FRIDAY
JUNE 15
2012

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Public Television, Check local listings

It’s summer, but Bill Moyers continues to produce and present new shows. On this weekend’s fresh edition, he takes Deep Throat’s immortal advice, and follows the money. In one segment, he interviews Mother Jones editors Clara Jeffrey and Monika Bauerlein (pictured), who provide a map for the trail of what they call “dark money” influencing today’s elections and freedoms. Also on the show: historian Thomas Frank, whose What’s the Matter with Kansas? Was examined how extensively the wealthy influence society. Moyers & Company is shown by local public TV stations between Friday and Sunday. To find it in your local area, click the schedule HERE.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

You and I may know this 1954 monster movie better by its Anglicized sound-alike title: Godzilla. But that was a different, re-edited movie, made in 1956 with scenes inserted featuring Raymond Burr as an American reporter. This is the 1954 restored original, which took Japan’s totally understandable fear of nuclear attacks and testing and transplanted them into a giant, fire-breathing creature, revived by nuclear tests to ravage Tokyo and beyond. It’s followed by two other classics in the Japanese monster tradition: 1957’s Rodin at 9:45 p.m. ET, and 1962’s Mothra at 11:15 p.m. ET.

 
  
 
 

ABC, 9:00 p.m. ET

It’s been decades, literally, since Johnny Carson made jokes about the Flying Wallendas – but here’s one of them, daredevil Nik Wallenda, doing a live stunt in which he walks a tightrope across Niagara Falls. It’s a stunt that was banned more than 120 years ago, but here he goes… albeit on a wire so thick he likens it to a sidewalk, and with a harness that will prevent him from falling. Unless he removes it, which some advocates of live TV are rooting to happen. My guess, though, is that any contracts signed with ABC have already added built-in clauses to prevent, or punish, that sort of liability. For a local's look at the event, see the latest from our Buffalo-based correspondent, Alan Pergament, in his Still Talkin' TV column HERE.
 
  
 
 

HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET

This new episode makes room for a lot, conversation-wise. It goes from the microcosmic – Karl Pilkington’s travails in buying and assembling a new bed – to the cosmic, with Karl’s views on the origin of the universe. Watch, and I predict you’ll get a Big Bang out of it.

 
  
 
 

HBO, 10:00 p.m. ET

David Frum and Alan Thicke are among the guests tonight. That leaves open the possibility for jokes about being Thicke-headed versus thick-headed, but I’m not biting. I will, however, be watching.

 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.