WEDNESDAY
AUGUST 6
2014

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Epix, 8:00 p.m. ET

I have a triple affinity for director Robert Altman. First, he was a fabulously influential and experimental director, pushing the boundaries regarding the way audiences would accept both sights and sounds – he was a true maverick (and a truly nice guy, when I interviewed him). Second, he directed some fabulous movies, from his well-regarded classics MASH and Nashville to such underappreciated cult classics as Brewster McCloud and my personal favorite, Images. And third, he came up from television, clocking about a decade on everything from Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Millionaire to Maverick, Bonanza and Combat! This new biography of Altman covers some of that ground, at least. It’s directed by Ron Mann, who did Comic Book Confidential, and includes home movies provided by Kathryn Altman, Robert’s widow. And if Altman whets your appetite for seeing more, Epix is happy to oblige, and follows the documentary, at 9:45 p.m. ET, with 1973’s The Long Goodbye, starring Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe, and at 11:45 p.m. ET by 1980’s Popeye, with Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall as Popeye and Olive Oyl.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

It’s Paul Muni night (and day) on TCM, and the evening part of the tribute begins with one of his most important starring roles. Made in 1932, it told the based-on-fact story of a man who was wrongly imprisoned, and, at the time the movie was released, still on the run from authorities, like a true-life Richard Kimble. And the reaction to this film, and Muni’s performance, was so potent that, as happened decades later with the subject of the sympathetic biopic Hurricane, its protagonist was pardoned.

 
  
 
 

WE TV, 9:00 p.m. ET

The plot continues to thicken, almost to gumbo level, as things happen on all sorts of fronts. One of them: Christine contacts her estranged family for help, once her investigation results not only in some new information, but some unexpected dangers.

 
  
 
 

TCM, 9:30 p.m. ET

Paul Muni plays a ruthless gangster named Tony in this 1932 Howard Hawks mobster movie – but it’s pretty obvious he was playing Al Capone, or a very close approximation thereof. (The real Capone reportedly enjoyed this movie enough to own his own copy – and that was about 45 years before home video.) The cult classic of the same name, starring Al Pacino in 1983, follows the same brutal and tragic trajectory – but watch this one for Ann Dvorak as his sister Poppy, and George Raft and Boris Karloff as fellow thugs.

 
  
 
 

CBS, 10:00 p.m. ET

Josh Malina from Sports Night, among many other things, shows up tonight as one of the doctors guiding Molly (Halle Berry) through her pregnancy. If that’s what it is…

 
  
 
 
 
 
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3695 Comments
 
 
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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.