MONDAY
MAY 25
2015

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

AMC, 6:00 p.m. ET

You aren’t going to be able to see many better, or more appropriate, Memorial Day movies than this one. Made in 1998, and directed by Steven Spielberg, it begins with one of the most jarring and intense war movie scenes ever put on film – and keeps going. Tom Hanks stars as a captain given a particularly risky humanitarian mission, of finding and escorting back to safety Private Ryan (Matt Damon), the only surviving son of a woman who lost her three other boys to war the same day. Co-stars include Paul Giamatti, Tom Sizemore, Vin Diesel, Jeremy Davies, Adam Goldberg and Edward Burns.

 
  
 
 

ABC, 8:00 p.m. ET

ABC’s summertime quiz show experiment returns, after a few days of a holiday breather for reruns, with a fresh installment, as contestants try to complete their marathon Q&A sprint without answering three consecutive questions incorrectly.

 
  
 
 

History, 9:00 p.m. ET

MINISERIES PREMIERE: History Channel is aiming to make this new miniseries feel like an old-fashioned Western epic, starting with the decision to film it in classic old CinemaScope. It’s the story of Texas independence, a piece of American history that begins as Mexican history, at the Alamo, and keeps going. Stars include Bill Paxton as Sam Houston, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Erastus “Deaf” Smith, Kris Kristofferson as Andrew Jackson, and Cynthia Addai-Robinson as Emily West, the woman immortalized in song as “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Don’t expect pure fidelity to the facts here – but millions of people seem to find these History productions entertaining, as with the top-rated Hatfields & McCoys. So if you liked that, chances are you’ll like this.

 
  
 
 

Lifetime, 9:00 p.m. ET

This movie, starring Nicole Kidman as movie star turned actual princess Grace Kelly, premiered last year at the Cannes Film Festival. To say that it was greeted less than warmly is an understatement: Even though it was produced by the Oscar-generating Weinstein brothers, Grace of Monaco left France without a U.S. distributor, and ends up making its American premiere as a Lifetime acquisition. Co-stars include Tim Roth as Prince Rainier of Monaco, as well as Frank Langella, Derek Jacobi and Parker Posey.

 
  
 
 

NBC, 10:00 p.m. ET

SERIES PREMIERE: This is not a recommendation, just a notation. On tonight’s new NBC reality competition series, hosted by Bear Grylls, 14 “real men” try to survive on an island. First thing they should do to survive: Turn off their TVs. No, wait, that’s the first thing we should do…

 
  
 
 
 
 
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5382 Comments
 
 
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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.