TUESDAY
NOVEMBER 17
2020

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Disney+, 3:00 a.m. ET

SPECIAL PREMIERE: Now this is diving deep into the geek weeds. Star Wars, the original George Lucas film that launched the franchise (now part four in the saga), premiered in 1977. A TV holiday special followed the next year, featuring enough of Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher to get them in the credits, but mostly focusing on Chewbacca and a trip to his Wookie homeland. I reviewed the show then (yes, I’m that ancient), and not that favorably – and the Star Wars Holiday Special faded quickly into well-earned obscurity, eventually to become revered as a high-camp bootleg VHS. And, eventually, DVD. Well, one of those bootlegs obviously found its way to the Lego movie creators, because today, on Disney+, they’re presenting an entire Lego special playing off, and with, that very first Star Wars TV spinoff.
 
  
 
 

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

This is Night 12, almost the end, of TCM’s Women Make Film documentary series. This week, the movies shown after the documentary are the biggest draw, so stay tuned. They include Zelda Barron’s 1989 film Shag, a romantic comedy-drama set in 1963 and starring Phoebe Cates and Bridget Fonda (9:15 p.m. ET, pictured). And Wednesday morning, the film treasures continue at 7:30 a.m. ET with 1992’s Orlando, Sally Potter’s take on the Virginia Woolf story about a mercurial young nobleman, starring Tilda Swinton – whose narration, by the way, opened the Women in Film series with charm and elegance. And finally, at 9:15 a.m. ET Wednesday, there’s 1983’s Yentl, directed by and starring Barbra Streisand.
 
  
 
 

ABC, 10:00 p.m. ET

SERIES PREMIERE: David E. Kelley, having quite a stretch adapting other people’s books into TV series and miniseries, currently is doing great work on HBO’s The Undoing. And starting tonight on Big Sky, he does some solid work adapting the C.J. Box book about young women who become the latest captives, and potential victims, of a human predator prowling the open roads and shadowy truck stops of Montana. The story opens slowly but effectively, with some jolting surprises before the opening hour is up – and with some very good performances, including from John Carroll Lynch, Valerie Mahaffey, Kylie Bunbury, and DeDee Pfeiffer (pictured), who happens to be Michelle Pfeiffer’s little sister, and therefore Kelley’s sister-in-law. For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower, and for some background info from Kelley, see Mike Hughes' Open Mike
 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.