TCM, 6:00 a.m. ET
Today is Alan Arkin day on TCM’s “Summer Under the Stars,” and one of the best things shown – twice, in fact – is the network’s home-grown interview special with host Robert Osborne, Alan Arkin: Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival, produced and televised earlier this year. You can see it at 8 a.m. ET, and again at 7 p.m. ET. And of the many Arkin films shown today, one of my very favorites, at 12:15 a.m. ET, is 1979’s The In-Laws, in which Arkin is teamed with fellow stellar character actor Peter Falk. And Arkin tells a great story about Falk, and that film, in the TCM interview special, so watch that first.
TCM, 1:00 p.m. ET
In 1967, Alan Arkin, who’s being saluted all day today by TCM, played one of his darkest roles as a drug smuggler terrorizing a young blind woman – played by Audrey Hepburn. It’s very tense, and, just when it needs to be, very cinematic.
AMC, 8:00 p.m. ET
A double-header of the Marty McFly adventures is presented tonight in prime time: 1985’s Back to the Future at 8 p.m. ET, and its 1989 sequel at 10:30 ET. In the former, Marty (Michael J. Fox) goes back 30 years, to 1955. In the sequel, he jumps ahead 30 years – to that bizarre sci-fi future of… 2015.
CNN, 9:00 p.m. ET
CNN’s Chris Cuomo interviewed Donald Trump in a special interview Wednesday, and the network is wasting no time in giving it a same-week second viewing. So here it is. Surprise: Give Trump a platform like this, and he says something quotable.
HBO, 10:00 p.m. ET
Tonight’s scheduled lineup includes a couple of politicians and an explorer – but the person I’m most eager to see, and hear, is comedian Marc Maron.