SATURDAY
OCTOBER 18
2014

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Cinemax, 6:50 p.m. ET

Spike Jonze wrote and directed this interesting 2014 film, which got great reviews from most movie critics, even though (or perhaps because) it plays like an expanded episode of The Twilight Zone. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore, a geeky guy who becomes so enamored of his new computer operating system that he literally falls in love with it. Make that falls in love with Her, because the system is voiced by a female – who is voiced, in turn, by the huskily-voiced Scarlett Johannson. Kristen Wiig also provides a disembodied voice (that of SexyKitten), and the embodied voices – Phoenix’s three-dimensional co-stars – include Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, and new official movie star Chris Pratt.

 
  
 
 

BBC America, 9:00 p.m. ET

Jenna Coleman’s Clara is back at center stage tonight, and even more than usual – because she and the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) are separated, requiring her to figure out a way to save the day, and maybe even him, armed with nothing more – but nothing less – than his sonic screwdriver.

 
  
 
 

NBC, 10:00 p.m. ET

Tonight’s late-night Saturday Night Live, at 11:30 p.m. ET, is a repeat of this season’s opener – but the prime-time SNL repeat is of a much older vintage. It’s from 2000, and is one of the episodes hosted by Christopher Walken, with Christina Aguilera in her post-Disney, pre-Voice period. Primary reason to watch? Two words, repeated many times by Walken in one instant classic of a skit: “More cowbell!”

 
  
 
 

CBS, 10:00 p.m. ET

Tracy Smith reports on a case that sounds like an episode of a scripted crime series: A married college swimming coach named Kristen Cunnane, becoming increasingly tormented by flashbacks of sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her female gym teacher in high school more than a decade earlier, decides to confront the memory – and her abuser. She goes to the police, carries a tape recorder to the “reunion” – and the rest of the story, which becomes increasingly and disturbingly complicated, is the one Smith tells in tonight’s edition, Kristen’s Secret.

 
  
 
 

BBC America, 10:00 p.m. ET

This talk show has three elements that make it distinctive, and particularly entertaining, from the viewpoint of a U.S. viewer watching this U.K. import. One, most of the guests come out at the start, and stay and intermingle for the whole hour. Two, the guests are top-notch: This week’s guests, for a (sterling) example, include John Cleese, Taylor Swift and Neil Diamond. And three: There’s usually one British-based celebrity in the lot, someone who is unfamiliar to stateside viewers at the start, but memorable and likable by the time the show’s over. (See: James Corden, soon to come to the U.S. as the next host of The Late Late Show on CBS.) And who is that type of guest tonight? Cricket player Kevin Petersen!

 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.