Bold-faced names worthy of a post-Oscar party turn out for the 22nd annual “Kids’ Choice Awards” (7 p.m., today, Nickelodeon), honoring the entertainers of 2008 and courting the audience of tomorrow. Nominees include Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Will Smith, George Lopez, Jennifer Aniston and Anne Hathaway.

Dwayne Johnson hosts the 90-minute festivities, which also features appearances by the talented and merely famous, from Beyonce to Tiger Woods.

l Right after the awards show, Nickelodeon will debut the animated series “The Penguins of Madagascar” (8:30 p.m., today). I have not seen the two feature-length films that preceded this venture, but I am not impressed. The penguins share the Central Park Zoo with other creatures, including a lemur who acts like a Caribbean stereotype that was tired when “The Little Mermaid” debuted. The arctic birds spend a lot of time in what looks like aa cement cell block, a sad fate for any wild creature and an artistic choice that only accentuates the colder aspects of computer graphics.

I found it hard to distinguish between or care about the individual penguins. Their patter and relationships seem based on ancient service-comedy routines dating back to “Sgt. Bilko” and beyond.

The gag-driven humor of “Madagascar” is based almost entirely on entertainment culture and Hollywood in-jokes. It’s a rather nutrition-free diet we’re feeding the kids. Like many CGI movies stuffed with movie-star voice-overs, “Madagascar” is loud, obvious and utterly forgettable.

l Based on a popular series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, the new series “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” (7 p.m., Sunday, HBO) marks a departure for HBO. A big one. For starters, check out that PG rating.

This whimsical series, set in Botswana, stars Jill Scott as Precious Ramotswe, an ardent and honest divorced country woman who sells her deceased father’s cattle and moves to the city of Gaborone to open a detective agency. Her goal is to help her neighbors and her beloved country, in that order.

If you’re looking for “Murder, She Wrote” set in Africa, you’re wrong. There aren’t even any murders in the pilot episode, making “Ladies” gentler than that beloved Angela Lansbury series.

If anything, “Ladies” reminds me of the old “Andy Griffith Show,” a series about good country people and a noble and decent central character who helps neighbors sort out their issues.

There is a dark subplot about a kidnapped child and an organized black-magic ring, but violence remains either implied or entirely offscreen.

Today’s highlights

l Reese Witherspoon haunts an architect (Mark Ruffalo) in the 2005 romance “Just Like Heaven” (7 p.m., ABC).

l Faye Dunaway and Jerry O’Connell star in the Dora Roberts-inspired pot-boiler “Midnight Bayou” (9 p.m., Lifetime).

Sunday’s highlights

l A medical emergency rocks Silas’ court on “Kings” (7 p.m., NBC).

l The Rev. Lovejoy’s technical difficulty forces Homer and Marge to remarry on “The Simpsons” (7 p.m., Fox).