With the baseball playoffs looming, today’s schedule is laden with college football. Alabama hosts Florida (7 p.m., CBS) on CBS. They take their football seriously in Crimson Tide territory. Take it from someone caught in a traffic jam in Tuscaloosa during last year’s Alabama-LSU game.

• “Iconoclasts” (8 p.m., today, Sundance) returns for a fifth season. “Iconoclasts” allows one notable person to interview and profile a friend or colleague or a person who has offered inspiration or insight.

On tonight’s offering, Academy Award-winning actress Charlize Theron visits primatologist Jane Goodall, in the Congo, where she continues her work with endangered chimpanzees. Next week, singer Lenny Kravitz profiles director Lee Daniels (“Precious”).

• After a harrowing and frustrating experience in the hospital involving her 4-day-old baby, medical journalist Elizabeth Cohen decided she needed to write about how patients could take charge of their care.

Her book “The Empowered Patient: How to Get the Right Diagnosis, Buy the Cheapest Drugs, Beat Your Insurance Company and Get the Right Medical Care” (2010, Ballantine Books) forms the basis of “The Empowered Patient” (6 p.m., today, CNN). Calling on her own experiences as a mother and patient and stories from her 20 years of covering the medical profession, Cohen advises people that they have to ask questions, and demand second opinions, even if that makes us feel like a “bad patient.”

• Is bleak chic? We’re beset with brooding vampires and moody detectives. And none is more tortured and reflective than Kurt Wallander, the Swedish detective at the center of many best-selling novels by Henning Mankell. “Masterpiece Theatre” (8 p.m., Sunday, PBS, check local listings) returns with a second round of murder detection and personal angst in “Wallander II” adaptations of three Mankell novels running over as many weeks.

In Sunday’s “Faceless Killers,” Wallander (Kenneth Branagh, who received an Emmy and Golden Globe nomination for this role) must find the killers of an elderly couple savagely beaten in their isolated farmhouse. He also must quiet a brushfire of far-right nativist violence that erupts when the press reports that the homicide may have been the work of foreigners.

And if that weren’t enough to make a brooding man worry, he must contend with his father’s (David Warner) advancing Alzheimer’s and his daughter Linda’s (Jeany Spark) criticism of his attitudes toward her new boyfriend, a handsome doctor of Syrian descent. His wife left him for reasons still unstated, and his long-distance love affair with a new love interest isn’t exactly catching fire.

Wallander may or may not catch the bad guys, but he can’t catch a break with Linda. She accuses him of racism even as he’s fighting racism in his own police department and facing down white supremacists in the hinterlands.

“Wallander” makes for above average and thoughtful television, but they do not equal the joys of reading the novels, works dedicated to depicting Wallander’s anguished thought process.

Today’s highlights

• Young stars get the wrong kind of attention on “Law & Order: Los Angeles” (8 p.m., NBC).

• A pop-culture obsession turns deadly in the 2009 shocker “The Graves” (8 p.m., SyFy).

• Bryan Cranston hosts “Saturday Night Live” (10:30 p.m., NBC), featuring musical guest Kanye West.

Sunday’s highlights

• Who will have the last “ha-ha” when Nelson meets the creator of Facebook on “The Simpsons” (7 p.m., Fox)?

• Rosie Perez and Benito Martinez star in the 2010 drama “Lies in Plain Site” (7 p.m., Lifetime Movie Network).

l• “Nick News with Linda Ellerbee” (8 p.m., Nickelodeon) tackles the subject of schoolyard bullies.

• Alton Brown hosts “The Next Iron Chef” (8 p.m., Food).

• Will receives a new assignment on “Rubicon” (8 p.m., AMC).

• A witness emerges from the shooting in the woods on “Boardwalk Empire” (8 p.m., HBO).

• Dexter tries to find a comforting routine on “Dexter” (8 p.m., Showtime).

• A dangerous psychopath claims a victim on “CSI: Miami” (9 p.m., CBS).

• Luc seems overexposed on “Brothers and Sisters” (9 p.m., ABC).

• Rumors spread about the firm’s slippery footing on “Mad Men” (9 p.m., AMC).

• An ex-con caddy carries his last bag on the season finale of “The Glades” (9 p.m., A&E).

• “The Haunted” (9 p.m., Animal Planet) offers tales of the paranormal involving people and pets.

Sunday series

Gone to Ghana on “Amazing Race” (7 p.m., CBS) … Caring siblings get help on “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” (7 p.m., ABC) … A behind the scenes episode of “The Cleveland Show” (7:30 p.m., Fox) … A female CEO works as a lifeguard on “Undercover Boss” (9 p.m., CBS) … Rush Limbaugh guest voices (as himself) on “Family Guy” (8 p.m., Fox) … … Guilt consumes Susan on “Desperate Housewives” (8 p.m., ABC) … Hayley ties the knot on “American Dad” (8:30 p.m., Fox).