What’s on TV

BREAKTHROUGH (2019) 8 p.m. on HBO. A tragedy happens on ice — and an apparent miracle happens off it — in this faith-based drama from the TV veteran Roxann Dawson. The screenplay is based on an actual 2015 incident in which John Smith, a Missouri teenager, fell through the frozen surface of a lake and remained submerged long enough for his heart to stop. It started pumping blood again after he was brought to a hospital — but reportedly only when his mother audibly prayed for him. That event and the community’s subsequent push to aid in John’s recovery are at the center of this movie, which follows John (Marcel Ruiz), his mother (Chrissy Metz) and father (Josh Lucas) and a young pastor (Topher Grace). The film “tells the story of John’s miraculous ordeal with an unassuming simplicity, focusing on the harrowing details of the case without an overreliance on proselytization,” Bilge Ebiri wrote in his review for The New York Times. Though faith is ever-present, he added, “the film also wisely dedicates plenty of screen time to the emergency workers and doctors struggling to bring the boy back to life. Here, religion is not in contention with medicine, but seems to work in tandem with it.”

DEPUTY 9 p.m. on Fox. The director David Ayer and the screenwriter Will Beall created this new series, which mixes police procedural and western genres. Its premiere introduces a Los Angeles officer (Stephen Dorff) who reluctantly assumes the mantle of sheriff after the sudden death of his superior. (He’s the kind of live wire who says things like “policy and procedure be damned.”)