SATURDAY

AUGUST 12

2017

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

2017 PGA GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP

CBS, 2:00 p.m. ET

The 2017 PGA Golf Championship moves to the weekend – and to CBS, which begins Saturday coverage at 2 p.m. ET. Before that, three hours of earlier live coverage are available on TNT. But the leaders arrive later in the afternoon – if the rain doesn’t.

DOUBT

CBS, 8:00 p.m. ET

SERIES FINALE: This Katherine Heigl series has been hiding in plain sight, as CBS has been burning off first-run episodes on Saturday nights all summer. Summer TV? Saturday night? That’s broadcast TV’s idea of an unwanted, unwatched gulag. If episodes of Doubt fall in a forest, and no one is tuned in to watch, did they really drop at all? At any rate, tonight CBS presents the season’s concluding two episodes back to back, which presumably include a verdict in the legal case that’s been dramatized all summer. Will this series, and this narrative, be back next season with fresh episodes? I Doubt it. In fact, it’s been officially canceled.

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM

HBO, 8:00 p.m. ET

In 2001, Newt Scamander published a fantasy book called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It sold well – especially when it was revealed that Scamander, the hero of his own story, also happened to be the pen name of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. There was no such mystery surrounding this 2016 movie, but by then, anything connected to Rowling and Potter, no matter how tangentially, sold like magical hotcakes. Set 70 years before Harry became a student at Hogwarts, Fantastic Beasts stars Eddie Redmayne as Newt, and co-stars include Katherine Waterston and Samantha Morton.

THE QUIET MAN

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

William Friedkin takes over as Alec Baldwin’s guest co-host on TCM’s The Essentials beginning tonight, and the director of The French Connection and The Exorcist arrives on the day TCM is saluting John Wayne. So, fittingly, Friedkin’s choices in prime time on tonight’s The Essentials are two Wayne movies directed by the great John Ford – who has won more Oscars than any other movie director in history. He’s won four times, including for 1952’s The Quiet Man, starring Wayne and Maureen O’Hara (pictured), which begins The Essentials tonight. Ford also won for 1935’s The Informer, 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath, and 1941’s How Green Was My Valley. He didn’t win for 1956’s The Searchers, which TCM and Friedkin are showing at 10:30 pm ET – in fact, that John Wayne Western movie wasn’t nominated for a single Oscar, even though it’s a fabulous movie and one of Ford’s all-time best cinematic achievements.

ORPHAN BLACK

BBC America, 10:00 p.m. ET

SERIES FINALE: In last week’s episode, one long-time adversary finally was dealt with, by pregnant and captured Helena, while Helena herself ended the episode by having her water break, and the birth of her “miracle babies” ill-timed but imminent. Tonight’s episode is the finale for Orphan Black, so all the plots, subplots, and deadly confrontations will be resolved tonight, one way or the other. This has been a consistently entertaining and ambitious sci-fi series for BBC America, and Tatiana Maslany, as the star, has been TV’s best dramatic series actress for several years running. Tonight, she stops running – and the final scene, I’m hoping, includes a happy reunion of the surviving clone sisters. One last, happy meeting of the Clone Club…

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David Bianculli

Founder / Editor

David Bianculli has been a TV critic since 1975, including a 14-year stint at the New York Daily News, and sees no reason to stop now. Currently, he's TV critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and is an occasional substitute host for that show. He's also an author and teaches TV and film history at New Jersey's Rowan University. His 2009 Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour', has been purchased for film rights. His latest, The Platinum Age of Television: From I Love Lucy to the Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific, is an effusive guidebook that plots the path from the 1950s’ Golden Age to today’s era of quality TV.

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BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

CBS, 2:00 p.m. ET

CBS, 8:00 p.m. ET

HBO, 8:00 p.m. ET

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

BBC America, 10:00 p.m. ET

David Bianculli

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