TUESDAY
DECEMBER 25
2018

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

Okay, so it’s not a Christmas movie special – but any time you get a chance to watch a pair of movies featuring Marilyn Monroe, it’s a gift. And tonight, TCM presents, in prime time, two films in which Monroe shone with mesmerizing exuberance. In Some Like It Hot, from 1959, she’s the radiant star, throwing off equal measures of sex appeal and playful humor as a member of an all-girl music band – a band infiltrated by two musicians in drag (played by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), who adopt the ruse to avoid and evade gangsters trying to kill them. At 10 p.m. ET, the second movie is Monkey Business, filmed seven years earlier. It’s a Cary Grant comedy, in which he plays a stodgy professor, and Ginger Rogers his equally reserved wife – until they sample his newest laboratory concoction, which acts as an unrepressed youth serum of sorts. Monroe, on the brink of stardom, plays a youthful secretary, with no need of chemical enhancements to make her seem young and vibrant, tooling around with an artificially rejuvenated Grant. And since Curtis, in Some Like It Hot, spends some of his time doing a Cary Grant impression of sorts (pictured), this is a very compatible double feature.

 
  
 
 

NBC, 8:00 p.m. ET

Here’s another nicely conceived double bill. NBC’s prime time Christmas lineup begins with yet another showing of the 1966 holiday cartoon special, featuring Dr. Seuss’ holiday-hating Grinch…

 
  
 
 

NBC, 8:30 p.m. ET

…And that’s followed by the 2000 Ron Howard live-action adaptation of the same source material, starring Jim Carrey as an amazingly elastic-faced green Grinch. Also featured, as residents of Whoville: Christine Baranski, Jeffrey Tambor, Bill Irwin, and, as Cindy Lou Who, Taylor Momsen. My favorite character name? Played by Clint Howard, it’s the mayor’s aide, Whobris.
 
  
 
 
 
 
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4483 Comments
 
 
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Aug 18, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
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Aug 18, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
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Aug 18, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
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Aug 18, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
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Aug 18, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
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Aug 18, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
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Aug 18, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
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Aug 18, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
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Aug 18, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
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Aug 18, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
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Aug 18, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
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Aug 18, 2026   |  Reply
 
 
 
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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.