TUESDAY

JANUARY 5

2016

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

FINDING YOUR ROOTS WITH HENRY LOUIS GATES

PBS, 8:00 p.m. ET

SEASON PREMIERE: These are very personal stories, as Gates, with help from genealogists and DNA testing, uncovers the past of his celebrity guests, working back through many, many generations. This season, he’ll uncover some amazing facts about Bill O’Reilly and Bill Maher (including something they have in common), and even more amazing ones about Bill Hader – but tonight, his guests include Donna Brazile and Modern Family star Ty Burrell (pictured), who in this Season 3 opener gets to learn about his not-so-modern family. For a full story, see David Hinckley’s All Along the Watchtower. Check local listings.

KING KONG

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

Willis O’Brien created the stop-motion effects in this 1933 monster-movie classic, inspiring several generations of special-effects wizards to come. Some are more effective than others, especially looking at them more than 80 years later – but imagine how amazing they must have seemed to audiences at the time. Fay Wray stars.

FRONTLINE: "NETANYAHU AT WAR"

PBS, 9:00 p.m. ET

Filmmaker Michael Kirk has provided some of the best Frontline programs since the series’ conception, so any time he produces a new one, it’s well worth the attention. Tonight, he examines a particularly timely and volatile issue in global politics, by probing the history and temperament of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – including his dealings with Palestinians and his often flinty relationships with U.S. Presidents, including our current one. Check local listings.

THE GRINDER

Fox, 9:30 p.m. ET

MIDSEASON RETURN: This very entertaining sitcom returns with the first new episode of 2016, and it provides an interesting twist: One of the brothers is jealous, but this time the jealous sibling is Rob Lowe’s Dean, not Fred Savage’s Stewart. It’s partly because a newspaper reporter is coming to town to write a profile of Stewart – but it’s also because one of Dean’s former Hollywood “friends,” Timothy Olyphant (in a recurring role as himself), is stealing not only his thunder, but perhaps the interest of available women. The episode’s title? “The Olyphant in the Room.”

KILLING FIELDS

Discovery, 10:02 p.m. ET

SERIES PREMIERE: This new nonfiction series, launching with a six-episode re-examination of a 19-year-old murder case from Louisiana, obviously owes its existence to such popular recent series as the podcast Serial and HBO’s Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, and arrives right on the heels of Netflix’s headline-grabbing Making a Murderer. What may make this new Discovery series stand out, in the long run, is its storytelling: Its executive producers are Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana, who first collaborated on NBC’s fictional but fascinating Homicide: Life on the Street.

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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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BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

PBS, 8:00 p.m. ET

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

PBS, 9:00 p.m. ET

Fox, 9:30 p.m. ET

Discovery, 10:02 p.m. ET

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