SUNDAY

NOVEMBER 6

2016

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

Sundance, 6:00 a.m. ET

Beginning today, Sundance is devoting part of its schedule to a truly welcome TV retrospective: in-sequence giant helpings of some of the best TV comedies ever made. Sunday from 6 a.m. ET through Tuesday at the same time, Sundance works its way through a marathon showing of the first four seasons of M*A*S*H, the brilliant anti-war war comedy developed for television by Larry Gelbert in 1972. That’s followed, on Tuesday, by heaping helpings of another 1970s TV classic, All in the Family. Collect them all. Trade with friends. And this, I hope, is just a taste of things to come. What TV needs next is an entire programming block, if not network, that takes TV as seriously as TCM treats film: with documentary specials, focused retrospectives, insider guests, and other treats. But for starters, let’s salute Sundance for what it’s doing here.

THE CIRCUS: INSIDE THE GREATEST POLITICAL SHOW ON EARTH

Showtime, 8:00 p.m. ET

This is the final pre-election edition for any weekend show dealing with politics, and tonight that refers to at least two noteworthy ones. The first is this team effort by Showtime and Bloomberg Politics to cover the presidential election campaign in weekly documentary bursts, and show it, from the inside as well as the outside, for the exhausting marathon it is. Mark Halperin, John Heilemann and Mark McKinnon – veteran political reporters or strategists – divide and conquer, covering the competing candidates and other prominent politicians and media figures and networks. The show is unfailingly smart, refreshingly nonpartisan, and, if anything about the 2016 campaign can be described as entertaining, relatively painless to watch –as well as, most weeks, helpfully informative, and sometimes even quietly revelatory.

THE WALKING DEAD

AMC, 9:00 p.m. ET

The first week of this season’s Walking Dead shows was unremittingly, even controversially, grim and violent. Last week’s episode was, by comparison, almost whimsical, introducing both an ersatz messiah and his uncaged pet tiger. And tonight’s episode changes tone again, focusing on another potentially deadly caged mammal: Daryl (Norman Reedus), captured and carted away by Negan and the Saviors.

WESTWORLD

HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET

Westworld continues to reveal itself slowly and present its intention and direction in unexpected twists, turns and dead ends – just like a maze, which has become not only this show’s central metaphor, but a plot device of its own, with the Man in Black (Ed Harris) searching with fierce determination to find “the maze” and understand its secrets.

MASTERS OF SEX

Showtime, 10:00 p.m. ET

This season’s shows have been alternately emotional and amusing, and I’m guessing tonight’s new outing leans towards the latter. Libby (Caitlin FitzGerald), the sexually emboldened estranged wife of Michael Sheen’s Dr. Masters, heads on a weekend road trip with Bram (David Walton), her husband’s attorney – and her current paramour. It’s the summer of 1969, and they take a drive to upstate New York, to check out a little music and arts fair being held in Bethel – a little outdoor concert venue now known as… Woodstock. But traffic is tough. As Arlo Guthrie famously told his audience of 500,000 muddy listeners: “The New York State Thruway is closed, man!”

LAST TANGO IN PARIS

MGM HD, 10:20 p.m. ET

In 1972, Marlon Brando made two movies, both of which achieved an unusual degree of notoriety. One was Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. The other was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, in which he plays an American in Paris, but one who’s a far cry from the type portrayed on screen by Gene Kelly. In Last Tango, he plays a grieving widower, so overcome by the suicide of his wife that he embarks on a carnal, physical, no-names-please affair with a young woman (played by Maria Schneider) he meets by accident while looking to rent an apartment. Well, we all have different ways of coping with grief. This guy used butter, in a scene so infamous at the time, it still ranks as one of the most noteworthy cinematic sex scenes ever filmed – and explains why this movie, though almost 40 years old, is televised so rarely. Yet here it is, unedited.

LAST WEEK TONIGHT WITH JOHN OLIVER

HBO, 11:00 p.m. ET

This is the other show, often dealing with politics, presenting its final edition before the arrival of Election Day 2016. Oliver has spent more and more time discussing the election campaign, always to his own dismay, and it’s impossible to imagine he won’t address the most recent events, and dramatic turns of events, in tonight’s installment, taped a few hours before it’s shown on HBO. Last Week Tonight has been the most consistently excellent satirical comedy show covering this election, and I expect no less from it, and from Oliver, tonight.

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