Hot Dots

by Clif Garboden

FRIDAY 18

9:00 (2) The Great Love Songs. Tender lyrics from the 1920s through today, delivered by Jack Jones, Maureen McGovern, John Raitt, and other people like that. Tina Turner's "What's Love Got To Do with It?" probably didn't make the final cut here; the Channel 2 program schedule blurb lists three examples -- "I'll See You in My Dreams," "When I Fall in Love," and the immortal "When Time Goes By" (must be from that unforgettable Bogart/Bergman film Casanova -- "Play it again, Stan"). (Until 10:20 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Around the World in 80 Days: Two Arabian Nights. Michael Palin continues his British-TV race against the globe and the clock with a visit to Egypt and a rough passage to India. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:20 (2) Marvin Hamlisch and the Pittsburgh Pops: Looking Back. Hamlisch is no big deal (Pittsburgh just wanted to hire someone as lame as John Williams to lead its orchestra-lite), but it's always nice to check in with tonight's guest stars, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé, who sing a tribute to the Gershwin brothers. (Until 11:20 p.m.)

SATURDAY 19

8:00 (44) Masterpiece Theatre: Rebecca, part one. Repeated from last week. Emilia Fox stars in this two-part adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's gothic romance made lastingly famous by Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 movie classic. Woman marries widower, moves into mansion haunted by his first wife's spirit, encounters the leftover housekeeper (played by Mystery host Diana Rigg), and eventually discovers that her predecessor didn't exactly go gentle into her good night. We think the whole thing's trite and overrated, but there are those who love it. (Until 9:30 p.m.)

9:00 (2) The Lavender Hill Mob (movie). Alec Guinness highlights this classic 1951 British comedy about a bank clerk who hatches a scheme for a big heist and enlists the help of a motley crew of unlikely crooks. With Stanley Holloway, Alfie Bass, Marjorie Fielding, and Sidney James. Leonard Maltin suggests that we look for little Audrey Hepburn in the opening scene; never noticed her ourselves, but we trust Leonard. To be repeated on Sunday at 3:35 p.m. (Until 10:20 p.m.)

9:00 (5) Leaving LA. Pretty strange stuff. The first of a pair of oddball ABC "second-season" dramas -- this one set in the wacky world of the Los Angeles coroner's office. We have a likable lead character here in Christopher Meloni as boss Reed Simms, but his character is so stylized and goofy that he'll never be able to anchor the plots. So the scramble for central character (something the writers seem to have left to chance) may yet be won by Melina "never-to-be-a-household-name" Kanakaredes, who's the ingenue among civil-servant ghouls, a demoted cop named Libby Gallante assigned to investigate mysterious deaths. As the outsider, she may be able to interpret the pretty shallow stories here, but if the show is to survive, the writers will have to add some dimension to the cavalcade of characters who populate the show's work-family: the corpse photographer who does weddings and collects celebrity parting shots; the stretcher pusher who talks to the dead; the psychic properties clerk; and the gourmand big boss. Too many kooks, too many offbeat players who would be memorable one-shot roles in a movie but whose peculiarities limit their potential as regular characters. Of course, adding attributes to the gag-cast parts is going to ruin their jokes. So it goes. This is refreshing while it lasts, though. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:30 (44) Great Performances: The Sleeping Beauty. A Royal Ballet production of Tchaikovsky's snoozer, with Viviana Durante as Aurora and Zoltan Solymosi as the dancing prince. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

10:00 (5) Gun. Robert Altman does television. That's good. He brings stars down with him from the big screen. Also good. And does a limited anthology series (six episodes), with a gun as the recurring character. Through peripatetic circumstances, the Gun goes from one owner to another, introducing new opportunities for irony and tragedy into already precarious lives while bringing out the worst in everyone into whose hands it falls. Neat idea. Sustainable? Not without more thought than episode one received or provoked. But give Altman a break. He's used to beating genius vision into movies. Television is a much tougher act to improve. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:20 (2) The Bank Dick (movie). One of the too-long-surviving W.C. Fields comedies. From 1940, with Fields playing his trademark alcoholic misanthrope as a bank guard. To be repeated on Sunday at 2:25 p.m. (Until 11:35 p.m.)

11:35 (2) My Little Chickadee (movie). More of W.C. Fields slurring his way through lines that lost their originality more than half a century ago. Mae West, another cinema icon of anything but lasting appeal, co-stars. To be repeated on Sunday at 1 p.m. (Until 1 a.m.)

SUNDAY 20

7:00 (2) Shari's Passover Surprise. Well we suspect that at least part of the tradition came as something of a shock to Lamb Chop. Anyway, the Passover tale is retold as an intro for youngsters. Alan Thicke, Dom DeLuise, and Robert Guillaume help out. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (5) Primetime Live Special Edition: The Royals. All your favorites: Di, Fergie, Monaco's Caroline, Stephanie, and Albert . . . okay, some of your favorites, we don't see Charles or Andrew on the list. And this isn't exactly live, that is, it was when it originally aired, but now it's just bits and pieces from assorted past shows. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Masterpiece Theatre: Rebecca, part two. In which our heroine figures it all out -- something you, the viewer, did about an hour ago. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (4, 12) Rose Hill (movie). There are these four young orphan boys from New York, see, and they adopt a baby girl and head out West, and she grows up and probably breaks a lot of hearts. Happens all the time. A Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (5) Tango and Cash (movie). We always get this confused with one of those cop-and-dog movies. Might as well. This is for sure the worst buddy-cop film ever made. Sly Stallone and Kurt Russell star. If you call that stardom. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (7, 10) On the Edge of Innocence (movie). Psychos Kellie Martin and James Marsden break out of a mental institution and head for Mexico. Not a Hallmark Hall of Fame production. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Frontline: How To Buy a President. Repeated from last week. Clinton's campaign financing has been anything but unsullied, and things have gotten worse since this documentary was made. (Until 10 p.m.)

