SATURDAY

MAY 28

2016

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

ABC, 8:00 p.m. ET

This quiz show ought to get fairly exciting, should its contestants ever make it close to the end of its marathon of questions. So far this season, though, most of them have had difficulty making it past the opening 20-question round. Still, when one of the previous game shows on TV was one that required its players to do nothing other than choose a briefcase, the level of difficulty here is quite welcome.

THE EIGHTIES

CNN, 8:00 p.m. ET

Breaking news events over the past month have wreaked havoc with the presentation of this documentary series – pre-empting some episodes, substituting others, and making it hard to catch every installment. Maybe this will help: a Memorial Day weekend Saturday night compilation of several of the episodes so far, starting at 8 p.m. ET. Scheduled among them: Repeats of the two-hour opener about Eighties television (in which I appear, so be forewarned), and the so-far elusive installment about MTV and the rise of music videos (in which I don’t, but the Buggles and Madonna do).

THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

This weekend of war movies continues, all day and all night, and the opening movie in prime time tonight is one of the genre’s best and most unusual: 1957’s The Bridge On the River Kwai, the Oscar-winning David Lean movie starring Alec Guinness and William Holden as POWs forced by their Japanese captors to build a strategic bridge. The novel on which it’s based was written by Pierre Boulle, who also wrote the Planet of the Apes novels.

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.

HBO, 10:05 p.m. ET

This 2015 movie is a bad remake of an enjoyable Sixties spy series, and both Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer, as the Solo and Illya roles played in the original series by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, are woefully miscast. (Considering that Hammer also starred in the title role of another TV-to-movie fiasco, 2013’s The Lone Ranger, he should have known better.) So why watch? Because the female lead, Gaby, is played by Alicia Vikander, who made this otherwise forgettable film just after starring in Ex Machina, and just before co-starring in The Danish Girl.

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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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