MONDAY
FEBRUARY 19
2018

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Various Networks, Check local listings

Today is the golden anniversary of the premiere of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on public television. All manner of tributes are on the way, from film and book biographies and a PBS special to a U.S. Fred Rogers postage stamp (pictured), but even the PBS KIDS network is holding its televised week-long Fred Rogers salute to next week. Today, though, there are a few places you can go to honor one of the best children’s shows, and hosts, in TV history. One is to travel to Latrobe, PA, where St. Vincent College will be hosting a special 7 p.m. ET showing of that first, Feb. 19, 1968 Neighborhood episode. (I’ll be there as one of the introductory panelists, if you’re in the neighborhood.) Another is to listen to Fresh Air on your local public radio station today, because Terry Gross is scheduled to revisit a vintage interview with Fred Rogers – and I’m scheduled to provide a tribute there, too. Oh, and if you’re a member of Amazon Prime, you can watch many seasons of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, including that 50-year-old premiere episode, by streaming it here.
 
  
 
 

Various Networks, 1:30 a.m. ET

NBCSN is heavy into curling today, with delayed coverage in women’s curling – USA vs. Denmark – in the early early morning block (1:30-4:30 a.m. ET), and men’s curling in both the early block (4:30-7:10 a.m. ET) and early afternoon block (12:30-3:30 p.m. ET), covering the USA vs. Canada. Women’s curling also is shown by CNBC from 5-8 p.m. ET, with the USA vs. China match. But let’s face it: Unless you’re a curling nerd like I am, the biggest cable Olympics event today surely is in the prime-time 7-10:10 p.m. ET block on NBCSN, when live coverage is provided of the ice skating gold medal final in figure skating. But that’s available on NBC, in part, as well. And much of it is available live, too, on NBC's Olympics website.
 
  
 
 

NBC, 3:00 p.m. ET

Tonight in prime time, starting at 8 p.m. ET, NBC devotes part of its schedule to live coverage of the ice skating gold medal final in figure skating – but also juggles scheduled the halfpipe gold medal final in women’s freestyle skiing.

 
  
 
 

HBO, 8:00 p.m. ET

This documentary is only 32 minutes long. It also happens to be one of this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Short Subject. The bulk of the story comes from actual footage, recorded on police-car dashboard cameras, of the 2015 arrest in Austin, TX of a schoolteacher by an Austin police officer. The officer is a white male, the teacher an African-American female, and a seemingly routine traffic stop escalates into a charge of resisting arrest. “Why?” she asks. And so does this documentary…

 
  
 
 

PBS, 9:00 p.m. ET

The initials HBCU stand for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and in this new documentary, filmmakers Stanley Nelson and Marco Williams trace the history and legacy of such institutions of learning. Check local listings. For a full review, see Gerald Jordan's Crossing Jordan.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 2:15 a.m. ET

TCM is saluting Best Supporting Actress winners in tonight’s ongoing “31 Days of Oscar” TV festival – and tonight, it saves the best for, well, very late. At 2:15 a.m. ET, TCM presents Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s haunting tale of small-town Texas life, starring Timothy Bottoms and Cybill Shepherd. Cloris Leachman, while appearing as a series regular on The Mary Tyler Moore Show as Phyllis, won a Supporting Actress Oscar as Ruth Popper, the coach’s lonely wife, in The Last Picture Show. She was only 45 when she won her Academy Award – but in the movie’s black-and-white starkness, playing a woman beaten down by both circumstances and environment, Leachman portrayed someone who looked much less vibrant.

 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.