northwest Syria.

“These stories avoid triteness by lingering on the daily, unassuming routines of their characters,” Claire Shaffer wrote in her review for The New York Times. The result, Shaffer said, is a film that’s “anything but simple when it comes to its technical achievements, weaving together familiar immigrant narratives in ways that still manage to surprise and stun.”

HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE (2001) 6:30 p.m. on Syfy. This first movie in the “Harry Potter” franchise hit theaters 20 years ago this month. The movie made celebrities out of its three young stars, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, and defined the look of the so-called wizarding world in which the stories are set, which until that point had existed only in readers’ imaginations.

In a recent interview with The Times, Radcliffe reminisced about shooting the film. He looked back on some elements, like the use of practical special effects, fondly (“one of the great things about the films early on,” he said). Memories of, say, broom riding, came with more of a wince. “It was a broomstick with a thin seat in the middle, and you didn’t have stirrups — or, if you did, they were very, very high up,” Radcliffe explained, “so you were basically leaning all your weight onto your junk when you leaned forward.”

Wednesday

BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997) 11 p.m. on Showtime. The filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson is set to roll out his latest movie, the 1970s coming-of-age story “Licorice Pizza,” next week. That new movie shares its setting with Anderson’s 1997 period drama, “Boogie Nights” — both are set in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California.

The story in “Boogie Nights” follows a young man, Eddie (Mark Wahlberg), who gets discovered in the late ’70s by a successful pornographer (Burt Reynolds) and becomes a star. The film, Anderson’s second feature, was how many viewers first discovered Anderson. In her review for The Times, Janet Maslin wrote that Anderson’s “display of talent is as big and exuberant as skywriting.” Everything about “Boogie Nights,” she wrote, “is interestingly unexpected.”

Thursday

HIGH ANXIETY (1977) 10 p.m. on TCM. Mel Brooks spoofs Hitchcock as both the director and star of this satirical mystery movie. Brooks plays an anxious psychiatrist who gets accused of murder. The doctor’s quest to clear his name lets Brooks riff on scenes from “Vertico,” “Psycho,” “Spellbound” and “The Birds,” using the same brand of disgruntled humor he employed to great effect in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974), which TCM is airing at 8 p.m.

Friday

GREAT PERFORMANCES: SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY REOPENING NIGHT 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The San Francisco Symphony’s current music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, finally got an in-person welcome last month, when he led a reopening concert that featured the contemporary dance company Lines Ballet and the jazz star Esperanza Spalding, and works by John Adams, Alberto Ginastera and Wayne Shorter. This PBS broadcast is built from a recording of that concert, which was performed in front of an audience at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. For those who watched Salonen’s virtual debut last year, it’s a step toward normalcy.

Saturday

2021 ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME INDUCTION CEREMONY 8 p.m. on HBO. Among this year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees are Tina Turner, Carole King, the Go-Go’s, Jay-Z, Todd Rundgren, LL Cool J and Foo Fighters. The ceremony honoring them, held last month in Cleveland, brought together an equally impressive range of performers to speak — and sometimes sing. Among them was Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, Angela Bassett, Dr. Dre, Eminem, Drew Barrymore, and Jennifer Lopez, all of whom appear in HBO’s broadcast of the ceremony.

THE HUNT FOR PLANET B (2021) 9 p.m. on CNN. This documentary from the filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn (“The Price of Everything”) follows scientists working on NASA’s newest space telescope. Scheduled to launch in December, the new telescope is three times larger and seven times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope, and is meant to be its successor. Its development has been long and complicated, which gave Kahn plenty to talk about as he gathered perspectives from engineers, astronomers and other researchers.

Sunday

2021 AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS 8 p.m. on ABC. Cardi B is slated to host this year’s edition of the American Music Awards, which will be held on Sunday at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. The pop singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo is the most-nominated artist this year with seven nominations, including one for artist of the year. The other nominees for that top honor are Ariana Grande, BTS, Drake, Taylor Swift and the Weeknd. Sunday’s ceremony is set to include performances from Rodrigo, BTS (with Megan Thee Stallion), Bad Bunny, Carrie Underwood and several others.