Hot Dots

by Clif Garboden

THURSDAY 27

8:00 (5) Skating. Exhibition performances by last week's world championship winners. (Until 11 p.m.)

8:30 (2) Say, Brother: In Our Own Words. Nine kids have a studio discussion about the issues that drive their daily lives. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Mystery: Cadfael: The Devil's Novice. Derek Jacobi plays the medieval monk detective again. This time out, Caddy, refusing to believe a novice's murder confession, uncovers a web of love and intrigue in his search for the truth. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

10:00 (7) Law & Order. Still camping out on Thursdays while ER takes a breather. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (44) People in Motion: A New Sense of Place. Marlee Matlin hosts a three-part series on how people with disabilities are becoming more independent through "adaptive technologies" and access laws. The first show profiles people who've brought their wheelchairs into the workplace. (Until 11 p.m.)

FRIDAY 28

7:30 (38) Basketball. The Celts versus the Philadelphia 76ers.

9:00 (2) Great Performances: Some Enchanted Evening: Celebrating Oscar Hammerstein 2. An all-star tribute to the lyricist of The King and I, Oklahoma!, South Pacific, and Show Boat. Think about some of those lyrics. Think hard. Was this guy really such a genius? Julie Andrews, Bernadette Peters, and Patti LaBelle sing. Plus interviews with Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

10:30 (2) Frank Sinatra: The Main Event. The 1974 Madison Square Garden concert. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

SATURDAY 29

5:30 (4) Basketball. The NCAA's Final Four get reduced to a Dynamic Duo in this semifinal doubleheader. Do you still care? Then you are mad.

6:30 (2) La Plaza: Caetano in Bahia. A bio of singer/songwriter Caetano Veloso that follows him home for the São João festival. (Until 7 p.m.)

8:00 (7) Skating. Todd Eldredge, Kurt Browning, Michelle Kwan, and Kristi Yamaguchi headline an event that features men's, ladies', pairs, and ice-dance competitions. Taped in Boston. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (2) The Razor's Edge (movie). A 1946 film adaptation from Somerset Maugham with Tyrone Power as a man who gets religion and forsakes Gene Tierney. Also starring Anne Baxter, Herbert Marshall, and Clifton Webb. More Maugham follows. To be repeated on Sunday at 2 p.m. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

11:30 (2) Of Human Bondage (movie). Leslie Howard in a 1934 Maugham yarn about a young doctor who becomes obsessed below his station and has eyes only for waitress Bette Davis. (Until 12:55 p.m.)

SUNDAY 30

7:00 a.m. (7) Easter Sunday Mass. Starring Bernard Cardinal Law. (Until 8 p.m.)

Noon (7) Basketball. The New York Knicks versus the Orlando Magic.

3:00 (38) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (movie). The 1962 Joan Crawford/Bette Davis sibling terror-tale retold with Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave playing the depraved sister act (and starring together for the first time). Unfortunately it's a real lame job all around. (Until 5 p.m.)

7:00 (2) Eyewitness: Volcano. The first of 13 shows (British-made, we suspect) exploring myths, legends, and facts of nature. Tonight we spot and classify eruptions around the globe and trace the geological aftermath of volcanic action. (Until 7:30 p.m.)

8:00 (5) The Ten Commandments (movie), part one. The Cecil B. DeMille Biblical epic returns for its seasonal airing -- though what this has to do with Easter is unclear and Passover isn't till next month. Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner star. To be concluded on Monday starting at 9 p.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

8:00 (7) A Few Good Men (movie). Drama surrounding the trial of two Marines who murdered one of their own. Starring Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, and Demi Moore. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: Heavy Weather. A P.G. Wodehouse adaptation starring Peter O'Toole as a typical Wodehouse creation, Lord Emsworth, whose only ambition is to be left to live in peace with the Empress of Blandings, his prize pig. Also in typical Wodehouse fashion, the eccentric's family are only slightly less peculiar than he is, and their silly squabbling disrupts his dream. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

9:00 (4) A Walton Easter (movie). A 1997 reunion for the clan that were TV's first family from 1972 to '81. John-Boy goes home for Easter, pregnant wife in tow. Returning from the original are principals Richard Thomas, Michael Learned, and Ralph Waite, plus Ellen Corby (Grandma), Jon Walmsley (Jason), Judy Norton (Mary Ellen), Mary McDonough (Erin), Eric Scott (Ben), David Harper (Jim-Bob), Kami Cotler (Elizabeth), and Mary Jackson and Helen Kleeb (the fabulous Baldwin sisters). (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (44) Talking with David Frost. A chat with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Think peace, buddy. (Until 11 p.m.)

MONDAY 31

8:00 (2) The World of National Geographic: The Sharks. Opening up shark night on 'GBH, we see shark myths exploded and get a chance to know the real fishes. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (7) Mad About You. Special time this week. (Until 8:30 p.m.)

8:00 (44) The American Experience: The Iron Road. Repeated from last week. How 20,000 laborers linked America's coasts with railroad tracks. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:30 (7) The Piano (movie). Jane Campion's 1993 lyrical masterpiece, with Holly Hunter playing Sam Neill's mute mail-order bride in 19th-century New Zealand and Anna Paquin as her daughter. Harvey Keitel co-stars as the neighbor who lets her move her piano into his house when Neill refuses delivery. And then there's a lot of music and sex. Channel 7 mysteriously ends its description of this with the line "Holly Hunter and lots of Harvey Keitel star." (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (2) The New Explorers: Walking Among the Sharks. You need heavy shoes. A trip on a research sub, the Aquarius, to observe deep-water sharks off the Vancouver coast. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (4) Basketball. The NCAA men's championship.

