5 things you Don’t want to miss
Sunday, 8 p.m. (Ch. 13) Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr. Gates’ new series continues his genealogy formula, which has spawned imitators: Track down celebrities’ ancestry and watch them be surprised. This season will have Barbara Walters, Martha Stewart, Sanjay Gupta and others, but it starts in Nawleans with Harry Connick Jr. (l.) and Branford Marsalis (r.). Spoiler: They both have some interesting sleepers, but Connick has the funnier reactions. Monday, 8 p.m. (Ch. 5) Alcatraz This is the season finale for “Alcatraz,” and to be coldly realistic, probably goodbye forever. There’s little or no chance Fox will bring it back, even though it’s been kind of fun. Maybe it was a case of one too many shows with a supernatural component, though the funny thing is that it’s also easy to enjoy “Alcatraz” just as a cop show with a good odd-couple buddy team in the lead. They always used to say no one had ever escaped from Alcatraz. Fox may be the first. (At r., Sarah Jones, who plays Rebecca.) Sunday, 9 p.m (Ch. 2) The Good Wife CBS obviously likes this program, as it should, since it’s a strong show with exceptionally good actors led by Julianna Margulies. But competition on Sunday nights can be brutal, so its numbers have been, by CBS standards, just so-so. That’s probably why the show is bringing in a reinforcement this week: Matthew Perry (above), who will have a recurring role. The show isn’t short on hunky guys, but Perry provides another one anyhow, and he’s a good actor who has shown he can rise (or, okay, fall) to the level of the show he’s on. In this case, there should be no problem. Monday, 9 p.m. (FAM) Make It or Break It This isn’t how the series’ final season was supposed to play out. There were four girls trying for the Olympics, and we were going to follow them to see who made it there. But then Chelsea Hobbs got pregnant in real life, and she was written out of the show. So we now have the other three plus a late substitute or two. The good news is that Ayla Kell, Josie Loren and Cassie Scerbo (above, l.-r.) are plenty good on their own, so the show should be able to whip up enough drama for its final run. At the very least, we’ll find out who makes the Olympic team. Monday, 11 p.m. (OXY) Brooklyn 11223 The strangest new reality series in years stars two posses of women from Brooklyn, all in their 20s and living the single life. They like to party, let’s put it that way. But the show has a weirdly narrow focus. One of the girls, Christie, is convinced her exBFF, Joey Lynn (r.), slept with her boyfriend three years ago. So Christie (and thus by extension everyone else) spends the whole show obsessing about it. It’s so bizarre, it’s almost surreal. You may not want to watch twice, but once is acceptable — just for educational purposes.