Hot Dots

by Clif Garboden

A CLASSIC TREAT: in honor of Homer's Odyssey finally making it past the NBC script doctors after three millennia -- a collection of Homeric links.

FRIDAY

9:00 (2) Evening at Pops. A repeat airing of Pops' conductor Keith Lockhart's first concert. Guests include soprano Sylvia McNair and the always offputting Mandy Patinkin. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Around the World in 80 Days: Dateline to Deadline. Michael Palin finds himself in America with just 16 days to go to make his rendezvous with Phileas Fogg's globetrotting record back in England. But first, a balloon ride in the Rockies. The series finale. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (2) Evening at Pops. Visitors are opera's Migenes (singing classical lite) and 13-year-old violin virtuoso Kawakubo. Everyone's on a first-name- (or at least one-name) only basis tonight. (Until 11 p.m.)

SATURDAY

7:00 (44) The Royal Opera House: Star Struck. The first of six shows taking us behind the scenes at London's home to opera and ballet. Tonight's edition has us watch American diva Denyce Graves collapse on stage and tracks the institution's reaction to a new PR director's new publicity tacks. (Until 8 p.m.)

9:00 (2) A Letter to Three Wives (movie). Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain, Ann Sothern, Kirk Douglas, Paul Douglas, Jeffrey Lynn, and the voice of Celeste Holm star in this 1948 Joseph L. Mankiewicz-directed comedy about three women who receive letters from a mutual friend claiming she's run off with one of their husbands. Apparently a simple head count isn't enough to sort out the faithful from the stray. To be repeated on Sunday at 2:45 p.m. (Until 10:45 p.m.)

9:00 (7) Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country (movie). Never could trust those Klingons. Starring William Shatner as the Federation's trigger-happy peace envoy. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:45 (2) The Snake Pit (movie). This heavy 1949 drama about a woman tossed into a loony bin after her nervous breakdown actually had the social impact of championing mental-institution reform. Olivia de Havilland stars as the patient. From a novel by Mary Jane Ward, and also starring Mark Stevens, Leo Genn, and Celeste Holm. To be repeated on Sunday at 1 p.m. (Until 12:35 a.m.)

SUNDAY

3:00 (7) Basketball. NBA playoff action: game four of the Western Conference final, between the Houston Rockets and the Utah Jazz.

4:00 (44) The 14th Annual Report of the Secretaries of State. What a scary show. A bunch of white guys who once held the fate of the world in their administrative little hands sit around and chat about old times. "And suddenly we found ourselves invading Iraq! Boy was my face red!" Adding spice to today's merriment will be guest puppetmasters Andrey Vladimirovich Kozyrev of Russia and Germany's Dietrich Genscher. Yank secretaries on hand will be William Rogers, Alexander Haig (who never misses one of these confabs), and Lawrence Eagleberger. Hodding Carter moderates. (Until 5 p.m.)

5:00 (44) The 10th Annual Report of the Secretaries of Defense. An even scarier group of political appointees than the gang from 4 p.m. get together to discuss the proper use of wholesale slaughter. Panelists include James Schlesinger, Richard Cheney, and Elliot Richardson. (Until 6 p.m.)

7:00 (5) 5 Is 25: A Silver Celebration. What, again? WCVB's 25th-anniversary celebration. Another chance to track Natalie's hair through two and a half decades. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (2) The National Memorial Day Concert 1977. Oh yeah, tomorrow, May 26, is May 30 this year. And this year's version of the annual war-dead salute from the White House West Lawn features Colin Powell and a typically unlikely roster of guests, including Charles Durning, Tony Danza, and Barbara McNair. Assume these choices were politically motivated. Now try to figure out what point is being made. (Until 9:30 p.m.)

8:30 (7) Mr. Saturday Night (movie). School figures for Billy Crystal as a stand-up comic regretting that he put his one-liners ahead of his family. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (4) Thicker Than Blood: The Larry McLinden Story (movie). That title presumably means this is a based-in-fact TV-movie (BIFTVM). Peter Strauss and Rachel Ticotin dispute custody of a child he did or didn't father. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (5) Murder One, part one. The troubled series closes with a three-parter in which Wyler (Anthony LaPaglia) agrees to defend vigilante serial killer Clifford (Pruitt Taylor Vince). Is that all there is? To be continued on Monday and Thursday, starting at 9 p.m. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Frontline: The Opium Kings. Repeated from last week. Filmmaker Adrian Cowell visits remote corners of Burma where a lot of the world's narcotics are harvested. The story, though, goes back to the French colonists in Southeast Asia (see The American Experience on Monday at 9 p.m.) who financed and encouraged the opium business to pump up the region's economy. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:30 (2) Mystery: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Three Gables. Repeated from last week. Holmes receives a woman seeking help after "thugs" ran off with her brother's biography. Fast-paced? To be repeated on Tuesday at 8 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 11:30 p.m.)

12:30 a.m. (2) Nagasaki Journey. Welcoming in Memorial Day with a reminder that World War 2 wasn't as much fun as it looks in the movies, 'GBH gives us a collection of eyewitness accounts of the bombing of Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) and the subsequent occupation of southern Japan. (Until 1 a.m.)

MONDAY

3:00 (7) Basketball. NBA Eastern Conference final game four, with the Heat and them Bulls. NBC obviously thinks you got the day off.

7:00 (5) African Americans in World War 2: A Legacy of Patriotism and Valor. Guess this is a positive report. (Until 8 p.m.)

8:00 (44) The American Experience: D-Day. Repeated from last week. An expanded version of Charles Guggenheim's Oscar-nominated chronicle of the Normandy Invasion. (Until 9 p.m.)

