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What’s on TV Sunday: ‘Search Party’ and the American Music Awards

Alia Shawkat in “Search Party.”Credit...Mark Schafer

“Search Party,” starring Alia Shawkat, returns for a second season. Pink and Kelly Clarkson team up at the American Music Awards.

SEARCH PARTY 10 p.m. on TBS. This comedy started out as a wandering critique of millennial angst and entitlement, as Dory (Alia Shawkat) assembled an incompetent ragtag team of friends to investigate the disappearance of a college acquaintance, Chantal. But their sleuthing ended disastrously, prompting the show to take on a brutally dark tone. Season 2 follows their cover-up efforts. It’s tenser and meaner, delivered in waves of paranoid, hilarious outbursts.

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Pink at the 2010 American Music Awards.Credit...Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images for Dcp

AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS 8 p.m. on ABC. They’re both pop megastars who specialize in torch ballads of uplift and heartbreak, but Pink and Kelly Clarkson perform in remarkably different ways. While Pink soars through the air amid pyrotechnics and hordes of dancers, Ms. Clarkson prefers to plant her feet and let the tears flow. The pair will seek common ground when they perform together for the first time to open the American Music Awards. Tracee Ellis Ross (a star of “black-ish” on ABC) will host, and give her mother, Diana Ross, a lifetime achievement award. Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato and Niall Horan are also scheduled to perform.

POLDARK 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The series wraps up its third season with Ross and Demelza’s relationship in tatters. The slimy Whitworth faces a reckoning, while Elizabeth turns the tables on George.

THE ROOT 100 9 p.m. on Fusion. The Root celebrates 100 African-Americans, ages 25 to 45, who have left an imprint on culture and politics this year. The honoree Yamiche Alcindor, a reporter for The New York Times, gives a speech, and Representative Maxine Waters of California appears via video to accept a public service award.

THE PROBLEM WITH APU 10 p.m. on truTV. “I’m a comedian going after the biggest comedy show of all time,” Hari Kondabolu told The Times about his new documentary. In it, he wrestles with his relationship to one of his favorite shows, “The Simpsons,” and one of its most problematic characters, Apu, a convenience store owner who exhibits many of the stereotypes that South Asians have tried to shake for years. But the documentary goes beyond one cartoon character, exploring the depiction of South Asian characters as a whole and the discrimination that actors have faced in Hollywood. Aziz Ansari, Kal Penn and others are interviewed.

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Pam Grier in “Jackie Brown.”Credit...Darren Michaels/Miramax Films — Kobal Collection

JACKIE BROWN (1997) on Netflix. Several movies unfold within “Jackie Brown,” Quentin Tarantino’s experimental adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s novel “Rum Punch.” There’s an intricate blaxploitation caper starring an ornery Samuel L. Jackson; a stoner comedy starring Robert De Niro; and perhaps most important, a tender, slow-boiling love story starring Pam Grier and Robert Forster. (Chris Tucker also stops by for a rip-roaring five minutes of verbal jousting.) All of these coalesce into an unpredictable and thrilling whole.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section SP, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: What’s on Sunday. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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