Syfy, 12:00 a.m. ET
The Twilight Zone marathon New Year’s marathon continues, all day and all night today – and so does the show’s continued influence and excellence. Early today, at 9:30 a.m. ET, host Rod Serling takes us on a tour to “A Stop at Willoughby,” a Season 1 train trip that clearly inspired “The Commuter,” one of the tales dramatized in a few weeks when Amazon unveils its new sci-fi anthology series, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams. And back in and on The Twilight Zone today, this evening’s highlights include several classics: “Time Enough at Last,” with Burgess Meredith as a timid bookworm, at 8:30 p.m. ET; “A Living Doll,” with Telly Savalas as a man tormented by a toy doll, at 9:30 pm. ET; “To Serve Man,” the sinister story about seemingly benign alien visitation, at 10 p.m. ET; and an 11 p.m. ET double feature about beauty and conforming, “The Eye of the Beholder” and “Number Twelve Looks Just Like You” (pictured). Collect them all. Trade with friends.
HBO, 9:00 a.m. ET
All eight movies in the Harry Potter franchise available in one place, on one day. Happy New Year! Starts with 2001’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at 9 a.m. ET (pictured), introducing 11-year-old Harry Potter, played by Daniel Radcliffe, as he steps for the first time into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. His destiny awaits – and so do seven more movies from J.K. Rowlings’ fanciful universe, up to and including 2011’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 at 2:30 a.m. ET tomorrow, followed by the series’ 2016 prequel, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
NBC, 11:00 a.m. ET
NBC presents live TV coverage of today’s Rose Parade, straight from the streets of Pasadena, CA. The NBC morning-show family – what’s left of it – will be on hand to provide commentary. Other outlets providing coverage today include ABC, Hallmark Channel, Univision, and, with a strange refracted view, one streaming site…
Amazon Prime Video, 11:00 a.m. ET
Amazon gets into the Rose Parade business today, providing live coverage hosted by Cord Hosenbeck and Tish Cattigan, who are described as veteran local broadcasters who have covered the Pasadena parade for 25 years. Like their history, though, Cord and Tish are entirely fictional: They’re played, respectively, by fellow Saturday Night Live alums Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon.
AMC, 2:00 p.m. ET
The Breaking Bad marathon, showing all episodes in sequence on weekends through the end of January, picks up today after yesterday’s inaugural launch. The action picks up at 2 p.m. ET, with the fourth episode of Season 2: “Down,” which focuses on Anna Gunn as Skyler, the increasingly dissatisfied wife of Bryan Cranston’s Walter White. The title, it turns out, is part of a clue about what this season is leading up to – but only a small part. Just go with it. The point is, series creator Vince Gilligan and company had much more of an idea where they wanted to go, season by season and in terms of the show’s overall arc, than the writers and producers of most TV series.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Stanley Donen directed this 1963 film, but Alfred Hitchcock could have. It’s the best Hitchcock film made by someone other than Hitch himself (and yes, that includes Brian De Palma), and stars Cary Grant – a familiar face from the Hitchcock canon – as a man who may or may not be embroiled in a case of mistaken identity. Audrey Hepburn plays the young widow who finds that several killers are out to get her – one of whom may or may not be Cary Grant’s suave but slippery character. I loved this mystery thriller when I saw it as a kid, and still love it today, when I’m much more familiar with the supporting cast: Walter Matthau, James Coburn, and George Kennedy.
Fox, 9:00 p.m. ET
Most TV shows are taking the day off on this first day of 2018, showing reruns, but Fox’s interesting Marvel series about young mutants is returning for midseason with a fresh episode, number 11 of its first season. And tonight, with members of the mutant squad wary of one another, tensions run high – and the powers they can wield, including those of Polaris, are much more likely to be at hand. In her case, literally.
TCM, 2:15 a.m. ET
When Roger Ebert reviewed this Warren Beatty-Goldie Hawn bank heist movie upon its release in 1971, he praised it as “a slick and breakneck caper movie that runs like a well-oiled thrill.” Shot in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, $ is one of my favorite movies from the period, and certainly ranks today as an underrated treasure. Beatty plays a U.S. bank-security expert who is hired by a German banker (Gert Frobe, showing a much softer side than as the title villain of Goldfinger) to bolster the security at his bank. Beatty, meanwhile, is secretly plotting, with giggly prostitute Goldie Hawn, to rob it. But only part of it – the safety deposit boxes filled by crooks, who can’t report the thefts of their ill-gotten gains. The movie has a bank robbery sequence that is one of the best ever, followed by an outrageously, inventively extended chase scene that goes by foot, by car, by train, and, amazingly, over a frozen lake. And all of it propelled not only but Beatty’s sly performance and by Hawn’s effortless sex appeal, but by a deliciously inventive musical score, written by Quincy Jones and featuring, among others, Little Richard. This is shown late at night tonight on TCM, but obviously, I’m enough of a fan to encourage you to record and watch it. If you do, let me know what you think… and Happy New Year!
