BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

NBC, 9:00 p.m. ET

Every week on this half-hour Saturday Night Live summer spinoff, one bit has leapt out as the one most discussed, and remembered, the next day. Two weeks ago, on opening night, it was Alex Moffat and Mikey Day as, respectively, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. Last week, it was Tina Fey, suggesting an unusual “sheet cake” method (pictured) -- "sheetcaking" -- of coping with the upsetting news from Charlottesville. And tonight, who knows? All I know is, I’ll be watching. Colin Jost and Michael Che co-anchor.

FLASH GORDON

MGM HD, 10:00 p.m. ET

This 1980 big-budget, comic-book sci-fi movie isn’t very good, but it’s fun – and oddly, it seems to improve with age, at least in terms of its campy soundtrack by Queen. This film arrived in cinemas a few years after the first Star Wars movie, and when TV already was littered with such garishly colored sci-fi ripoffs and retro offerings as Battlestar Galactica (the original, terrible one) and Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century – which, like Flash Gordon, was a remake of a classic movie serial. Buck Rogers, as a weekly Saturday matinee feature in 1939, starred Buster Crabbe. Flash Gordon, a movie serial made three years earlier, also starred Buster Crabbe. In this 1980 reboot, Flash is played by the remarkably untalented Sam J. Jones, with Melody Anderson as his sweetheart Dale Arden, and Max Von Sydow as the malicious Emperor Ming. Future James Bond player Timothy Dalton plays a prince, and former Fiddler on the Roof star Topol an inventor, with Ornella Muti, as Princess Aura, providing most of the sex appeal. This movie’s original screenplay was written by Lorenzo Semple Jr., one of the original forces behind TV’s equally tongue-in-cheek, day-glo 1960s version of Batman.

THE GUEST BOOK

TBS, 10:30 p.m. ET

Tonight’s installment of this clever Greg Garcia comedy anthology series stars Jenna Fischer, who was so endearing as the receptionist Pam on NBC’s version of The Office. She plays a scientist who attempts an innovative form of therapy for an Alzheimer’s patient, played by the great Orson Bean. She takes him to one of the few places he remembers – an old vacation cabin from decades ago – and redecorates and repopulates it so that she and everyone else who visits appears to be from an earlier era. This unorthodox approach indeed succeeds at triggering old memories, and reviving the old man’s personality. That’s the good news… and the bad news.

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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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