Tune in Tonight for April 28 | Broadcasting Events

Noah Wyle (“ER”) returns to episodic TV in “The Red Line” (7 p.m., CBS, TV-14), an eight-part topical melodrama airing in two-episode installments over the next four Sunday nights.

Wyle portrays Daniel, a high school teacher whose husband, a black surgeon, is mistakenly taken for a convenience store robber and shot dead by a Chicago policeman, Paul Evans (Noel Fisher).

Named after a transit line that connects the city’s different neighborhoods, the series examines the police shooting and its aftermath from different points of view. High school student Jira (Aliyah Royale) takes her adoptive father’s murder very hard, alienating her a bit from Daniel and inspiring her to seek out her birth mother, a decision with emotional ramifications for all concerned.

Daniel’s role as a history teacher allows him to underscore some of the series’ emphatic messaging. As he tells his students, history is not so much a collection of static facts, but the decisions of the millions of people who lived before us.

Other, better series have tackled serious subjects and still allowed their characters’ quirks and even humor to emerge. This is the kind of show that introduces a group of white police officers by showing them arguing in stilted fashion about NHL hockey teams and then has two black Chicago political rivals share a cup of coffee accompanied by mournful Negro spiritual music. The earnest tone, combined with these stereotypical touches, does not help “The Red Line” move along.

• Van Jones hosts “The Redemption Project” (8 p.m., CNN), a series of reconciliations between the families of crime victims and prison convicts ready to make amends.
• Amy and Jonah play hardball with Selina as Super Tuesday nears on “Veep” (10 p.m., HBO, TV-MA). This savage satire has managed to keep its bite by creating a parallel political universe unrelated to the ongoing travails of the current reality-television administration.

At the same time, recent episodes have seen Selina’s campaign collude with a hostile foreign power either out of desperation, incompetence or a combination of the two. And Jonah’s hopeless campaign is underwritten by a character obviously based on casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. And an unhinged Amy has adopted a bracing form of spin modeled on the example of Kellyanne Conway.

Sometimes, reality TV does inform the best scripted fare.

Other highlights

• Scheduled on “60 Minutes” (6 p.m., CBS): An interview with acting Homeland Security secretary Kevin McAleenan; Chinese websites that sell fentanyl; Norway’s vulnerable border with Russia.
• Competitors face deep cuts on “World of Dance” (7 p.m., NBC, TV-PG).
• Kara works both sides of her identity on “Supergirl” (7 p.m., CW, TV-PG).
• Villanelle moves operations to Amsterdam on “Killing Eve” (7 p.m., AMC, BBC America, TV-14).
• A request for Tessa on “Charmed” (8 p.m., CW, TV-14).
• Valjean hopes to make up for his treatment of Fantine by rescuing Cosette on “Les Miserables” on “Masterpiece” (8 p.m., PBS, TV-14).
• Knox targets Matthew on “A Discovery of Witches” (8 p.m., AMC, BBC America, TV-14).
• Families quarrel on “Game of Thrones” (8 p.m., HBO, TV-MA)
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© 2019 United Feature Syndicate