Robinson’s tale of terror spotlighted
Lifetime continues its ripped-from-the-headlines film festival. Except for a seasonal interlude stuffed with Christmas movies, the network keeps its women-in-peril machinery running.
The 2023 shocker “The Girl Who Escaped: The Kara Robinson Story” (8 p.m. Saturday, TV-14) recalls the true tale of a South Carolina teen (Katie Douglas) who was innocently watering plants on her front lawn when she was abducted by gunwielding sicko Richard Evonitz (Kristian Bruun) who forced her into his vehicle and incarcerated her for 18 excruciating hours of sexual violation.
Kara’s key to survival was keeping her wits about her and recalling every detail of her ordeal. When Richard eventually passed out, she escaped and led authorities back to his lair. There, they found evidence that linked Evonitz to three murders.
Robinson has since become an inspirational speaker, teaching potential victims about her keys to survival.
Her happy ending stands in bleak contrast to the tales that unfold on the three-part docuseries “Murder in Big Horn” (10 p.m. Sunday, Showtime, TV-MA). It explores an epidemic of murders of young Indigenous women in and around Montana Indian reservations, where generations of social dysfunction, poverty, substance abuse and isolation, compounded by overlapping and conflicting jurisdictions of tribal and local authorities, has created the perfect conditions for killers to prey on the vulnerable, often without pursuit or consequences.
› Marc Maron goes there. In his stand-up special “Marc Maron: From Bleak to Dark”
(10 p.m. Saturday, HBO, TV-MA), the comedian shares his thoughts in his customarily dyspeptic fashion, dismissing the prospects of things ever getting better — ever. He dismisses anyone harboring any glimmer of hope as someone saddled (or is that addled) with the mindset of a 7-year-old. He dismisses religious faith with withering scorn and contemplates the paradoxical nature of his affection for his pet cats, creatures that he loves with all of his heart while at the same knowing that a day will come when they will die or he will have them euthanized.
He even adds a personal note about his grief for his girlfriend, who recently died unexpectedly of an undiagnosed illness. But because he is a skilled comedian able to address things from an oblique angle, he does so while pretending to deliver a TED Talk about death.
A little of Maron’s misanthropy goes a long way. In fact, his whole routine can seem like an exercise in testing the limits of a certain kind of hypercerebral cynical audacity. It’s like treating Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?” as your own personal “Christmas Carol.”
Just as watching the worst kind of televangelist can make one question the value of religion, a steady diet of Marc Maron can make one wonder just how grim life might be when brazen hopelessness is proclaimed as the only acceptable sign of intelligence — extolled as a virtue, in fact.
› “The Perfect 10” (8 p.m. Saturday, Fox, TV-PG) counts off the 10 football icons who have received college football’s coveted Heisman Trophy and then went on to enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Does Bronko Nagurski make the cut?
The “First Things First Super Bowl Special” (9:30 p.m. Saturday, Fox) follows, reminding fans of all the things they should be aware of as they anticipate Sunday’s big game.