WEDNESDAY

FEBRUARY 24

2016

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

Fox, 8:00 p.m. ET

The winnowing continues, and the first eight semifinalists are announced, in this slow but steady march to March, and the end of the final American Idol season. And tonight and tomorrow, the Idol who started it all returns, as a guest judge and to perform: Kelly Clarkson.

MASH

TCM, 10:00 p.m. ET

It’s such a spectacular night for movies on TCM, even though they arrive rather late, they deserve – and are getting – individual mention. Watch them together, all at once, and you’ll be experiencing a beautiful, bountiful binge of four of the best movies of the 1960s and 1970s. Start with Robert Altman’s anti-war masterpiece from 1970, which spawned one of the most popular and durable sitcoms of all time. The original film starred Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye, Elliott Gould as Trapper John, and Sally Kellerman as Hot Lips. And the movie title, unlike the TV title, had no asterisks.

NETWORK

TCM, 12:15 a.m. ET

This 1976 movie, written by Paddy Chayefsky and starring Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and William Holden, is an utterly brilliant satire of network TV in the mid-1970s. It’s also so prescient about what was to come, from a successful fourth network to corporate purchases of networks and the demand for news divisions to show profits. Oh, and reality TV, and so much more, including the great Ned Beatty speech that Bob Odenkirk recreated so hilariously on last year’s Better Call Saul opener.

BONNIE AND CLYDE

TCM, 2:30 a.m. ET

From 1967, here’s another Faye Dunaway movie – this one pairing her with Warren Beatty in a period gangster film that’s as stylish as it is cinematically groundbreaking. Gene Hackman is in here as brother Buck, and in a few years became a star in his own right in The French Connection.

MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER

TCM, 4:30 a.m. ET

And from 1971, here’s another Warren Beatty movie – and another Robert Altman-directed film as well. Not until Deadwood showed up on HBO would a Western town look so gritty, so atmospheric, and so utterly real. And, in this case, so isolated by the depths of winter. The Mrs. Miller in the title, by the way, is played by Julie Christie.

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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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