FRIDAY
JANUARY 2
2015

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

AMC, 8:00 a.m. ET

The series-to-date marathon continues – and today, all day, we get the most recent episodes, with our favorite survivors separated into smaller groups, and facing various, usually very serious, dangers.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

Fridays in January this new year, it’s Neil Simon night – and this first Friday of 2015 begins with the comic playwright’s classic 1968 movie version of his hit Broadway play. Walter Matthau plays slovenly sportswriter Oscar Madison, and Jack Lemmon is recently divorced fussbudget Felix Ungar. Watch because, in a few months, Matthew Perry will be starring in a new sitcom spinoff – playing, somewhat surprisingly, the Oscar role. But also watch because this movie is flat-out hilarious.

 
  
 
 

PBS, 9:00 p.m. ET

This songwriting salute to Billy Joel includes him in the action as an observer, a participant (he gets on stage at the end), and in full-length vintage performance clips. The best clip – Joel and his band in their prime – is from their groundbreaking 1987 concert trip to Russia, and has them burning through “Only the Good Die Young,” bowling over the excited Russian youngsters with undiluted American rock ’n’ roll. And when Joel takes the stage to cap this tribute concert, he does a very touching “Vienna,” and leads all the performers who are there to honor him in the closing number, “Piano Man.” Watch for Kevin Spacey (pictured with Joel) on harmonica, and alternating lead vocals, as that one opens. But also tune in earlier for LeAnn Rimes, who does a hauntingly gorgeous version of Joel’s lullaby to his daughter, “Goodnight, My Angel.” Check local listings.
 
  
 
 

I.D., 10:00 p.m. ET

It’s been a few years since Investigation Discovery launched this docudrama series recreating cases about women either defending themselves, or on the attack, with sharp blades. It’s one of the few first-run series on TV tonight – and though I’m by no means recommending it, I am listing it here to point out one thing that occurred to me, given the show’s title. Were this program on the Food Network, it’d be a completely different type of TV series.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 10:00 p.m. ET

Another entry in tonight’s TCM salute to Neil Simon, this 1970 move stars Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis as visitors to New York, whose every bite of the Big Apple leads to something very sour. If you want to understand, or relive, the urban squalor of the big city circa 1970, this is it. Simon’s dialogue, and the acting by the stars, is very funny – but the location photography is dismally, and intentionally, depressing. It’s followed at midnight ET by a much earlier, Simon effort, 1963’s Come Blow Your Horn.

 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.