It’s all about endurance tonight as an anime man finds a note to climb a mountain (because it is there), a documentarian follows three troubled Newarkers from the Reagan Years up til now, and Lifetime xmas heroes hold out for love on the holiday–OK, that last one is a threat, but they can’t all be diamonds. We’re lucky if even some of them are.

BRAD’S PICK:
The Summit Of The Gods [Netflix]
A Japanese photo reporter named Fukamachi finds a camera that may have belonged to Mallory, the famous adventurer who disappeared in 1924. However, before he can see the film it is stolen. Let the chase begin! Netflix’s newest animation definitely has a cool premise.

JASON’S PICK:
Life of Crime: 1984-2020 [HBO, 9p]
This ambitious documentary takes place in my current backyard of Newark, New Jersey, so even if the premise weren’t fascinating, I’d be intrigued. Filmmaker Eric Alpert has followed three urban hustlers since 1984 and chronicles the lives of the trio as they travel through the system and try to escape their pasts one way or another.

KATHERINE’S PICK:
Saying Yes to Christmas [Lifetime, 8p]
A career-oriented gal falls in love with an ex during a whirlwind visit home for Christmas. I guess that’s the conflict, because who among us doesn’t visit our small hometown and say yes to every social invitation? 

BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE:

• Perhaps the only TLC reality show based on a book–the autobiography of Jazz Jennings written when she was 10, I Am Jazz has quietly logged six seasons and starts on a seventh tonight.
• The late singer-songwriter George Michael has become entwined with Christmas both for writing and performing one of the few great holiday songs written in the last half century with “Last Christmas” and having died on Christmas Day 2016. ABC celebrates his life through interviews with his friends and colleagues on George Michael: Superstar.
• Stand-up comedian Mo Amer looks into some of the absurdities of being a muslim man in a state like Texas in his very funny looking Netflix special Mo Amer: Mohammed in Texas.
• As for the LHV (what we like to call that TV landscape featuring a very particular kind of movie popular on Lifetime and Hallmark), we’re recommending the one new Lifetime movie and Hallmark is taking the Tuesday off. However, Oxygen is offering a film that fits the description in A Chestnut Family Christmas about that familiar trope of a family coming home for Christmas.