MONDAY
AUGUST 4
2014

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

TCM, 6:00 a.m. ET

Today’s TCM 24-hour salute is to Judy Garland – and while her iconically unbeatable The Wizard of Oz is not part of today’s roster, lots of other important Garland films are. Start at 10 a.m. ET with 1944’s Meet Me in St. Louis (directed by Vincente Minnelli, whom she would marry the following year at age 23). Rejoin the festivities at 2 p.m. ET for 1948’s Easter Parade, in which she stars opposite Fred Astaire, and set the alarm clock or DVRs for midnight ET to catch 1954’s A Star Is Born (pictured), her dramatic tour de force opposite James Mason.

 
  
 
 

AMC, 8:00 p.m. ET

Discovery Channel is rolling out its annual Shark Week starting this Sunday, and it was only last week that Syfy presented Sharknado 2: The Second One. Neither of those bizarre TV phenomena would exist if not for this 1975 Steven Spielberg film, which spawned not only a feeding frenzy of shark TV, but the entire concept of the modern movie blockbuster. But really – who needs a week of shark documentaries, or a goofy Syfy telemovie, when you can watch Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider clash on the high seas, in pursuit of, and being pursued by, the greatest Great White Shark in cinema history?

 
  
 
 

FX, 9:00 p.m. ET

SERIES PREMIERE: Give FX credit for rolling the dice on a somewhat bold experiment here. They’re taking two sitcom stars from a previous TV generation, and pairing them in a new comedy about lawyers, with very different approaches and ethics, who join forces. The “odd couple” premise is one of TV’s oldest and most successful, so what makes Partners relatively daring? The fact that it’s an aggressively integrated comedy, taking Kelsey Grammer (who, as Frasier Crane on Cheers and Frasier, embodied one of the “whitest” characters in TV comedy) and placing him opposite Martin Lawrence (whose Martin sitcom character was just as plainly as proudly “black”). Whatever happens in the long run with this series, everyone involved gets credit, at least, for trying to break barriers and combine audiences.

 
  
 
 

HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET

These days, people have to be careful about what they write in an email, whether it’s deleted or not, if they fear it could surface later in the wrong hands (and those wrong hands, it appears, could indeed be the government). Well, the prior-generation precursor of that was President Richard Nixon’s predilection for secretly recording his own Oval Office conversations – intended for posterity, but eventually becoming the petard on which he was hoist, so to (Shakespearean) speak, during the Watergate era. Listen, tonight, to the stark contrast between Nixon’s public and private comments during the Sixties and Seventies – when, in some instances, he contradicted his public statement by proving, among other things, that he was a crook.

 
  
 
 

PBS, 10:00 p.m. ET

Nadine Pequeneza directed this new POV documentary, which looks at a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling about juveniles receiving especially hefty prison sentences – and looks at it by focusing on one case and one prisoner. Kenneth Young was 14 when he began committing brazen armed robberies in Florida, and 15 when he was caught and given a “15 to life” sentence for his crimes. Already imprisoned for more than a decade, Young now has a chance to have his case looked at again, given his efforts at redemption since his incarceration. “They should have tried to salvage this child instead of just throwing him away,” says one person in this documentary – but others, including one of Young’s victims, disagree. For a full review, see Eric Gould's Cold Light Reader. Check local listings.
 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.