TV this weekend
focusing on such figures as Frank Capra, John Ford, Oakland-born George Stevens and others.
More Netflix content: Season four of “Dinotrux,” a“Trailer Park Boys: Season 11” special, the first season of the Finnish series “Bordertown,” and the special “The Discovery.” Time to face the
“Grimm” truth: NBC’s supernatural hit is ending tonight at 8. It proved that Friday doesn’t have to be a graveyard for decent TV shows anymore, not with time-shifting and with appealing supernatural dramas like “Grimm.” “Last Man Standing” closes the book on its sixth season on ABC at8 p.m., followed by the second-season finale of “Dr. Ken” at 8:31. It takes a lot more than two to tango, as Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic prove with a concert of tangos and other Latin music at Hollywood Bowl on“Great Performances” at 9 p.m. on KQED.
Showtime looks at the 2003 murder of basketball player Patrick Dennehy by his Baylor teammate Carlton Dotson ina special at 9 p.m. called “Disgraced.” The fourth season of
“Sleepy Hollow” returns to the crypt on Fox at 9:01 p.m. No word at this writing whether there will be a fifth season. It’s been on the bubble so long, it’s taken out a second mortgage.
CBS airs the 150th episode of “Blue Bloods” at 10 p.m. The episode is titled “A Deep Blue Goodbye,” but don’t worry: The show isn’t going anywhere. The network has just renewed it for an eighth season. “Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg” (see accompanying review) is a laugh-filled look at why the comic was such an inspiration for “youngsters” like Billy Crystal, Jerry Seinfeld and Eric Bogosian, and why he’s still going strong. The documentary, by Marshall Fine, airs on Starz at 10 p.m.
SATURDAY
While the NCAA basketball semifinals air on CBS tonight, NBC counters with the two-hour “World Figure Skating Championships ” at 8 p.m.
Also at 8 p.m., Reelz ponders “Autopsy: The Last Hours of ... John Denver,” who died in a solo plane crash off Pacific Grove in Monterey Bay in 1997. In case you’re wondering, “Saturday Night Live” isn’t back with new episodes till next week. And that’s no April Fool’s joke.
SUNDAY
A new season of the PBS hit “Call the Midwife” is born at 8 p.m. on KQED. In the season opener, Sister Mary Cynthia’s health is cause for concern. It will be followed by the secondseason premiere of “Home Fires ” at 9. CBS fences off three hours tonight for the “52nd Annual Academy of Country Music
Awards,” starting at 8. The second season of
“Missing” closes on Starz at 8 p.m. and the first season of “Big Little Lies” ends at 9 p.m. on HBO.
“Black Sails,” the Starz pirate series, heads for Davy Jones’ locker at 9 p.m. after four seasons. A bountiful voyage.
Reelz struck pay dirt by picking up “The Kennedys” in 2011 after it was dumped by the History
Channel. Reelz follows up with “The Kennedys:
After Camelot,” a fourhour, two-part miniseries that begins with the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and ends with the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1994. Katie Holmes again plays the widow of the slain U.S. president, with
Matthew Perry playing her brother-in-law, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. The series is a bottom feeder, of course, but saying that will only draw more viewers. They’ll no doubt swoon at the scene where Aristotle Onassis (Alexander Siddig) is slowly drawing Jackie’s stocking off her raised leg while she reclines on her bed.
Holmes at least looks more like Jacqueline Kennedy this time around, and overall, she isn’t terrible. She pretty much leaves “terrible” to Perry.
The script is beyond redemption, cutting and condensing with little purpose beyond getting us to the so-called “good stuff” with dispatch.
There is no legitimate good stuff here, though. This would be a good time to turn the TV off and do your income taxes. It will be less painful, I promise.
The seventh season of “The Walking Dead” stomps off at 10 p.m. on AMC, followed by the sixth-season finale of “The Talking Dead” at 11.