Honoring the best players in the world of sports, and saluting athletes who’ve gone the extra mile off the court, the ESPYS is among the year’s most inspiring awards specials. Comedian Shane Gillis hosts from L.A.’s Dolby Theatre, with music from Busta Rhymes, Clipse and Gelo, with Tobe Nwigwe and David Michael Wyatt leading an In Memoriam tribute. But it’s the athletes who are the stars of this show, with Simone Biles, Caitlin Clark, Saquon Barkley, Coco Gauff and Ilona Maher among the top nominees. Special honors go to former women’s basketball and soccer stars Diane Taurasi and Alex Morgan, each receiving the Icon Award. Other honorees include former NBA star Oscar Robertson, accepting the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage for his battle to establish free agency; Pennsylvania State University’s women’s volleyball head coach Katie Schumacher-Cawley accepting the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance for leading her team to win the NCAA Women’s Volleyball Championship while battling breast cancer; and Olympic swimmer David Walters and former soccer goalkeeper Erin Regan receiving the Pat Tillman Award for Service, acknowledging their post-career vocation as members of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Wedding bells are sounding more like funeral chimes lately on TV’s period romances. First we watched Gladys Russell (Taissa Farmiga) take her very solemn vows on The Gilded Age, and now another reluctant bride approaches the alert in the show where American debutantes cross the pond (instead of vice versa) in the 1870s to make love (or quasi-love) matches in Jolly Olde England. The focus this week is on beautiful Lizzy (Aubri Ibrag), who’s betrothed to nice but dull Hector Robinson (Jacob Ifan), though she’s obviously head over heels — sometimes literally — for abandoned Duke Theo (Guy Remmers). With runaway Duchess Nan (Kristine Froseth) returning from Italy to disrupt this potentially scandalous flirtation, and the wedding date imminent, what path will Lizzy choose?

More tortured romance is on display in the third and final season of the coming-of-age beachy drama, promising to reveal which of the Fisher brothers “Belly” Conklin (Lola Tung) will choose. (If this were a TLC show, she could probably go with both.) The new season picks up at the end of Belly’s junior year of college, with summer beckoning for her and her soulmate Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno). But when her first love and Jeremiah’s older sibling Conrad (Christopher Briney) reenters the picture, all bets are off.

Even by this wacky show’s standards, their latest outing is a lot to digest. And not just because everyone seems obsessed with hot peppers, including Dennis (Glenn Howerton) and Mac (Rob Mac), who are inspired to put on EMT uniforms after watching emergency workers save a collapsed patron of Paddy’s who ate one of Frank’s ghost peppers. Microdosing during their first training session isn’t the best idea, and neither is commandeering a decommissioned ambulance: “The illegality of what we’re doing is spicy enough to get me off,” Mac crows. Meanwhile, Frank (Danny DeVito) spars with The Lawyer (Brian Unger) while Dee (Kaitlin Olson) tries a side gig in food delivery and Charlie (Charlie Day) channels The Bear with his too-hot-to-handle cuisine. If only someone would say, “NO, Chef!”

The certified “Disney Legend” brings her latest project, a “visual album,” to Disney+ and Hulu, featuring 13 original songs. Something Beautiful is billed as a pop opera fueled by fantasy, which seems very on brand for this pop princess.

INSIDE WEDNESDAY TV:

• Sullivan’s Crossing (8/7c, The CW): The grand opening of Rob’s (Reid Price) new restaurant is the setting for the Season 3 finale, with Cal (Chad Michael Murray) suspecting that Maggie (Morgan Kohan) misses her surgical career more than she’s telling everyone.
• MasterChef: Dynamic Duos (8/7c, Fox): It’s a culinary game of “Telephone” when the teams are split up for a relay, with one chef beginning the dish and the other, waiting in a separate room, swapping places midway through the challenge.
• Expedition Unknown (9/8c, Discovery): Josh Gates scours the swamps of South Carolina in search of female pirate Anne Bonny’s lost treasure.
• Tyler Perry’s Sistas (9/8c, BET): The ninth season of the dramedy opens with the ladies racing to the hospital in the wake of a citywide blackout after learning something’s wrong with Karen’s (Ebony Obsidian) pregnancy.

ON THE STREAM:

• Stick (streaming on Apple TV+): Is young golf protégé Santi (Peter Dager) ready for the pro leagues? He’ll find out in the sports comedy’s penultimate episode when he enters an Invitational Tournament, ignoring all the “zygote” cracks as Pryce (Owen Wilson) and the crew cheer him on. CBS Sports broadcaster Jim Nantz and former pro Trevor Immelman play themselves, calling the shots.
• Outrageous (streaming on BritBox): The docudrama about the infamous Mitford sisters ends with a secret marriage, an engagement and an eventful family reunion.
• Amy Bradley Is Missing (streaming on Netflix): A three-part true-crime docuseries follows the cold-case investigation into the 1998 disappearance of 23-year-old Amy Bradley, who vanished during her family’s cruise-ship vacation to the Caribbean.
• Countdown (streaming on Prime Video): The task force heads to the California desert to follow a new lead while Volchek (Bogdan Yasinski) puts the next phase of his deadly plan into motion.