TV This Week

SUNDAY

Feed me, Elmo: A rumble in the tummy is no laughing matter for the millions of American children who don’t get enough to eat. The “Sesame Street” gang takes a kids-eye view of the problem in the special “Growing Hope Against Hunger.” (KOCE, 7 p.m.)

How do they do it? The special “The Making of ‘South Park’: 6 Days to Air” goes behind the scenes to reveal how Messrs. Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s crude and crudely animated satirical series manages to stay so very topical. (Comedy Central, 10 p.m.)

MONDAY

Get “Enlightened.” Oscar nominee Laura Dern (below) plays a corporate striver who suffers a major meltdown, takes a much needed mental-health holiday, and returns to work with a new-and-improved attitude in this new dramedy. (HBO, 9:30 p.m.)

TUESDAY

Ladies and TV fans love cool James: It’s a busy night for LL Cool J when the rapper-turned-actor is feted for his decades-long music career at the “BET Hip Hop Awards 2011” and stars on a new “NCIS: Los Angeles.” (BET, 8 p.m.; CBS, 9 p.m.)

WEDNESDAY

“Psych” has been canceled … psych! The mystery series is back for a sixth season, with pseudo psychic Shawn Spencer (James Roday), his best buddy, Gus (Dulé Hill) and his former-cop pop (Corbin Bernsen) all present and accounted for. (USA, 10 p.m.)

THURSDAY

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue — and the rest, as they say, is history. Unless, of course, you are descended from one of the Americas’ indigenous populations, as a Spanish film crew discovers while trying to shoot a historical drama in Bolivia in the 2010 fable “Even the Rain.” Gael García Bernal stars. (Showtime, 9:30 p.m.)

FRIDAY

They also sail the ocean blue … and their saucy ship’s a beauty! Capt. Corcoran (Robert O. Berdahl, below front) and crew weigh anchor for “The Guthrie Theater Presents H.M.S. Pinafore,” a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operetta. (KOCE, 9 p.m.)

SATURDAY

“Five” is a new anthology of five short and bittersweet films that seeks to demystify the often deadly disease that is breast cancer and includes directorial contributions from Jennifer Aniston, Demi Moore and Alicia Keys. (Lifetime, 8 p.m.; also Mon. 9 p.m.)