TCM, 6:00 a.m. ET
Marlene Dietrich is today’s featured actress on TCM – and while some of her most audacious and entertaining films are missing here (what, no Scarlett Empress?), the day and night are loaded with films that showcase Dietrich at various stages of her lengthy and showy career. Start at 9:15 a.m. ET with the 1930 film that made her a star, The Blue Angel (and also gave Madonna and others some iconic music video inspirations). Jump to 2:45 p.m. ET, where director Alfred Hitchcock showcases her in 1950’s Stage Fright. Then stay tuned for a potent double feature. At 4:45 p.m,. ET, it’s 1961’s Judgment at Nuremberg, the post-war Nazi war criminal trial story, in which she stars opposite Spencer Tracy and Maximilian Schell. At 8 p.m. ET, it’s the wily and witty 1958 adaptation of the Agatha Christie mystery, Witness for the Prosecution, starring Charles Laughton as the British barrister and Dietrich (pictured with Laughton) as a very key witness. That’s four great movies, made over a three-decade span… and TCM has a lot more where they came from.
BBC America, 8:00 p.m. ET
The salute to some of the most pivotal modern Doctor Who episodes continues with a repeat, accompanied by fun facts and other features, of “The End of Time,” the two-parter that featured the return of The Master (John Simm, pictured) and the end of the line for the Tenth Doctor, played so exuberantly by David Tennant. Tennant is the star here – but because of the Master’s sinister plot, he gets almost as much screen time – and many, many more roles to play.
HBO, 8:00 p.m. ET
This isn’t a recommendation – just a notation that, if you enjoyed the first Dumb and Dumber movie more than I did, tonight HBO presents its many-years-later sequel. Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels star.
NBC, 10:00 p.m. ET
Last week’s episode of Hannibal featured hardly any Hannibal. But with the series just about to end, expect that to change tonight and next week, as one killer helps stop another, in the familiar Silence of the Lambs plot – and the even more familiar “It takes one to know one” adage.
HBO, 10:00 p.m. ET
Tig Notaro received a giant career boost in 2012 after a series of personal setbacks and tragedies that included the death of her mother, the onset of a rare intestinal disease, and a diagnosis of breast cancer. She went on stage, at the Largo nightclub in Los Angeles, and performed a brutally honest, bravely uncomfortable comedy standup set that began with her telling the crowd, “I have cancer.” Louis C.K., who watched the set, released audio of it on his website, which became a No. 1 comedy album for Notaro, and a documentary about her soon followed. Now comes her first comedy special for HBO – and in it, for part of her new standup act, she goes topless. But not at all gratuitously, since she’s discussing her double mastectomy…
Comedy Central, 11:00 p.m. ET
At a comedy club, it’d probably be daunting to follow Tig Notaro, especially if you were another female comic looking to establish herself as a comedian with edge. But this Natasha Leggero Comedy Central special, which only by coincidence follows HBO’s Notaro special by premiering on the same night an hour later, starts strongly, with a music-video opening that, by the end, had me both marveling at Leggero’s bravery and her audacity. Yikes. And her standup set hadn’t even started yet…