WEDNESDAY
AUGUST 20
2014

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Netflix, Check local listings

SERIES PREMIERE: Here’s a new Netflix Original series, produced by the BBC, that arrives today with a lot less fanfare than the usual Netflix offering – but it’s well worth seeking out and sampling. Shown in the U.K. earlier this year, the six-episode drama series stars Sarah Lancashire as Catherine Cawood, a uniformed police sergeant in a small valley town in Yorkshire. It may be setting expectations too high to compare Happy Valley to Helen Mirren’s groundbreaking role in Prime Suspect, but there definitely are parallels here, especially in the way we get to know her home life, and personal travails, as much as we do her workplace problems and persistent, intuitive investigative work. The strength of Happy Valley is that it presents fully drawn portraits of all its key characters, not just the central protagonist. Try one episode, and I’m betting you’ll stay for all six -- all of which are available immediately.
 
  
 
 

BBC America, Check local listings

I could have just pointed out the Doctor Who takeover week, with its wall-to-wall programming and complete romps through the modern era of this delightful and durable sci-fi series, because I’ve seen all these episodes before. But no. I had to turn my TV to BBC America and get sucked in all over again, freshly impressed by the cleverness of the writing and the freshness of the acting. Few series can manage to be so funny, so suspenseful, so genuinely involving, and so unpredictable, all in the same hour. And the hits just keep on coming. Today, feast on the reboot’s Season 4 episodes, featuring Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, and end up shifting to yet another Doctor. And it’s all building up to Saturday’s new tag-team transfer of the show’s starring role – a role that began on TV back in 1963.

 
  
 
 

ESPN 2, 5:30 p.m. ET

It’s been 25 years since Pete Rose signed a contract agreeing to a lifetime ban from professional baseball – a contract he now says he thought was for one year, and a ban that this special reevaluates in the light of what other baseball players have done since, and how their punishments do and don’t measure up. Interviewees in this special include both Rose and the baseball commissioner who banned him, Bud Selig.

 
  
 
 

CBS, 9:00 p.m. ET

CBS is doubling down, or at least doubling up, on this Halle Berry sci-fi series tonight, by presenting two episodes back to back. That’s usually less a show of confidence than a desire to burn off the remaining episodes before the fall season begins in earnest – and that could well be the case here as well.

 
  
 
 

Sundance, 10:00 p.m. ET

I absolutely adore this 1977 movie – which must be obvious to even the casual TVWW reader, because I highlight it almost every time it’s televised. And why not? It’s one of the funniest comedies ever filmed – and one of the most inventive, too. And in the supporting roles, even the actors and actresses showing up just for a line or two hit it out of the park. This time, I think I’ll run a picture of Jeff Goldblum, who always makes me laugh.

 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.