TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
New York is the location highlighted in tonight’s “31 Days of Oscar” tribute on TCM. It begins with this 1967 thriller, starring Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman terrorized, in and around her walk-down city apartment, by a sadistic thug (Alan Arkin). Great, still-scary, still-clever movie. And it’s followed by four others, including 1960’s The Apartment at 10 p.m. ET and 1975’s Three Days of the Condor at 12:15 a.m.
NBC, 9:00 p.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: If you missed Monday’s premiere episode of this entertaining and ambitious new drama series, starring Katharine McPhee as a talented hopeful auditioning for a Broadway play about Marilyn Monroe, you can see it here, in this same-week repeat. And you can read my full review
HERE, in what amounts to
another same-week repeat.
Science Channel, 10:00 p.m. ET
Tonight’s new program itinerary sends Karl Pilkington to Alaska, in search of whales. Sounds lovely – but instead of booking him on an excursion tour on a chartered boat, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant send him on a fishing boat – and make him earn his keep, cutting octopus tentacles and other duties, until he’s sick of them. Literally sick of them.
NBC, 11:29 p.m. ET
Zooey Deschanel is the guest host, appearing for the first time – and she’s a guest who can both act funny and sing well, so there’s a lot of possibility here. And the musical guest is Karmin, the YouTube sensation (well, one of them) that came to the fore by doing very clever covers of the songs of others.
TCM, 4:45 a.m. ET
Here’s the final New York movie of the night on TCM – and this 1979 movie, starring Dustin Hoffman as a young father trying to deal with unexpected single parenthood, is worth watching (or setting your recorder to catch) for plenty of reasons other than the Manhattan scenery. It features terrific performances by Hoffman, and by Meryl Streep as the mostly absent mother who asks for a divorce. Streep won an Oscar for her role here, and another for Sophie’s Choice in 1982. But since then, that slacker actress hasn’t won a single Best Actress Oscar in 29 years. So maybe this year, thanks to her nomination for The Iron Lady, you can root for her wholeheartedly – as the underdog.