FRIDAY

MAY 2

2014

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

CW, 8:00 p.m. ET

Tonight’s guest star, playing along with the improv crowd, is actress Mircea Monroe. She appears here, on this CW series, primarily because she appears on a CW drama, Hart of Dixie, as Tansy, but I’m pointing her out because she also appears on the much more watchable Showtime comedy, Episodes, as the eerily ageless actress Morning Randolph.

BREAKER MORANT

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

Australian actress Jacki Weaver, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook, hosts this month’s Friday night salute to movies from her native land. The salute begins tonight, in prime time, with two of the best Australian movies ever to make a impact here in the States, starting with 1980’s Breaker Morant, directed by Bruce Beresford. Edward Woodward stars in the title role, as a lieutenant in the Boer War in a unit accused of war crimes – crimes actually ordered by superior officers.

THE WRITERS' ROOM

Sundance, 9:00 p.m. ET

Tonight’s new installment focuses on the Netflix hit series House of Cards. Among the show’s representatives: Beau Willimon, who adapted the vintage British miniseries for a new generation, a new country, and, in Kevin Spacey, a new star.

REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER

HBO, 10:00 p.m. ET

This week, Bill Maher has a timely booking that could lead to the show’s most intensely debated conversation of the season. One of his guests is retired basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who earlier this week weighed in on the controversy regarding Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who was banned for life from the National Basketball Association after a recording of him making racist comments to his now ex-girlfriend were made public. Abdul-Jabbar said in a Time magazine opinion column he hopes Sterling loses his franchise – but also says whoever taped and leaked Sterling’s private conversation should go to jail. He wrote that the girlfriend’s efforts to get him to reveal and explain his racist views as they talked on the phone “was like a sexy nanny playing ‘Pin the fried chicken on the Sambo.’” Maher sometimes comes down on unexpected sides of certain issues – but I can’t wait for his questions, and Abdul-Jabbar’s answers, on this topic.

GALLIPOLI

TCM, 10:00 p.m. ET

From 1981, here’s another Australian film classic introduced tonight by Australian actress Jacki Weaver. Directed and co-written by Peter Weir, it’s another war film: This one set in Turkey during WWI, about Australians sent to do battle in the Gallipoli campaign. Starring as one of the soldiers: young actor Mel Gibson, two years after breaking out in, and as, Mad Max.

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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.

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BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

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