Some things are so special, you just want to save them for a rainy day.
Or in the case of TV, so special you save them for a cold, wintry day in January when you're trying to stretch things out.
In this case, ABC has taken a special that was filmed way back in September at Washington's John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and is rolling it out now. I believe you'll find it worth the wait.
Taking the Stage: African American Music and Stories That Changed America, airs from 8 to 10 p.m. today and celebrates the opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.
And quite the star-studded celebration it is.
Check out the performer list: Angela Bassett, Dave Chappelle, Chuck D., Doug E. Fresh, Savion Glover, Tom Hanks, Samuel L. Jackson, Quincy Jones, Rashida Jones, Elijah Kelley, Janelle Monae, Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith, Octavia Spencer, Chris Tucker, Jesse Williams, Oprah Winfrey and Stevie Wonder.
Want more? Here you go: Patti Austin, Christina Aguilera, Alvin Ailey Dancers, Jon Batiste, Shirley Caesar, Chloe x Halle, Gary Clark Jr., Common, Cynthia Erivo, Fantasia, Jamie Foxx, Robert Glasper, Dave Grohl with Trouble Funk, Herbie Hancock, Gladys Knight, John Legend, Mary J. Blige, Mary Mary, Donnie McClurkin, NeYo, Usher and the West Point Choir.
It's going to be a packed two hours of music, dance and the spoken word "to celebrate America as seen through the prism of African American culture and celebrate African American contributions to the global landscape."
Highlights include new footage from the museum's collections. For example, a plane used to train the famed Tuskegee airmen for World War II combat and a Bible owned by Nat Turner.
The new 400,000 square-foot museum sounds like an idea whose time was long overdue. It is the 19th and newest museum in the Smithsonian family.
The museum, built for $540 million, has 12 galleries and a collection of more than 35,000 items. It stands on a five-acre site adjacent to the Washington Monument.
Director Lonnie G. Burch III says, "[The museum] will be a place where visitors can learn about the richness and diversity of the African American experience, what it means to their lives and how it helped shape the nation and the world."
• My Kitchen Rules, 8 p.m. today on Fox. If you're not up for all that specialness above, Fox is premiering a raucous hourlong cooking reality series to help it get though the seasonal gap.
My Kitchen Rules (TV-14 for dialogue and language) will present five celebrity duos taking turns hosting intimate Hollywood dinner parties to be judged by Curtis Stone (Top Chef Masters) and Cat Cora (Iron Chef America).
The celebrities taking on the challenge include Lance Bass, siblings Brandy & Ray J, Andrew Dice Clay, Brandi Glanville and Naomi Judd.
As the rounds escalate, the duo with the lowest score at the end of each one will be eliminated. The last two teams standing will duke it out for the right to brag that "my kitchen rules."
• Colony, 9 p.m. today on USA. For those who have been asking, Season 2 finally arrives for the science fiction/dystopian drama set in a walled Los Angeles "in the not-too-distant future."
Colony stars Josh Holloway (Sawyer in Lost) and Sarah Wayne Callies (Lori Grimes in The Walking Dead) as former FBI agent Will Bowman and his wife, Katie. They are dealing with a city occupied by an outfit known as the Colony Transitional Authority.
They are humans, but part of a larger extraterrestrial invasion force that we assume is worldwide. The conflict comes because the population is divided -- some of the residents have collaborated, others are rebelling.
As the second season begins, the aliens are still in control and Will has been cooperating with the Collaborators in an effort to get his son back. He also now knows that Katie is allied with the Resistance. There's a rough place for a marriage to find itself.
The series is rated TV-14 for language and violence.
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Weekend on 01/12/2017