Decades, 12:00 p.m. ET
In 1968, ABC made a brazen attempt to appeal to young viewers – as part of the first overt campaign by a broadcast network to woo that particular demographic – by presenting a new type of cop show. It was one that had a trio of young characters enlisted by Los Angeles police to work undercover… but only with the understanding that they were targeting the evil adults at the top of various criminal enterprises, not people their own age. That wiggle room allowed the three heroes of The Mod Squad – as described in the show’s own promos, “One white, one black, one blonde” – to go about their business without being branded and ostracized as turncoats or narcs. Michael Cole, Clarence Williams III, and Peggy Lipton starred, and it was an early Aaron Spelling TV hit, running for five years. Eventually, Williams would play Prince’s father in Purple Rain, while Lipton, even more memorably, would play waitress Norma Jennings in both the old and new versions of Twin Peaks. This weekend, Decades presents two days’ worth of episodes from The Mod Squad. It’s not a great TV show – but it’s a spectacularly revealing time capsule… Solid!
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Meredith Willson’s classic Broadway music came to the big screen in 1962, immortalizing the pitch-perfect con-man role of Harold Hill as embodied by Robert Preston. Add Shirley Jones as Marian the Librarian, and little Ron Howard as lisping Winthrop, and there’s plenty of justification to watch this week’s TCM entry in “The Essentials” – no matter how many times you’ve seen it before. There’s so much to point out here. The “one Grecian urn, two Grecian urns” tableaux nonsense was based on an actual, terrible turn-of-the-century midwestern “act” known as the Cherry Sisters. The love song “Till There Was You” was sung by The Beatles on their debut appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. And so on…
NBC, 11:29 p.m. ET
The first new Saturday Night Live of 2021 features a first-time host (John Krasinski) and a first-time musical guest (Machine Gun Kelly). Is it too much to hope for to wish for a return appearance by Brad Pitt as Dr. Anthony Fauci, now that Fauci is out of the Trump doghouse and into the Biden White House?