The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching

last updated 8 January 2015

The 34th Annual Kennedy Center Honors

A star-studded sing-along to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” (Smokey Robinson! Lionel Richie! Caroline Kennedy!) is among the highlights of this salute to America’s artists, taped Dec. 4 in Washington, D.C. Along with Diamond, this year’s Kennedy Center honorees include Sonny Rollins, Yo-Yo Ma, and Meryl Streep. Tuesday, Dec. 27, at 9 p.m., CBS

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Creators and co-stars Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein return with more scathing sketches about Portland, Ore., and the crunchy-granola lifestyles of its denizens. In the second-season premiere, Armisen and Brownstein play a couple who venture to “SoCal,” where sunshine is so abundant that they feel compelled to don burkas to shield their pale and tender skin. Other characters include a pair of overprepared river rafters and the prickly proprietors of a feminist bookstore. Friday, Jan. 6, at 10 p.m., IFC

Two decades after the premiere of the British comedy series about two dissolute fashion victims, Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley return to their roles so seamlessly it’s like they never left. Highlights of this hilarious special, the first of three, include one key character’s release from prison, a spoof of the Danish series The Killing, and a ribald re-enactment of the royal wedding. Sunday, Jan. 8, at 10 p.m., BBC America/Logo

Henry McCarty, alias Billy the Kid, came to fame in the 1880s just as the mythology of the West was taking shape. Though seen as “the Robin Hood of New Mexico,” he was also a murderer. Tracing the colorful career of a skinny orphan who became the most wanted man west of the Pecos, American Experience shows how McCarty set the mold for an American pop-culture archetype: the gangster as hero. Tuesday, Jan. 10, at 9 p.m., PBS; check local listings

This five-part documentary is an eye-opening history of the decades-long campaign to marshal much of the globe in the effort to end South African apartheid. Filmed across 10 years, it chronicles the tireless work of activist Oliver Tambo, the grassroots boycott of corporations doing business with the racist regime, the 1977 murder of Steve Biko, the 27-year imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, and much more. Thursdays, Jan. 12–19, at 9 p.m., and Jan. 26, at 10 p.m., PBS; check local listings

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