TUESDAY
JUNE 23
2015

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

TCM, 9:45 p.m. ET

Edgar Wright, the audacious and inventive English filmmaker known for both Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, is tonight’s guest programmer for TCM. His evening starts at 8 p.m. with 1934’s Dames (with its astounding Busby Berkeley production numbers), but his even more interesting choices come later. For example, at 9:45 p.m. ET, there’s this 1973 murder mystery, a sly death-at-sea adventure starring Richard Benjamin, James Coburn, James Mason, Raquel Welch and Dyan Cannon. It’s directed by Herbert Ross, but the most intriguing element of this movie is its screenwriting team: actor Anthony Perkins and Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim. The two shared a love of intricate puzzles, and the whodunit aspects of The Last of Sheila certainly meet that description.

 
  
 
 

PBS, 10:00 p.m. ET

It sounds, at first, like an oddly specific story for Frontline to be devoting an hour to examining: sexual harassment and rape of women working nights as janitors in office buildings across the country, often attacked by their own supervisors. But once you hear the statistics – an estimated 17,000 sexual assaults of this type occurring per year – it’s chilling. And once you hear the testimony of victims – “Everything happened so fast – fast, and at the same time, it went on forever” – it’s unforgettable. Check local listings.

 
  
 
 

Comedy Central, 10:00 p.m. ET

To make room for another show – Another Period – Amy Schumer’s series gets a time slot starting 30 minutes earlier. Just don’t expect there to be a reduction in the “adult” content. She’s not about to lose her head – though, in tonight’s new episode, she does get decapitated… but watch for the silent sketch in which she falls in love with her barista.
 
  
 
 

Comedy Central, 10:30 p.m. ET

SERIES PREMIERE: This series has a very amusing concept: transplant Real Housewives-type spoiled brats into a Downton Abbey-era setting. And it still might gel into a strong comedy, but in tonight’s pilot, the tantrum-throwing Bellacourt girls (played by Riki Lindhome from Garfunkel and Oates and Natasha Leggero), striving for attention in 1902 Rhode Island, are too exaggerated to be the center of a comedy. Others around them, though, strike just the right tone, including Michael Ian Black as the butler and Christina Hendricks, straight from Mad Men, as the new, immediately dehumanized maid. The show is different enough to sample, but it has to find its comic center quickly in order to earn repeated visits. Right now, Hendricks is the most realistic and sympathetic character, and one of the most persuasive reasons to give Another Period another chance.

 
  
 
 

Comedy Central, 11:00 p.m. ET

Jon Stewart has been understandably serious the past couple of shows, but tonight, at least when it comes to his interview segment, he may get a chance to lighten up a bit. (Not that I’m complaining: Jon Stewart, when he’s serious, is even more valuable than when he’s being funny.) Tonight’s scheduled guest: Seth MacFarlane, promoting Ted 2.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 1:45 a.m. ET

Set your recorders for this late-night, rarely televised treat. This is another pick from tonight’s TCM guest programmer, English director Edgar Wright, and this time he’s picking a strange, strange, strange movie. 1973’s O Lucky Man!, directed by Lindsay Anderson and starring Malcolm McDowell, was McDowell’s follow-up to playing two powerful early film roles: the student anarchist in Anderson’s If…, and the futuristic, sadistic gang leader in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. What to do next? This: a stunningly original allegorical film in which McDowell plays a neophyte coffee salesman suddenly entrusted with a key route across the United Kingdom. What, you ask, makes that plot interesting, much less unique?  Almost everyone he encounters, across his journeys, recurs in various, vastly different roles. Providing the soundtrack, and also appearing in the movie as himself, is Alan Price, former keyboard artist for The Animals, whose songs here are among the best rock songs ever composed for the movies. And making her debut here, as the female lead, is a young, beautiful, and even then captivating Helen Mirren. It’s a bizarre black comedy, which, like Price’s lyrics, has a lot to say if you pay attention: “We all want justice / but you got to have the money to buy it / You’d have to be a fool to close your eyes and deny it….”

 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.