Best Bets on TV Tonight

Billy Bob Thornton plays the head of NASA in "Armageddon" (8 p.m., ABC), the 1998 theatrical film that also features Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler. New York City is still trembling from a "minor" asteroid shower, and now a major asteroid is on a direct path toward Earth, set to smash the planet to smithereens. But the world's top deep-core driller, played by Willis, is leading a team of rescuers who will try to plant a nuclear device at the core of the asteroid, thus averting disaster.
There was the 1989 British TV miniseries titled "Traffik." Then came the 2000 feature film that won a supporting-actor Oscar for Benicio Del Toro and a directing Academy Award for Steven Soderbergh. Now comes "Traffic: The Miniseries" (9 p.m., USA, continues Tuesday and Wednesday), giving the same trafficking theme a new story and new characters. The story revolves around illegal trade in drugs, weapons and people.
"The Wild Ride to Super Bowl I" (10 p.m., HBO) takes us back XXXVII years ago, when the Green Bay Packers of the NFL and the Kansas City Chiefs of the upstart American Football League met in what was called the NFL-AFL World Championship Game. The Packers won easily, 35-10, and nobody imagined just how big such a game would become. It was played at the Los Angeles Coliseum, which wasn't sold out, and so the TV coverage was blacked out in the area. The winning coach? A guy named Vince Lombardi.