BBC America, 7:00 p.m. ET
The exciting news that Steven Spielberg is working with the Stanley Kubrick estate to complete the director's never-realized Napoleon epic is more than enough reason to revisit a Kubrick film that works every time you watch it anyway. This 1980 adaptation of the Stephen King novel is one of the spookiest movies ever made - and Jack Nicholson is the demented beating heart of it.
Fox, 8:00 p.m. ET
Last night, we finally got our first live edition of this year’s Idol incarnation, and left with several first impressions. First, the women challengers are not the overwhelmingly impressive batch of singers the judges have claimed them to be. As for the judges this year: Keith Urban is a nice-guy singer in the Adam Levine mold, Mariah Carey loves the sound of her own voice whether she’s singing or talking, Nicki Minaj is the most blunt judge of the group (but also the Steven Tyler-type wild card, in terms of her tossaway remarks), and Randy Jackson, who should sue himself for plagiarism, already has pegged several contestants as being “in it to win it.” Tonight, the guys sing.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Last year, TCM host Robert Osborne, at the third annual TCM film festival event, had a special sit-down interview with the reclusive Kim Novak. Tonight, that interview is televised, followed by a quartet of Kim Novak films. There’s no
Vertigo, but the films do include 1955’s
Picnic (at midnight ET) and the same year’s
The Man With the Golden Arm (at 2 a.m. ET), as well as our next Wednesday Best Bet,
Bell, Book & Candle.
TCM, 9:00 p.m. ET
This 1959 comedy reteams James Stewart and Kim Novak, who had starred, the year before, in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. In that movie, he played a man obsessed with her. In this movie, he plays a man who isn’t — not, that is, until she casts him under her spell. Literally, because she’s a witch. And when she casts a love spell, the look in her eyes sells it. Completely.
FX, 10:00 p.m. ET
This series has upped its game quickly and commendably, as it becomes more and more like a game of international chess. The Americans have recruited a Soviet informant by threatening to reveal that she’s stolen things from the Soviet embassy in the States, where she works. The Soviets, in turn, suspect that someone in their employ has been turned by the U.S. feds – and tonight, they try to ferret out the mole. Or mole out the ferret. And even Russian undercover agents Elizabeth and Phillip (Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys) are under suspicion.