ESPN, 7:00 p.m. ET
Monday Night Football begins its season – a tradition that, on ABC, began 45 years ago – with an ESPN doubleheader, featuring one East Coast game, then one West Coast. First up: the Philadelphia Eagles vs. the Atlanta Falcons, at Atlanta. Next up, at 10:15 p.m. ET: the Minnesota Vikings vs. the San Francisco 49ers, at San Francisco.
ABC, 8:00 p.m. ET
SEASON PREMIERE: This is cycle No. 21 for this unlikely prime-time hit, and the mix of celebrities this time includes Gary Busey, Paula Deen and Chaka Khan. I don’t mean to be critical in advance, but Dick Smothers has expressed his desire, for years now, to be a contestant on this show. He’s not getting any younger, and some of the celebrities booked by ABC aren’t getting any better. I’m just saying…
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Ira Levin’s mystery thriller of a Broadway play is preserved, with wickedly good performances, in this 1982 movie, directed for the screen by Sidney Lumet and starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve as a once-hot playwright and his gifted student. Dyan Cannon co-stars, in a clever story about a teacher who thinks of killing a student to claim a first-draft script as his own. That reminds me – I have to teach class today…
PBS, 9:00 p.m. ET
Part 1 of 2. Walt Disney was born at the turn of the century, in 1901, and died 65 years later, five years before the opening of Florida’s Walt Disney World – but more than a decade after the opening of California’s Disneyland. In between were cartoons, movies and other enterprises, as enumerated and revisited in this four-hour study. For a full review, see
Tom Brinkmoeller’s Raised on MTM. Check local listings.
CBS, 11:35 p.m. ET
Among Stephen Colbert’s scheduled guests as he begins his second week as Late Show host is a rare booking: a current member of the U.S. Supreme Court. As judges go, Stephen Breyer is squarely in the middle – not necessarily in terms of politics, but in terms of tenure. He joined the Supreme Court in 1994 – after Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, but before Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito Jr., Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.