9:00 (5) The Ten Commandments (movie), part two. The conclusion. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (2) The American Experience: The Orphan Trains. In the mid 1800s, a well-intentioned theology student pitied the urchins of industrialized America's Eastern streets and devised a plan to ship them off to good homes in the West. For some of the kids, this turned out to be a good thing, but for a lot it was like being sold into slavery. The Orphan Trains ran for decades, and there are a few survivors of the project around today to tell the tale. This award-winning documentary covers all that and more. (Until 11 p.m.)

TUESDAY 1

8:00 (2) Nova: Kidnapped by UFOs? No, you weren't. You're delusional, drunken, drugged-up trailer trash, and if the aliens did capture you for examination, they'd have left our planet in disgust. Anyway, you're so persistently nuts that scientists have actually decided to waste time trying to figure you out. But the truth is that the aliens are much subtler than your daydreams paint them. They landed years ago, insinuated themselves into our communities, and managed to get elected to Congress. This explains a lot -- certainly a lot more than the paranoid ravings of a bunch of white trash do. To be repeated on Wednesday at midnight, and on Thursday at 9 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (25) Hot Shots, Part Deux (movie). Charlie Sheen deadpans his way through this blessedly out-of-control 1993 Rambo spoof. With Lloyd Bridges, Valeria Golino, and Richard Crenna. (Until 10 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Mystery: Inspector Morse: Happy Families, part two. As Morse fights with the tabloids, another body turns up. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:30 (38) Basketball. The Celts versus the Chicago Bulls.

9:00 (2) Frontline: Valentina's Nightmare. Why Rwanda isn't going to win any enlightenment awards. A look at the 1994 massacre of 800,000 Tutsis by Rwanda's Hutu majority and the ugly aftermath of that benighted nation's petty internal struggle. Imagine no countries, no religions . . . yeah that would be better. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (4) The Last Boy Scout (movie). Bruce Willis and Daman Wayans teamed up as a detective and a quarterback to investigate a murder in this 1991 buddy effort. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (2) Daughters of the Troubles. Speaking of small-minded excuses for bloodshed, WGBH moves from Rwanda to Northern Ireland with filmmaker Marcia Rock's portrait of two Belfast women forced out of their traditional roles in society by political forces beyond control and comprehension. See page 22. (Until 11 p.m.)

WEDNESDAY 2

9:00 (44) In the Life: As American as Apple Pie: Gay Americana Uncovered. This month's edition of PBS's gay-and-lesbian news magazine looks at gay life in the circus, growing up gay in rural America, and the Andy Warhol Museum on Pittsburgh's North Side. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (2) Great Performances: Emmeline. Before the Civil War, a young Maine farm girl was shipped off to sweat it out in Mr. Lowell's textile mills. Story goes that she was seduced, got pregnant, had a son, gave him up, and then accidentally married him some years later. In 1980, Looking for Mr. Goodbar author Judith Rossner novelized the story; in 1990, PBS's The American Experience treated it in a powerful documentary (The Sins of Our Mothers). This is an opera based on all that; it was composed by Tobias Picker and is performed by the Santa Fe Opera with soprano Patricia Racette as the title-role wronged spinner. (Until midnight.)

Midnight (2) Nova: Kidnapped by UFOs? Aliens are also responsible for fast-food restaurants. That "beef" is actually industrial waste imported from the planet Holda-onyon as part of a government-mandated recycling initiative. Repeated from Tuesday at 8 p.m.

THURSDAY 3

7:30 (38) Hockey. The Bruins versus the New York Rangers.

8:00 (2) Live from Lincoln Center: The New York Philharmonic: Debussy's "The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian." The NY Phil and the Westminster Symphonic Choir join up under Kurt Masur. With Maria Ewing, Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz, Nancy Maultsby, and Mary Ann McCormick. (Until 9:30 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Nova: In Search of the First Language. Radical linguists study the world's 5000 languages for links among tongues previously considered unrelated. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:30 (7) The Naked Truth. The first of two episodes tonight. With Téa Leoni and not much else. Part two airs, after Seinfeld, at 9:30 p.m. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:30 (2) Mystery: Cadfael: St. Peter's Fair. A traveling wine merchant is murdered and Brother Cadfael thinks there's more to the motive than jealousy and greed. (Although that would be enough.) Derek Jacobi stars. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:30 (7) The Naked Truth. The conclusion. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (7) Law & Order. Again on Thursday.

The 525th line

Revisionist History Dept.: first of all, we want a show of hands -- every American who owned a Toyota in 1957, please take your bow. What is this 40th anniversary of "Toyota in the USA" ad they're running? How many Japanese cars were over here back then? Five total? In 1957, foreign cars of any kind were 1) rare and 2) laughed at.

Now about that two-hour Hidden History of Boston special that Channel 5 ran on March 23 opposite the lunar eclipse . . . Never mind the forced "revelations" (the Salem witch trials took place in Salem Village, which is now in Danvers; the Pilgrims didn't all wear big black hats). We'll just point out two (of dozens of) mistakes of which Channel 5, narrator Mike Barnicle, and the show's producers should be roundly ashamed. The bridge over the pond where the Swan Boats go is in the Public Garden, not on the Common. That was real stupid. And that old footage they showed to illustrate the molasses flood -- of the people climbing into boats to escape? Wow. That wasn't the molasses flood. Boats don't do well in molasses. What an unnecessary insult to history and documentary. Bad show. Bad, bad show. Sloppy, amateurish nonsense, and it could have been fantastic. Next time, call us.