Acorn TV, 3:00 a.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: Another British series premiere is imported courtesy of the Acorn streaming site. This one is a six-episode comedy miniseries called
Detectorists, acclaimed as the most popular comedy airing on BBC4 in 2014. (To be fair, BBC4 is to England what the CW is to the U.S., at least in terms of overall viewership.) Both the show’s premise and its stars, though, are intriguingly oddball.
Detectorists, joining the lineup today at
the Acorn TV streaming website, is about members of the Danebury Metal Detectors Club, who comb the countryside of Essex looking for possible fortune buried beneath the surface – kind of like those equally deluded optimists combing Fort Lauderdale beach at all hours. And playing the two most persistent fortune hunters? Standout character actors Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones.
TCM, 6:00 a.m. ET
Lee J. Cobb has the spotlight all day and all tonight, starting at 6 a.m. ET with 1941’s Men of Boys Town, sharing screen time with Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney. Classics and rarities shown throughout the 24-hour salute include 1958’s The Brothers Karamazov (at 8 a.m. ET, pictured), a great movie to remember when you’re playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon: In addition to Cobb, its cast also includes Yul Brynner, Richard Basehart and William Shatner. The 1954 classic On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando, is shown at 11:30 p.m. ET, and 1946’s Anna and the King of Siam, the non-musical precursor to The King and I, is shown at 1:30 a.m. ET, starring Irene Dunne and Rex Harrison.
Starz!, 7:30 p.m. ET
Surely enough time has passed since you saw this 1980 film comedy for it to be a treat to watch again. (Of course it would – but don’t call me Shirley.) Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves and Robert Stack star, having a great time with the joke-filled script by Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers, David and Jerry.
HBO, 8:00 p.m. ET
This documentary has a title that makes it sound like a Seventies TV cop show, but it’s actually a dual character study: of Buddhist monk Lobsang Phuntsok, who established a protected environment for orphaned Himalayan children, and five-year-old Tashi, one of his newest, and most rebellious and challenging, young charges. Phuntsok’s patience and perspective are positively saintly – or, at the very least, monkly.
TCM, 9:45 p.m. ET
Part of today’s all-day Lee J. Cobb festival on TCM, this 1957 movie stars Henry Fonda as the lone initial holdout on a jury otherwise ready to convict a young defendant of murder. Cobb (pictured) plays the angry Juror No. 3 – a role played in its original live TV version, on Studio One in 1954, by Franchot Tone, opposite Robert Cummings in the role later played by Fonda. I prefer the TV version to the movie, but the movie’s still a very enjoyable drama to watch. Just try not to think about Amy Schumer’s recent half-hour offshoot, when the dozen jurors, on Inside Amy Schumer, were arguing something quite different than a murder verdict.