Late Sunday evening is one of the most time-shifted time slots in television. It’s DVRed, viewed on a delay or downright ignored. But like it or not, that’s where programmers have chosen to slot some of TV’s best shows.

Throughout the year, The Walking Dead, The Good Wife, Downton Abbey, Once Upon a Time, Mad Men and Game of Thrones all compete for dominance on Sundays (and for space and recording time on my DVR), each trying to be the show that viewers choose to watch live.

On April 5 (Easter Sunday), television is forcing fans everywhere to make that same tough choice. But it will become even harder for some, because a majority of the new shows coming out that night seem to be targeting precisely the same group of people.

So among those adults 18-49, skewing female, will DVRs fill up with Salem, Mad Men, Wolf Hall or A.D. The Bible Continues?

(Thank goodness The Walking Dead already had its season finale, or else we’d all be in even more trouble.)

First, Lifetime starts off the night with its next iteration in the Flowers in the Attic series, If There Be Thorns, at 8 p.m.

Going up against HBO’s documentary Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, as well as returning shows Call the Midwife and Madam Secretary, the dramas may see some major overlap in female 18-49 viewers – especially since Lifetime is using If There Be Thorns as a lead-in for its Lizzie Borden Chronicles series debut.

At 9 p.m., NBC airs A.D. The Bible Continues from executive producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey. The series picks up where History’s miniseries The Bible left off, which also, they hope, translates to ratings. Its Easter Sunday debut date should help, especially as related programming has hit ratings highs this year.

National Geographic Channel’s miniseries event Killing Jesus just broke the network’s ratings record on March 29 with 3.7 million viewers – the channel’s biggest audience in its history. NBC is looking to duplicate that success with A.D. The Bible Continues.

Other 9 p.m. shows (CBS’ The Good Wife, Fox’s Last Man on Earth) might not cross over audiences too much, especially as NBC has been promoting its A.D. series as an epic TV event not to miss (translation: watch this live).

Once it gets to 10 p.m., TV fans are really in trouble.

The 10 p.m. time period has seen viewership drop 9 percent in the last year on broadcast networks, which analysts attribute largely to the DVR. The timeslot that was once prime real estate for new series on broadcast is seeing a huge shift to delayed viewing and toward ratings hits over on cable.

Recently, broadcast networks have seen less-than-stellar ratings in the time period. CBS’ Battle Creek debuted to a record low for a new drama on the network March 1.

Over on cable, though, The Walking Dead just broke records with its season finale on March 29, earning 15.8 million viewers for AMC, 10.4 million of which was in the 18-49 demographic. Even its after-show, Talking Dead, had a viewership of 7.5 million viewers, an impressive number for any show.

On April 5, however, no less than five big new shows will debut in that time period, trying to not only outdo one another, but also change the Sunday night ratings odds.

NBC follows up on its A.D. The Bible Continues with American Odyssey, an action drama centered on a female Special Forces soldier, emphasizing the patriotism, military and feminine aspects of the show at the same time. The tagline for the show further emphasizes the female demographic the show is hoping for: “Wife. Mother. Hero. Getting home will be the fight of her life.”

Lifetime, also known for its female-skewing audiences, premieres The Lizzie Borden Chronicles on April 5, a follow-up series to its January 2014 movie, Lizzie Borden Took an Ax, both of which star Christina Ricci as Borden.

The series catches up with Borden after she was acquitted of the murder of her father and stepmother. The period drama takes Lifetime back to the 1890s, which is not quite as far as WGN America goes for its second season of Salem.

Season two of the network’s first original scripted series, Salem, also touts powerful female roles in the fictional retelling of the 17th century Salem witch trials. The new season promotes a “Witch War,” pitting each scared citizen against witch, and witch against witch in the dark thriller.

Under PBS’ Masterpiece banner, and even further back in time, Hilary Mantel’s novel adaptation, Wolf Hall, makes its debut that same night with Homeland’s Damian Lewis as King Henry VIII.

While Wolf Hall includes King Henry and his future queen Anne Boleyn, but focuses on Thomas Cromwell and his rise to power under Tudor reign. Wolf Hall and its bestselling sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, have both become popular books for reading groups, which is an audience could translate well into the Sunday time slot.

And of course, the last seven episodes of Mad Men come to AMC April 5, marking the beginning of the end for the award-winning drama.

Don Draper and crew are now in the ‘70s, dealing with unraveling careers, relationship troubles and shady decisions of seasons past. In the words of Draper: “Everyone has their own story to tell.”

AMC has been promoting the end of Mad Men all month long on air and off, with an exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image, a panel at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, a gala in downtown LA, even a bench mimicking the show’s opening title sequence at the corner of the faux streets of Mad Men Avenue and Don Draper Avenue in New York. The Emmy winner will be missed.

So, as DVRs fill up across the country on Sunday, April 5, networks continue to fight for their place in live viewing, hoping to outwit, out-program and out-market one another for a slice of that ever-waning TV pie.

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