SATURDAY
FEBRUARY 24
2018

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Various Networks, 2:40 a.m. ET

I wrote about this in yesterday’s Best Bets, to give you guys fair warning – but if you watched or recorded today’s early-morning coverage on NBCSN of the gold model game in men’s curling, good for you. And good for me, because any abuse that’s come my way about loving and supporting Olympics curling is now drowned out by my last laugh. The USA men’s curling team just won gold, ladies and gentlemen. Gold. Prior to this morning’s victory, the highest our country ever had ranked, in men’s curling, was a bronze medal, in 2006. Today, skip John Shuster and the USA squad earned gold, against world-champ team Sweden. So for me, today’s cable highlight at the Olympics already has happened.

 
  
 
 

NBC, 3:00 p.m. ET

The figure skating gala, the four-men bobsled gold medal final runs, and the men’s hockey gold medal game are the events scheduled to be covered live tonight on NBC, in the prime-time block beginning at 8 p.m. ET.

 
  
 
 

HBO, 8:00 p.m. ET

SPECIAL PREMIERE: This is a filmed version of Anna Deavere Smith’s one-man play about what she calls the school-to-prison pipeline, which she also wrote. I probably should write “one-woman” play, to be gender-specific – but since among the many characters she portrays here, several are men, I’m letting it slide. But Smith, like Hal Holbrook in his one-man portrayals of Mark Twain in Mark Twain Tonight!, is equally impressive in terms of performance and research. In Smith’s case, she interviewed more than 200 people when gathering facts, stories, and even characters for Notes from the Field.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

TCM is saluting Best Actor Winners tonight in its ongoing “31 Days of Oscar” TV fest, and the fun leads off with 1965’s Cat Ballou, for which Lee Marvin won the Best Actor Academy Award that year. Never mind that his performance, as a drunken former gunslinger, actually was a supporting rather than leading role – it was so good, he deserved to win. And this, to me, is the movie where Jane Fonda really proved she was a carry-the-film movie star in her own right – three years before she proved it, a different way, with Barbarella.  But with Cat Ballou, it’s a very clever story, some wonderful music, and one of the lightest and best comic Westerns of that decade, until Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid came along.

 
  
 
 

BBC America, 9:00 p.m. ET

Tonight’s penultimate installment of Blue Planet II is “Coasts,” and it’s devoted to the places where the sea meets the land. And, as always, the photography is nothing less than stunning. To hear or read my new review on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, visit the Fresh Air website.
 
  
 
 
 
 
Read and add comments HERE for today's Best Bets!
 
 
 
 
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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.