‘Donut Showdown’ seeks continent’s best
Paula Deen may have been banished from the cable airwaves, but the celebration of extreme cuisine goes on.
On the Cooking Channel, Danny Boome hosts “Donut Showdown” (9 p.m.), which has been airing on Food Network Canada. This series scours the diners and doughnut shops of North America to find the most exalted pastry.
In each episode, a baker can win a $10,000 prize if he or she pleases the palates of doughnut judges David Rocco, Maggie McKeown and Zane Caplansky. Tonight’s highcalorie competition involves doughnut-makers from Minneapolis and Toronto.
The History Channel gets an early jump on the Fourth of July and cable marathons with a 12-hour helping of the documentary-biography series “The Men Who Built America” (3 p.m. to 3 a.m.). Filled with historical re-enactments, “Men” profiles such ambitious and frequently ruthless monopolists as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan. These titans of industry and finance reshaped American business and society between the Civil War and World War I.
Unabashedly pro-business, the series doesn’t consult historians, but a Greek chorus of television figures, including Donny Deutsch, Jim Cramer, Donald Trump and Jack Welch. As I noted in my review of the series, the History Channel’s “Men” is much closer to advertising than real history.
In a curious twist, CNBC, the business network that employs Jim Cramer, will air “The Queen of Versailles” (7 p.m.), a 2012 documentary that offers a savage take on consumerism and excess.
Tragic, staggeringly strange and frequently jaw-dropping, “Versailles” profiles former Florida billionaire David Siegel and his trophy wife, Jackie. They find themselves in straitened circumstances after the economic collapse of 2008. Their unfinished 90,000-square-foot home is the “Versailles” in the film’s title.
TCM presents a night of films about blended families and children as matchmakers (as in “The Parent Trap”). Doris Day and Brian Keith star as single parents of large broods who combine forces in the 1968 comedy “With Six You Get Eggroll” (7 p.m.). Other films include “Twice Blessed” (1:45 a.m.), a 1945 comedy about twin sisters scheming to reunite their divorced parents, and “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” (3 a.m.) from 1963, starring Glenn Ford. This film inspired a TV version, starring Bill Bixby, which ran from 1969-72.
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
A mystery ingredient forces contestants to improvise on “MasterChef” (7 p.m., WHBQ-TV Channel 13).
Oliver goes on hiatus on “Arrow” (7 p.m., WLMT-TV Channel 30).
A repeat of “Nature” (7 p.m., WKNO-TV Channel 10; WMAV-TV Channel 18) from 2008 visits the bald eagle, a species that has come back after being declared endangered.
Spend nine hours with “Duck Dynasty” (6 p.m. to 3 a.m., A&E).
Danielle visits a festival of food and music on “BBQ Crawl” (7 p.m., Travel).
Pastries loom large on “The American Baking Competition” (8 p.m., WREG-TV Channel 3).
Brown’s gravesite becomes a murder scene on “CSI” (9 p.m., WREG-TV Channel 3).
Jail inmates grow restive on “Chicago Fire” (9 p.m., WMC-TV Channel 5).
Consumer news on “ABC’s The Lookout” (9 p.m.).