The computer-animated gang from a popular film franchise comes to Santa’s (Carl Reiner) rescue in “Merry Madagascar” (7 p.m., NBC), the very first holiday special of the too-early-to-be-Christmas season. (For the record, Thanksgiving is still nine days off.)

Look for laughs, a song or two and a heartwarming lesson about putting the spirit of giving before your own desires. The humor ranges from slapstick to adult jokes designed to sail over the heads of the tots. In one scene, a Santa-obsessed child expresses excitement with a term better known to fashionable Hollywood Buddhists.

As a nonfollower of the “Madagascar” franchise, “Merry” is interesting to me as an example of how movie promotion can swallow up all other aspects of entertainment. The virtue of a sequel or sequel-izable property — be it “Ice Age,” “Toy Story,” “Saw” or “The Godfather” — is that you don’t have to sell the idea for the movie more than once. The franchise title is the marketing, and one supposes the audience knows what it’s getting.

But with “Merry,” it seems the “Madagascar”-makers have also dispensed with character development. There’s no apparent distinction between the Lion and the Zebra except that one clearly has the voice of Ben Stiller and the other, Chris Rock. They’re ruthlessly efficient wisecrack-dispensing devices, but I wouldn’t call them characters.

• Tim Gunn may have departed the NBC-Universal stable when “Project Runway” ran off to Lifetime, but he returns to the fold tonight for the makeover episode of “The Biggest Loser” (7:30 p.m., NBC). He’ll be joined by Tabatha Coffey, the host of Bravo’s “Tabatha’s Salon Takeover,” and the band OneRepublic, who appear in a segment highlighting hunger awareness.

• Heather Locklear returns to her old show and her role on “Melrose Place” (8 p.m., CW).

• “Independent Lens” (9 p.m., PBS, check local listings) presents “No Subtitles Necessary,” a joint profile of Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond, who both escaped Hungary after the 1956 Soviet invasion and became two of Hollywood’s most sought-after cinematographers, shooting groundbreaking movies including “Easy Rider,” “Five Easy Pieces,” “Deliverance,” “Paper Moon” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

Tonight’s other highlights

• Homo sapiens emerge on “Becoming Human,” the third of a three-part “Nova” (7 p.m., PBS, check local listings) look at human evolution.

• A special group of 100 Visitors receive diplomatic visas on “V” (7 p.m., ABC).

• Six feels beside himself and faces the ultimate test in the concluding episodes of the six-part miniseries “The Prisoner” (7 p.m., AMC).

• Gary Sinise narrates Parts 4 through 6 of “WWII in HD” (7 p.m., History).

• A marine’s murder may be linked to a violent militia group on “NCIS: Los Angeles” (8 p.m., CBS).

• “Frontline” (8 p.m., PBS, check local listings) profiles Neda Soltani, the young woman shot to death during the anti-regime protests resulting from Iran’s disputed presidential election.

• A victim’s identity may be key to releasing a wrongly imprisoned man on “The Forgotten” (9 p.m., ABC).

• Barbara Walters interviews former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on “Nightline” (10:35 p.m., ABC), a conversation that continues on Friday’s “20/20.”