Thursday TV: Ballet Dancers, Mountain Men
From a network whose other new reality show this week, “The Catalina,” was so tawdry that E! wouldn’t have touched it, tries to class things up with “Breaking Pointe” (The…
Wednesday TV: Dogs and Hockey on Network TV
You know things are going to be thin on network TV this summer when one of the first new shows is a straight up knockoff of “The Dog Whisperer.” “Dogs…
Tuesday TV: Al Qaeda in Yemen, Jeans in the East
Leave it to brave journalists to infiltrate the Al Qaeda compounds in Yemen. The Guardian’s Ghaith Abdul-Ahad does so, and with a camera crew for “Frontline” (PBS, 10 p.m, check…
‘Hemingway & Gelhorn’ vs. ‘Hatfields & McCoys’
Among its other uses, Memorial Day is a time to mark summer’s start, when people spend less time with their TV shows, networks take off their best shows, fill time…
Also on Monday: Memorial Day Fare
One of the few good things to come out of the current, seemingly endless wars are some stellar documentaries, reflecting what’s really going on in places like Afghanistan. There, the…
On Tonight: Fraud in Fins
One of P.T. Barnum’s first major frauds was something he called the Feejee Mermaid, a kind of lurid combination of monkey and fish with paper mache that brought in the…
Also on Sunday: Memorial Day Concert
Live from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol, The National Memorial Day Concert 2012 (PBS, 8 p.m., check local listings) features rock band Daughtry, singer Natalie Cole, country singer…
Saturday TV: Johnny Drama Returns
Now is the time that networks unload all the episodes of all the shows they paid for but never aired because they canceled the show. Prime example is “How to…
Friday TV: ‘Graceland’s 25th, Yo Yo Does Bluegrass
For the 25th anniversary of his most successful album, Paul Simon returned to South Africa to reconnect with the musicians on “Graceland,” prepare a tour, and shot a documentary at…
Thursday TV: So You Think You Can ‘Duet’
Sick of singing competitions? Too bad. The first of several knockoff reality shows to fill the airwaves this summer is “Duets” (ABC, 8 p.m.), a show like the voice in…