INDEPENDENT LENS: "TOWER"
PBS, 10:00 p.m. ET
Director Keith Maitland takes a daringly different approach to this account of the first mass school shootings in U.S. history: the time in Austin, in 1966, when a sniper perched inside the bell tower on campus at the University of Texas and began shooting, long enough for a local TV reporter to broadcast live radio reports as the carnage ensued. Sixteen people died, more than twice that were wounded, and the events are recounted here through eyewitness and survivor testimony – and told mostly via animation, a technique that works very powerfully here. Check local listings. For full reviews, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower, and Gerald Jordan's Crossing Jordan.