NBC, 8:00 a.m. ET
In the second hour of today’s
Today, Matt Lauer’s one-day special co-host is Sarah Palin (identified on air by the network as a Fox News Contributor when Lauer interviewed her in the opening hour). A co-host doesn’t usually interview his guest host one hour, then turn around and swap anchor duties the next – but there’s nothing usual about this particular morning-show move at all. Not when former
Today co-host Katie Couric is guest hosting ABC’s
Good Morning America this week. For more, see today’s
Bianculli’s Blog HERE.
PBS, 8:00 p.m. ET
(Check Local Listings) Tonight’s new American Experience special is a dam good program. It’s a documentary about FDR’s ambitious New Deal vision to construct a massive dam that would help farmers back from the waterless horrors of the Dust Bowl. The dam in question, of course, is the Grand Coulee (no relation).
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
This 1961 movie is part of Doris Day week, in celebration of her 88th birthday today. But this particular film also should be of keen interest to Mad Men fans. Not only is it set in the very era in which that Madison Avenue period drama began, but Doris Day and Rock Hudson play rival executives at New York advertising agencies. So catch the time, the issues and the sexual office politics – before they became nostalgia.
NBC, 9:00 p.m. ET
Yesterday was the year’s first live telecast of this series, as it entered the solo performance rounds. But last night, a lot of the thunder was stolen by one of the judges, who wore an outrageous wig to out-glam the other red-chair singer-celebrities. You’d expect it to be Christina Aguilera – but no. It was Cee-Lo Green.
FX, 10:00 p.m. ET
This is the penultimate show of the season, and, as in last week’s show, makes you realize just how many juicy, powerfully unpredictable characters are surrounding and threatening Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan this year. Limehouse, Quarles, and Jeremy Davies’ Dickie Bennett (pictured at left, with Olyphant) – all of them potentially deadly, and all of them increasingly threatened and defensive. Stand by for some wild, primal confrontations.