State of the Union, Colbert Goes Live, ‘Best Medicine’ and ‘Will Trent’ Mysteries, Taylor Tomlinson Stand-Up

When President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress for the first State of the Union address in his anything-but-quiet second term, all major broadcast networks and news channels will carry the speech, with analysis to follow. Virginia’s first female governor, Abigail Spanberger, delivers the Democratic response. (Find details on how and when to watch here.)

In what has become another annual tradition, Stephen Colbert goes live with his final post-State of the Union episode, the ninth time in the show’s history that he has delivered his satirical take on the nationally broadcast speech. (According to latenighter.com, it’s Late Show‘s 58th live broadcast, most tied to political events.) Scheduled guests include former CBS Evening News co-anchor John Dickerson, a frequent visitor, and a performance by Mitski.

Because of the news event, scripted TV is a rarity tonight, but in the hour preceding the speech (in Eastern and Central time zones), the whimsical dramedy offers a new episode that opens with the shocking discovery of a well-preserved corpse in Port Wenn’s bog. When Martin (Josh Charles) is recruited to play medical examiner, the grumpy doc actually shows some enthusiasm, and soon the entire town is atwitter when he declares the mystery man a victim of homicide. The bigger puzzle: why he hasn’t yet told Louisa (Abigail Spencer), from whom he’s expected to draw blood, about his sanguinary phobia.

What is this, Halloween? When a body is found drained of blood, GBI agent Will (Ramón Rodríguez) once again teams with Sheriff Cable Broussard (Yul Vazquez), his biological dad, in a puzzling case suggesting vampirism is somehow in play. Will’s boss, Amanda (Sonja Sohn), would be the first to scoff, but she’s got personal issues of her own.

“I started doing stand-up in churches. They called it testimony, but I was getting laughs,” quips former After Midnight host Taylor Tomlinson in her fourth Netflix stand-up comedy special, filmed at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her very personal set riffs on faith, death, religious trauma, and coming out as bisexual at 30.

INSIDE TUESDAY TV:

· Finding Your Roots (8/7c, PBS): Henry Louis Gates Jr. discovers threads of creativity embedded within the ancestral histories of Oscar-winning director/screenwriter Spike Lee and Tony- and Emmy-winning singer-actress Kristin Chenoweth.

· Beachfront Bargain Hunt: Renovation (9/8c, Magnolia Network): The 12th season opens with a team of house-flipping siblings seeking a seaside property in Gulf Breeze, Florida, to renovate, enjoy, and rent to other vacationers.

· Elsa Morante’s La Storia (streaming on MHz Choice): An eight-part historical drama from Italy depicts the ordeal of a single mother hiding her Jewish identity and struggling to survive in the final days of WWII and in post-war Rome.