MONDAY 21

9:00 (7) The 1997 Boston Marathon. The 101st running -- nonstop coverage until 3 p.m.

8:00 (2) Mysteries of the Deep: Exploding Stars and Black Holes. Space is not a peaceful place, it's just so big you don't really notice the disturbances. Astronomers watch anxiously as one corner of the cosmos goes down in a blaze of glory while another just kind of stops being. To be repeated on Friday at midnight, and on Thursday at 8 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (4, 12) The Magic of David Copperfield 16: Unexplained Forces. That old black magic. Who can explain it; who can tell you why. Who really finds this sort of thing entertaining? (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (44) The American Experience: The Quiz Show Scandal. TV-quiz-show superboy Charles Van Doren's fall from grace back in the 1950s, when a sore loser squealed that the game shows were fixed. Sad about that -- and about Van Doren, who was probably pretty clueless about what he was doing wrong while it was going on -- but even sadder is the reminder that this breach of viewers' trust was considered a national scandal at the time. If such revelations came down today, who would really be surprised? Sometimes what's happened isn't so much a loss of innocence as a gain of dishonesty. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) The American Experience: The Wright Stuff. Garrison Keillor narrates the story of Orville and Wilbur Wright, who catapulted the 20th century into the 20th century, as it were, by singlehandedly getting everyone with a ticket off the ground. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (5) Deadly Vision (movie). She's a waitress who "sees" murders before they happen. He's the cop who asks her to help him track down a serial killer. Hasn't this been done before? Like, lots of times? Kristin Davis and Matthew Settle star; Tari Signor (Juliet in Trinity's current Romeo and Juliet; see page 12) has a small role. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (2) Chicano: History of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement: Quest for a Homeland. Repeat of a four-part series covering the Mex-Am movement from 1965 through '75. Tonight's show covers the 1967 case to reclaim land granted in an 1848 treaty and a 1970 anti-Vietnam War demonstration in East Los Angeles that turned into a riot. (Until 11 p.m.)

TUESDAY 22

8:00 (2) Nova: Siamese Twins. The entire tense tale of cojoined siblings (or whatever the PC term is) and the decision to separate them surgically. To be repeated on Thursday at 9 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Masterpiece Theatre: Middlemarch, part three. Stalling tactics abound as the Vincy clan awaits the disposition of old Featherstone's estate and Dorothea keeps Will Ladislaw at bay to protect her husband from another heart attack. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Frontline: Nuclear Reaction. A look at nuclear power and why it isn't going anywhere in the US while Europeans cheerfully spew all sorts of radioactive shit into the environment and consider it progress. Pulitzer-winning historian Richard Rhodes narrates. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (4, 12) Sleeping with the Devil (movie). Shannen Doherty plays a nurse who marries the wrong guy. This one sounds pretty familiar too. (Until 11 p.m.)

10:00 (2) Viewpoint: The Blinking Madonna and Other Miracles. Whew! Lucky break with that Shroud of Turin fire, huh? Boston-area filmmaker Beth Harrington investigates the role of myth and faith (and faith in myth) in the lives of Catholic women, using as her starting point some nonsense about a blinking-Madonna miracle at a North End festival. Where is Umberto Eco when we need him? (Until 10:30 p.m.)

WEDNESDAY 23

8:00 (7, 10) The 32nd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards. From Twang City, USA. You know the winners in advance. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (2) The Metropolitan Opera Presents: Andrea Chenier. Luciano Pavarotti stars in Umberto Giordano's four-act songfest about love and the French Revolution. In Italian with English subtitles. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

THURSDAY 24

8:30 (2) Say, Brother: The "New" People: Exploring the Haitian Experience. A look at Haitian life in Somerville and at the notion that there's a high cultural wall between Haitian immigrants and American blacks. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) Mystery: Cadfael: The Sanctuary Sparrow. The local goldsmith is beaten near to death and robbed. Naturally suspicion falls on the juggler -- probably just because people found him irritating in the first place. (Until 10:30 p.m.)

9:00 (5) The Specialist (movie). Would that be Sylvester Stallone or Sharon Stone? His specialty is explosives; hers is . . . anyway, this one's from 1994. (Until 11 p.m.)

FRIDAY 25

8:00 (4, 12) The Dukes of Hazzard Reunion (movie). Now we're talking. One of the absolute stupidest television shows of all time is being welcomed as an old friend. Looking back, it was pretty funny -- not the show, but the fact that somebody 1) made the show and 2) watched the show. Can't fault a program with a character named Daisy Duke. Starring John Schneider, Tom Wopat, Catherine Bach, Stella Stevens, and the General Lee. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (2) In Performance at the White House. Playing for Bill and Hill, we get Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Around the World in 80 Days: Ancient Mariners. Michael Palin continues his global odyssey through heavy seas in the Persian Gulf. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (2) Marvin Hamlisch and the Pittsburgh Pops: Love Night The final concert in this questionable series features opera's Marilyn Horne singing sentimental favorites and the ever-unwelcome John Tesh performing more bullshit pretend music for idiots. (Until 11 p.m.)

Midnight (2) Mysteries of Deep Space: Exploding Stars and Black Holes. Repeated from Monday at 8 p.m.