9:00 (2) The American Experience: Vietnam: A Television History: Roots of War and America's Mandarin. A rerun of the landmark 1983 series based on the definitive Vietnam chronicle by Stanley Karnow. A chance to be reacquainted with (or meet) such famous-long-ago personalities as Bao Dai, Ngo Dinh Diem, Ngo Dinh Nhu (and the infamous Madame "Let Them Eat Cake" Nhu), and Uncle Ho Chi Minh, and to revisit such places as Phnompenh and Dienbienphu. The whole affair was a miserable waste of time and money -- not to mention 58,000 American lives and an estimated one million North Vietnamese. The strength of this series lies in the way it puts the whole disaster into perspective, harking back to the century of French occupation in Indochina that set the stage for the tragedy of the century. Worth taping, and in the "let Saigons be bygones" atmosphere that's cropped up in the past decade, worth watching. (The book is also being reissued.) To be repeated on Tuesday at 10 a.m. on Channel 44. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (5) Murder One, part two. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (7) Abducted: A Father's Love (movie). The tale of the first male to be assisted by the "mother's underground," which usually helps runaway moms hide their kids from dad. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (44) America on Wheels: Car Wars. The series ends with an analysis of America's devotion to inefficient private transportation. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (44) P.O.V.: Taken for a Ride. A nice companion to 9 p.m.'s America on Wheels finale. Filmmakers Jim Klein and Martha Olson recount General Motors' plot to deep-six America's perfectly wonderful streetcar system in the 1930s. (Until 11 p.m.)

TUESDAY

8:00 (2) Nova: The Mind of a Serial Killer. Inside the FBI and the real "profilers" who helped the cops catch serial murderer Arthur Shawcross. To be repeated on Thursday at 9 p.m. on Channel 44. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Mystery: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Three Gables. Repeated from Sunday at 10:30 p.m.

9:00 (2) Frontline: Innocence Lost: The Plea. A follow-up to a controversial Frontline documentary on the Little Rascals Day Care child-sexual-abuse case, reporting on the dramatically varied fates of the defendants. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (4) Broken Promises: Taking Emily Back (movie). A BIFTVM from 1993 -- sweeps month must be over. Cheryl Ladd and Robert Desiderio adopt Emily from a homeless couple who presumably change their minds. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (7) Basketball or Not. They're into the "if necessary" phase of the NBA semifinals, so if the Jazz and the Rockets absolutely have to play, they'll do it here and now. If not, we get Frasier, Caroline in the City, and Dateline NBC.

WEDNESDAY

8:00 (2) Mark Russell Comedy Special. The Simpsons has this guy's number. You'd figure that by now he'd be too ashamed to appear in public. No such luck. The thoroughly lame political song parodist visits another round of obvious and unfunny tunes on an audience of dopes. (Until 8:30 p.m.)

8:00 (44) Chess Kids. Making a move inside the world of international chess competition, focusing on Hungarian-born Judit Polgar, who became the youngest grandmaster ever at 15 and now beats the men. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:30 (2) The Durst Amendment. And here's another political lampooner -- San Francisco's Will Durst, whom we will not be quick to judge. (Until 9 p.m.)

8:30 (7) Basketball or No Basketball. More "if necessary" NBA action from the Heat and the Bulls, or The Single Guy (who let that back in rotation?), Wings, Men Behaving Badly, and Law and Order.

9:00 (2) American Visions: The Republic of Virtue and The Promised Land. The start of an eight-part series that follows US history through the nation's arts, architecture, and monuments -- a tantalizingly valid approach that gets too little attention. Tonight we consider the Roman Republic as the roots of inspiration for the American ideal and document the relationship between art and religion in Colonial America. Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes hosts. (Until 11 p.m.)

9:00 (4) Where Are They Now? Tonight's repeat show includes as guests Kim Phuc, the Vietnamese napalm victim in the famous photo, and Nick Ut, who took the famous photo. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (44) Sarah Chang: The Young Virtuoso. Continuing with Channel 44's prodigy theme, we tag along with violin star Chang on her first London tour -- at age 10. (Until 9:30 p.m.)

9:30 (44) Children with a Dream. And more kids who do stuff better than you ever could. The story of the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet. (Until 10 p.m.)

10:00 (4) The American Film Institute Salute to Martin Scorsese. Behind-the-scenes stories about the man behind Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ. (Until 11 p.m.)

THURSDAY

8:00 (7) Basketball Confusion. NBA Western Conference game six preceded by Friends at 8 p.m. and Seinfeld at 8:30 p.m. If there's no game, the 8-to-10-p.m. schedule will be: Friends, News Radio, Seinfeld, Suddenly Susan, and E.R.

9:00 (2) Mystery: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Red Circle. Wish we knew more. All the WGBH program-schedule blurb writer could come up with is, "Holmes looks into the background of a woman who is trying to escape the clutches of the Red Circle." Oh, that Red Circle. Jeremy Brett stars. (Until 10 p.m.)

9:00 (5) Murder One, part three. The conclusion. (Until 11 p.m.)

FRIDAY

7:30 (2) Caution: Auction! It's back. Find Channel 44. Watch Nick at Nite. Just stay as far away from this embarrassing annual fundraiser as you can. (Until 1:30 a.m.)

9:00 (7) If Necessary Basketball. NBA Eastern Conference game six unless the season's over.

9:00 (44) Pole to Pole: Cold Start. Michael Palin's BBC followup to his thoroughly entertaining Around the World in 80 Days is considerable less lively, owing in part to the decision to lug his camera crew from the Arctic to the South Pole via Africa, where it's difficult to have fun with things. This kickoff visit to Norway and other icy climes is pretty good, though. (Until 10 p.m.)