TUESDAY
JULY 4
2017

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Syfy, 12:00 a.m. ET

The recurring Syfy marathons of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone are more than just easy programming filler for occasional holidays. They’re also, these days, the torch that most keeps the memory and reputation of that classic TV series alive, at least for a new generation of viewers. So, today, revel in the Zone. Watch some of the iconic episodes, like “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” (3:30 p.m. ET), which we still show in class when teaching early TV history at Rowan University --  but also look out for less famous but still enjoyable episodes, such as “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” (11:30 a.m. ET), in which a rich businessman (Albert Salmi) pays for a visit to his nostalgic past, thanks to a very devilish travel agent (Julie Newmar, pictured).

 
  
 
 

Showtime, 5:00 p.m. ET

Episodes 5 through 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return are shown tonight in a mini-marathon, bringing viewers up to speed on the Twin Peaks sequel. But the speed, to this point, has been about as deliberately and maddeningly slow as watching someone sweep a barroom floor in real time to the music of “Green Onions.” Which, I swear, was one scene in this new David Lynch-Mark Frost revival. But nothing was stranger, or more memorable and inscrutable, than Episode 8, which features a grizzled, threatening old man wandering around taking lives, reciting foreboding poetry, and asking, over and over, “Got a light?”

 
  
 
 

CNN, 7:00 p.m. ET

Next weekend, CNN premieres The Nineties, the latest in its documentary series on various recent decades. Tonight, it repeats the most recently televised installment, The Eighties, which includes an expanded two-hour segment on television – which includes Hill Street Blues, and also includes me.

 
  
 
 

HBO, 7:00 p.m. ET

Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of Nancy Pelosi, is behind this documentary, which sought to unite rather than divide politicians, by having them recite something on which they could all agree: our founding documents. Actors are part of the mix, too, but it’s the politicians who matter the most – including all the living Presidents, taking turns reading parts of the U.S. Constitution and other writings that shaped and defined our country.

 
  
 
 

PBS, 8:00 p.m. ET

The annual concert is presented and televised live, with music and fireworks straight from Washington, D.C. Check local listings.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

For Independence Day, TCM is presenting some of the most patriotic movies in its entire archive. The evening begins with this 1942 movie musical, in which James Cagney, famous for portraying the toughest of gangsters during the cinema’s early days of sound films, portrays song-and-dance man George M. Cohan, and does a “Dandy” job. In a movie made during wartime, yet. Even in black and white, this movie is pure red, white and blue.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 10:15 p.m. ET

When Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the smash hip-hop Broadway musical Hamilton, he included a nod to this earlier musical about the founding fathers, by referencing the lyric “Sit down, John” – a salute to this 1972 musical movie’s opening song. The movie stars Williams Daniels as John Adams, with Howard Da Silva as Benjamin Franklin and Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson, and is all about the summer of 1776, when politicians sat through a sweltering summer and argued the merits, and dangers, of trying to form a more perfect union.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 1:15 a.m. ET

What makes this 1962 musical such a fine fit on this day of TCM’s patriotic programming? Basically, because not even baseball and apple pie are more American than The Music Man – not, at least, since we’ve had to worry about steroids and gluten. But with one song alone, the classic brass-band number “Seventy-Six Trombones,” composer Meredith Willson captured everything about small-town America, and Iowa in particular, that made the country what it was. And still is. Robert Preston, Shirley Jones star.

 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.