In baseball parlance, a "Roosevelt game" is one where a team wins by one run. The new TBS drama series, "Roosevelt Game" (Sunday, 9 p.m.), is based on a novel by Jun Ikeido, who wrote last year's smash series "Hanzawa Naoki." This one is also set in the corporate world, but in manufacturing rather than finance.
Aoshima Seisakujo Co. makes precision instruments, and since the 2007 recession has been badgered by customers to cut prices. President Hosokawa (Toshiaki Kawasawa), who did not reach his position "the traditional way," is under great pressure from his board of directors. During a meeting he drops a bombshell. He has decided to disband the company baseball team, which costs the firm ¥300 million a year. The directors are shocked since the team is a pet project of the founder and chairman of the company (Tsutomu Yamazaki). When Hosokawa tells the chairman of his decision, the old man is angry and tells him his iron rule: You never cut personnel.
Kento Nakajima of the boy band Sexy Zone is the host-reporter for this week's installment of "Challenge: Yume no Sono Saki e" ("Challenge: Beyond the Dream"; NHK-Premium, Wed., 8 p.m.), which profiles Kenichi Ebina, a dancer who outlasted all other competitors on the eighth season of the U.S. audition series "America's Got Talent." Ebina is especially lithe and limber, and his act isn't limited to dancing but incorporates martial arts, magic and pantomime.