TUESDAY

JANUARY 8

2019

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

NBC, 8:00 p.m. ET

SEASON PREMIERE: The first two installments of Season 2 are shown tonight, featuring such physically rewarding, or punishing, games as “Blindfolded Musical Chairs.” Ellen DeGeneres presides, gleefully, over a gauntlet of supersize versions of the playful games seen on her daytime talk show. And she seems to be having such fun, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ellen’s Game of Games outlasts its long-running parent program.

LINDSAY LOHAN'S BEACH CLUB

MTV, 8:00 p.m. ET

SERIES PREMIERE: This is not a recommendation. In 1954, Walt Disney presented a new TV series on ABC called Disneyland – which began, basically, as a full-length advertisement for his new theme park. The theme park was so new that it wasn’t open yet, and the TV partnership with ABC was the way Disney financed it. Then, in 1992, MTV premiered The Real World, a reality TV series from Bunin/Murray Productions in which “everyday” people were selected by the producers to cohabit temporarily in a fabulously appointed home or apartment in some exotic or attractive locale. Tonight, MTV adds to that history by partnering with former Disney actress Lindsay Lohan, star of the 1998 movie remake of The Parent Trap, on a new reality series co-produced by the team behind The Real World. It’s called Lindsay Lohan’s Beach Club – and while the title and network might suggest the show is a spring-break party venue for more of Lohan’s infamous misadventures, it’s actually a show meant to focus on, and of course publicize, her newest European beachfront nightclub. She is the owner of such beachfront clubs in Rome, Athens, and now in Mykonos, which this new MTV series promotes no less blatantly than Walt Disney pumped his movies and theme park on Disneyland. TV history marches on – and after a while, it’s all Greek to me.

THE GIFTED

Fox, 9:00 p.m. ET

Last week, the formerly separated mutants reteamed, temporarily, to rescue their common comrade Thunderbird – but in so doing, Lauren saw her brother exhibit some less than noble tendencies during the rescue mission. And in tonight’s new episode, Lauren investigates her family ancestors, and her own powers, and may unleash some dangerous emotions of her own.

U.S.S. INDIANAPOLIS: THE FINAL CHAPTER

PBS, 10:00 p.m. ET

The true story, unknown to almost everyone at the time, was told in riveting fashion by Robert Shaw’s sea captain in 1975’s Jaws: The U.S.S. Indianapolis, days after delivering the components for the top-secret nuclear bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, was torpedoed in the Philippine Sea. It sank quickly, stranding more than 1,000 sailors, hundreds of whom were stranded in the water as sharks slowly feasted on them – with no help coming, or distress signal sent, because their mission had been so crucial to the strategy of ending the war. In 2017, Paul Allen, the founder of Microsoft, founded a mission to locate the sunken wreckage of the Indianapolis, which was suspected of being 18,000 feet below the surface of the Philippine Sea. (That’s 5,213 leagues, which shows you just how deep Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was traveling.) And in tonight’s new PBS special – Spoiler Alert! – the ship is found. Check local listings.

PROJECT BLUE BOOK

History, 10:00 p.m. ET

SERIES PREMIERE: Even though this is a new production from the History channel, don’t mistake it for unadulterated history. This is a 10-part series, designed as a sort of flying saucer-centric The X-Files, in which Aiden Gillen stars as Dr. J. Allen Hynek, one of the men in charge of the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book. That was the code name for the government’s investigation into unidentified flying objects, or what it termed UFOs. (Hynek was responsible for, among other things, coining the terms and values of Close Encounters, of the First, Second, and Third Kinds.) Project Blue Book existed from 1962-69 – and near the end of its existence, I applied for, and received, official acknowledgment from Project Blue Book for the formation of my own (one-man) organization as a Florida-based, teenage investigating group interested in flying saucers. They welcomed the help, but I was in it mainly for the acronym. My Project Blue Book-recognized group was called the Youth Investigations Committee on Unidentified Flying Objects – and if you said the acronym aloud, it explained why I called it that: Y.I.C.U.F.O. For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower.

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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

NBC, 8:00 p.m. ET

MTV, 8:00 p.m. ET

Fox, 9:00 p.m. ET

PBS, 10:00 p.m. ET

History, 10:00 p.m. ET

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