TV This Week for Feb. 24 - March 2: ‘Parade’s End’ on HBO

SUNDAY

Films from “Amour” to “Zero Dark Thirty” will vie for best picture at “The 85th Annual Academy Awards,” hosted by — What the deuce?! — “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane, himself a nominee in the best original song category. (ABC, 5:30 p.m.)

MONDAY

There’ll be no need to apologize when “Independent Lens” presents the 2012 doc “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” a profile of the artist whose activist ways have put him in hot water with government officials in his native China. (KOCE, 10 p.m.)

TUESDAY

“Downton’s” off for now. But Edwardian England and WWI are back in “Parade’s End,” a new five-part miniseries airing over three consecutive nights and adapted by Tom Stoppard from Ford Madox Ford’s novels. With Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall, above. (HBO, 9 and 10:05 p.m; also Wed., Thu.)

WEDNESDAY

Bad guys of Beantown, beware! “Boston’s Finest” are on the case. Get up close and personal with beat cops, detectives and others on the city’s police force in this new docu-series. And don’t even think about trying to park your car in Harvard Yard. (TNT, 9 p.m.)

THURSDAY

First-name basis: Comedian Ben Hoffman does the man-on-the-street thing in the new series “The Ben Show,” and comic Nathan Fielder does something not entirely dissimilar in the new reality series “Nathan for You.” (Comedy Central, 10 and 10:30 p.m.)

FRIDAY

She sank over a hundred years ago and has been the subject of scores of dramas and documentaries ever since. What else is there to say? Find out with an evening of specials starting with “Save the Titanic With Bob Ballard: Revealed.” (Nat Geo, p.m.)

SATURDAY

Sing along with us: Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield is Spider-Man – “The Amazing Spider-Man,” to be exact, in this successful 2012 reboot of the superhero franchise. Emma Stone, Martin Sheen and Sally Field also star. (Starz, 9 p.m.)