What’s on TV This Week: ‘Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches’ and Awards Shows

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, Feb. 21-27. Details and times are subject to change.

Monday

THE ENDGAME 10 p.m. on NBC. An F.B.I. agent (Ryan Michelle Bathe) and a mysterious criminal mastermind (Morena Baccarin) fight to one-up each other materially and verbally in this new thriller series. The plot revolves around a series of major bank robberies in New York City. Expect fireworks: The “Fast and Furious” director Justin Lin is an executive producer of the show and directed Monday night’s debut episode.

Tuesday

FANNIE LOU HAMER’S AMERICA: AN AMERICA REFRAMED SPECIAL 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This feature-length documentary special looks at the influential civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer. The program shows Hamer’s legacy as an advocate for voting and women’s rights and explains how she went from working as a sharecropper in Mississippi to organizing grass-roots campaigns.

Wednesday

FREDERICK DOUGLASS: IN FIVE SPEECHES (2022) 9 p.m. on HBO. David W. Blight’s Pulitzer-winning 2018 book, “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom,” is the foundation of this new documentary, which includes commentary by Blight and the scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. that speaks to the abolitionist’s crucial place in American history. But the documentary also takes advantage of its own medium, emphasizing the power of Douglass’s words: It features five actors — Jeffrey Wright, Nicole Beharie, Colman Domingo, Jonathan Majors and Denzel Whitaker — performing words from five Douglass speeches from several different decades. A sixth actor, André Holland, narrates.

Thursday

AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS (2013) 5:15 p.m. on Showtime 2. The filmmaker David Lowery had proven himself a skilled maker of moody dramas by last year, when he released the Arthurian romance “The Green Knight.” Lowery’s reputation is due in part to this somber quasi western. In it, Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck play Bob and Ruth, a couple that gets involved in a shootout. The fight leaves one man dead and a sheriff’s deputy (Ben Foster) injured. Bob goes to prison, and Ruth gives birth to their daughter. Later, Bob escapes and journeys back to Ruth. But he’s wanted, and things get complicated.

Friday

QUEEN & SLIM (2019) 7:35 p.m. and 10:20 p.m. on FXM. Both the outlaw romance “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” (above) and Melina Matsoukas’s “Queen & Slim” feature couples whose lives are transformed, quickly, by violence. The story of Queen and Slim (played by Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya) opens with an awkward first date that leads into a deadly encounter with an aggressive white police officer (Sturgill Simpson). They become fugitives on the run, and “Queen & Slim” turns into a road movie and a love story. What lingers, A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times, “are strains of anger, ardor, sorrow and sweetness, and the quiet astonishment of witnessing the birth of a legend.”

Saturday

FREE GUY (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. This action comedy was a pandemic-era box-office success story. Now it can be a watch-from-home Saturday night diversion. A sugary sci-fi romp with notes of “The Truman Show” and “The Matrix” (but filtered through the director of “Night at the Museum”), “Free Guy” casts Ryan Reynolds as Guy, an Everyman who learns that he’s a side character in a video game. When he meets a player named Millie (Jodie Comer), Guy is drawn into a mission to stop the C.E.O. of the studio that created the game (Taika Waititi) from enacting evil deeds. The movie is “perky though predictable,” Maya Phillips wrote in her review for The Times.

53RD ANNUAL N.A.A.C.P. IMAGE AWARDS 8 p.m. on BET. One of the joys of the N.A.A.C.P.’s annual Image Awards show is that it allows for some matchups that you don’t see at the Oscars, Emmys or Grammys. The ceremony recognizes movies, TV shows and music. Some of the categories in this year’s edition are fairly typical: Halle Berry, Andra Day, Jennifer Hudson, Tessa Thompson and Zendaya are all up for the best actress in a film award, while “Encanto,” “Luca, “Raya and the Last Dragon,” “Sing 2” and “Vivo” will compete for best animated movie. But other categories break genre boundaries: The nominees for entertainer of the year are Jennifer Hudson, Lil Nas X, Megan Thee Stallion, Regina King and Tiffany Haddish.

Sunday

28TH ANNUAL SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AWARDS 8 p.m. on TBS and TNT. Lady Gaga was one of this year’s surprise Oscar snubs, but she will be up for a best actress statuette at the Screen Actors Guild Awards (for her role in “House of Gucci”), alongside Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”), Olivia Colman (“The Lost Daughter”), Jennifer Hudson (“Respect”) and Nicole Kidman (“Being the Ricardos”). The best performance in a motion picture award will be a competition between Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”), Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”), Andrew Garfield (“Tick, Tick … Boom!”), Will Smith (“King Richard”) and Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”). And on the TV side, the ensembles of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Morning Show,” “Squid Game,” “Succession” and “Yellowstone” will go head-to-head for the best cast award.

SUPER PUMPED 10 p.m. on Showtime. The first season of this new Showtime anthology series is based on “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber,” a 2019 nonfiction book by the New York Times technology reporter Mike Isaac that chronicles the transportation company’s rise. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Travis Kalanick, the Uber co-founder who was the company’s chief executive from 2010 to 2017, when he resigned after the company’s troubling traits — including a workplace culture that fueled sexual harassment and discrimination — rose to the surface. The show’s cast also includes Kyle Chandler, Kerry Bishé and Uma Thurman.